ThankYouVeryMuch Oh Mr. Roberto

Tuesday morning I found myself blaming 'the hormones'.  When I made a quick run into a Broad Ripple shop at 11AM, I peeked out the window just in time to see a meter man (unjustifiably of course), slapping my car with a fat ticket. I lost it, and started sobbing uncontrollably right there on the scene. Prior to this particular shop opening for the day I had some time to kill, so I stopped at a pharmacy for both greeting and gift cards. One greeting card I picked up was a sympathy card for a lost pet.

Once home and still very upset, I found myself reminiscing about my college life. I was advised by a grad student boss of mine that if I ever wanted to live by myself and have the freedom to keep the coffee maker in the bathroom if I so chose then I should seize the day, (especially if I thought I would get married right after college). So that's what I did.  As a junior, I snagged my own apartment and welcomed the joys of living alone- even if it was a dorm apartment to make my parents feel more comfortable with the idea.

I was lonely and often talked to myself when the apartment was too quiet.  My sister and I made a random stop to a pet store one October night and with much of her convincing, I decided to break the dorm rules and adopt the cutest sweetest fluffiest black kitty that let me hold him like a baby and rub on his belly the first time I picked him up. At 7 months old he was almost fully grown. He was already named Robbie, so I kept the name, thinking that after 7 months, he was already somewhat used to it. It must've worked because he was the smartest cat I've ever seen.

As a kitten he acted so much like a dog. He would beg for food. Get into the garbage. Tear open the package of english muffins left on the counter where he could get them. He would play fetch with one particular 'toy'- a faux hemp bracelet that I can only assume reminded him of a mouse tail. He would pounce on my feet in the early morning to get me out of bed and go to class. He did back flips for the orange toy I knitted for him and stuffed with cat nip.  In fact, cat toys were the perfect knitting project for anyone just learning to knit, after all- cat's don't care if you drop a stitch- the easier to get to the nip!  As the instructor and coordinator of our dorm's knitting circle, there was once a whole group of students knitting bright orange toys for Robbie. Many of those girls loved kitties, and missed theirs back home, so they would come to visit play with Bob-Cat (one of his many nicknames). 

Robbie the Jaguar, I mean during a yawn.

Everyone who knew about Roberto living in the dorm apartment looked the other way as he was such a cool cat. After Christmas break (and a bit of how-to research), we started the toilet training process. It was a long process, but by the time spring break rolled around, Robbie was using the toilet like a human room mate would, well not exactly- he couldn't flush. When I left on my Hawaiian spring break trip and needed a cat sitter, the dorm's dining hall president at the time agreed to watch the amazing kitty for me. There he was introduced to the great outdoors. She looked the other way in regards to the dorm regulations.

The following fall, when classes started back up, we moved a block away into an off-campus basement apartment.  It was cozy, sometimes I would let Robber roam the stairwell for exercise.  One time he managed to hop out the 2nd floor window, I found him just in time- on the little bit of roof that covered the side entrance door.  He was peering over the edge, I could tell he was thinking, "Should I jump? Can I make it down without hurting myself?  Would the pain be worth it?" I stared straight into his eyes, "Robert! Here kitty kitty, you come here right now!" To my relief, the good kitty did just that.  I didn't let him roam the stairwell anymore.

My best friend also lived alone and often the two of us would hit the bars together.  While waiting for drinks young men I would simply not be into would offer to buy me a drink. With that drink, one must at least converse a tiny bit out of gratitude, right? Often, that conversation was rather short, as they would say something along the lines of, "Is that your room mate you're here with?" My response was always the same, "No, actually I live with a big black guy named Robbie, he's pretty hard to miss, you know him?"  Something about that statement usually bought me my freedom and I was able to get back to having fun with Shannon.

Mr. Roberto and I even once visited a hotel in downtown Chicago to audition for a game show sponsored by a big name cat food company.  The show was called "Think Like a Cat", I never did see it air.  While we didn't make it on as contestants, one of the judges was a university professor of animal psychology who was thrilled to learn that Robbie liked to watch TV himself!  Rob's favorite show was Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor.  The professor was grateful I was willing to send him video of Rob watching the show so he could use it in his lector on the matter. Robbie surely did make quite the university impression to say the least.

It was at the end of that year that Rob started showing signs of a condition known as 'lip erosion'. Graduation ensued and we moved back to Crown Point.  The new vet there said it was thought to be a result of an allergic reaction to mice, or something else in his food.  We started him on better food and the lip sores would come and go. But he loved going outside, especially with Monroe, my parents cat, to show him the ropes of true living outdoors. Sometimes they would battle playfully in the backyard.

You can see Robbies tongue as he gave Hazel a kiss.

With the loss of Monroe came an addition to our family- a 3 month old weimaraner named Hazel.  Robbie had known a few dogs in his day, MJ and Sadie to name a couple, but never a puppy.  He quickly taught Hazel, a natural hunter by nature, how to behave around him.  I believe it was this early training, and that fact that Bobber still had his claws to defend himself, and resulted in Hazel being better than the average weimy with cats, knowing to keep calm and not to get too close.

 

The sores on his lips seemed to escalate, into sensitive itchy skin on his belly.  He licked it bare and eventually created sores on his skin with that sand-paper like tongue of his. At a couple of points he even needed stitches to close up the sores that turned into open wounds.  He needed to wear a cone to keep from licking at the stitches and allow himself to heal.  It was around this time in 2009 that Logan and I got married and moved to Indianapolis where we merged our little family- Robbie, Hazel, and his doberman pincher Reba.  Doberman 'kissers' (as I like to call them,) are naturally good with cats, and as Reba was a puppy at a breeder's house with cats, she and Rob got along well.

Again, sores became open wounds.  I found a new holistic and very expensive vet in Broad Ripple. They did blood work, they did dog allergy testing.  The results were negative, but they wanted to try ingredient elimination to determine if it was a food allergy. Robby was to be fed a diet of strange ingredients like duck and pea food or lamb and rice food to eliminate the common problem causing ingredients like chicken and corn.  This meant that the dogs too must eliminate those common ingredients from their diets, as they shared a water bowl and the molecules would be transferred through saliva into the water where Bob would then be exposed.  So that is what we did.

Sometimes we would go to the dog park and another patron would give the girls cookies without asking first if it was alright.  That drove me crazy because I knew I would have to keep Bobby confined to a bedroom for a few days until the molecules had passed. We would often have friends over with dogs, and they would drink from the water bowl, one of the enormous water cooler jug types that would then have to be emptied and cleaned out. The cleaning- and cleaning, if we ourselves ate corn with dinner the molecules would be all over the table, counters, etc. Washing the floors nearly everyday and febreezing the furniture constantly was a pain in the neck, and feeding two big dogs hypoallergenic food was a pain in our wallet. It just was not working.

The only photo of all three of them.

We thought it would be better for his health if Robbie went back to Crown Point to live permanently with my parents, in a house free from other animals and hopefully free of whatever he was allergic to.  Thank god my parents were willing to become Robbie's full time caretaker.  I was so sad to see him go, but at least I could visit and it was for his health. I know he was sad and missed me too, because mom said she saw him jump up on the back of a living room chair to paw at my senior portrait she has hanging there.  She said he was looking behind the frame to see if I was there.  That melted my heart.

There was a great vet there who stopped charging the $40 vet visit fee each time she took him in because he had to go so often.  They experimented with a pill that was intended for use in dogs primarily, to battle cancer, that seemed to work (even though Rob was never diagnosed with cancer).  It did work, for awhile, about four years. With the return yet again of the sores on his belly, we even experimented with laser treatment. Much of this time Robbie was in a cone.

We saw him recently on a visit North. He was skinny, mom said he would only eat if you sit there with him.  So that's what I did.  I took off his cone and gave him lots of love and brushes.  I turned on the water in the sink that he liked to watch and listed to as the basin filled up.  He was good and let the girls sniff at him and they all sat together.  He even napped in their bed. 

In the following two weeks he slept with my sister an nephew while they visited for a week.  He slept with uncle Ger while he visited  the following week too.  He got lots of love, cuddles and comfort from many. It was during those two weeks that he began to only eat out of mom's hand and then eventually not at all.

On Tuesday she took him to the vet where they found an abscess on his stomach.  Could he have known it was there all along?  Could that have been why he was licking there?  All these years we, along with multiple vets, thought it was severe allergies.  If only there was a signal to an internal stomach problem that would have warranted x-rays. We did everything we could do. Robbie was laid to rest on Tuesday.  Mom told me about it Wednesday morning.

Turns out it wasn't 'the hormones' or even the parking ticket that had me sobbing and thinking thoughts of Robbie Bobby Bumper Boy (my dad's favorite nickname). It was him.  It was his signals to the universe, his soul reaching out to me to say goodbye.  Robbie, I love you so much, you will be missed by many and will forever be in our hearts.  I hope you're able to have comfort now, and not itch all the time, loose the cone and enjoy your fluff to its fullest and finest potential.  I hope you have kitty company with Monroe and Poster, although you never met poster you would've loved him.  I'm glad you did get to share your life with us, while not as long as some other cats lives, I hope we were able to make the days you did spend on this earth enjoyable.  I know you created joy in so many of my days. May you rest in peace good friend, and enjoy some chicken and corn.