Well, this one is for Tope, the cat who moved from one country to another, from spending a few lifetimes running from beach dogs who wanted to eat her, to a few lifetimes happy with us, trailing about gardens ready to bite and define her space.


Tope was found dead yesterday by the road-where-everyone-speeds, the road where I never shift above third because we've already lost three cats and a dog to people who thrill on country roads but don't even stop to carry a loved animal up a hill to those who loved it. Honestly, I feel like sitting at the bottom of our driveway and slingshotting every speeding car that whips by. Fuck you, people in cars who kill and don't deal.

Tope would have take one of their eyeballs.


So, Tope was born in Mexico near Akumal where my sister was interning with turtles. The way I hear it, things were incredibly hot along that beach, and the hut my sister lived in was infested with bichos, or cockroaches that were eaten in the evening by a grey kitten who wandered in and kept my sister company at night. She ate bugs and cuddled solitarily, then during the day dodged pack dogs who were eventually foiled by my sis who adopted Tope away, taking her in a small carry-on case, via multiple unexpected tolls, to WA where she learned within days how to fling herself out of our umbrella stand, which she climbed and curled into the folds so's to capture with rapier any innocent passersby.

Thin as an anorexic playgirl, Tope had more claws than any other creature known scientifically to earth, so my sister the biologist swears.

Tope lived in Seattle with A and P for a couple of years after that, and for sure I admired her all the while. And I can't actually remember the reason why she came to live with me, but it had to do with some amount of relocation. But Tope spanned two of my gfriends, both of whom admired her or put up with her (for different reasons I think), and she kept me through my Masters degree.

All things considered, I always found it noble of her to slink out the window to potty out of doors since I despise litterboxes and didn't feel like keeping one for her easy usage. She also always loved that spot between my head and the story I was typing on my computer, and we compromised by letting her have that spot, with me crooking my neck to see around her sleeping form on my belly.


During her stint with me, Tope showed a talent for bringing mice indoors and dismembering them in the bathtub. On the one hand, this did contain the gore, but on the other, it happened to be "startling" to sleepily enter the shower in the morning and step on trailing mouse intestines and a near beating heart.

But she loved it if I left the door open when I showered so she could greet me after my survival, to lick the droplets off my knees. She slept either: between the legs, right in the crook of the arm with her little head out of the blankets but everything else under, or if one was part of couple, right in the between touching both and always, always chaperoning. Tope didn't approve of her people fornicating, ever. She scratched movement under covers.

When I was stuck away from the apartment during a snowstorm and her window to the outdoor litterbox was blocked, she gracefully scraped up little corners in my plant pots. And when she moved to my mom and cr's place because I was abroad, she so successfully annoyed cr that he ranted and raved about her evilness. But when I went to put her in the car to bring her with me to Chicago, cr threw a fit and took her out. She wasn't a cat meant to be within city, as much as I wanted her to come, and we all knew that. She loved to prowl and scratch and hide in the grass. cr really loved her too, actually.

And when I moved back, a month ago, Tope started sleeping in my armpit again, so much forgiveness, and it hasn't even been three days since she thumped my foot with her back legs, biting and clawing in her inevitable angst, nor has it been that long since she purred and purred against my shoulder. I just got back. I just got back. I just got back.

Whereas I called her Tope and Little Bitch, my mom dubbed her PurrPurrSlash. In that measure.

One has to respect a being who willynilly defined her boundaries and enforced them -- with cuddle too, but mostly nippings, hissings and beatings. My sis liked to say I ruined her, made her a wicked little cu-t, but that's who she was from beginning to end, all herself, ornery and stubborn and wild, demanding and wonderful.

I took this video of her last week: