Tonight we had Newt put down; he had terminal renal failure, which is often what does in old cats. And he was an old cat. Sweet to the end, dying with feline grace around 6:00 this evening. He was snow-white, with golden eyes, and had this high-toned, sweet meow. He loved people, especially gals, although I was usually the one to take care of him, and since I usually woke up earliest in the household, he'd meow at me to get some food or whatever he needed. A very talkative meower. He was a big, strong American Shorthair bought in southern Ohio, he was around 20 lbs. at his peak, and that was muscle. We never had him declawed (I just never believe in that -- fuck the furniture -- not like I had any furniture valuable enough to worry about that).
Newt was always a charmer, a people-pleaser. He was boundlessly curious, would come trotting out to check you out and loved attention. He was a pretty good mouser (I discovered this at the Black House), although not as good as his sister, Jinx, who was a really prime mouser. But Newt was very quick. In his youth, he could jump very high -- like maybe 62" straight up, which was pretty impressive for a cat. As a kitten, we had him and his sister blocked off in a room of the first apartment we ever rented, and entertained guests in one of the other rooms. And we heard this scrabbling and tiny Newt had managed to crawl his way up and over the barricade, peeking his lil' head over and mewling, to everybody's delight. He and his sister caught fleas, and turned that apartment into a real flea trap, prompting a major chemical war on those damned fleas.
I remember giving him a bath to get him clean, and Newt just hating that, mewling and refusing to make eye contact for a day or so. But he was ultimately an incredibly sweet and forgiving animal, with this calm and even temper. The only time I ever saw Newt bristle was when he saw an opossum on the other side of a sliding glass door at our apartment circa 1999 -- Newt didn't know what the hell that thing was; and when the in-laws brought one of their dogs in, and Newt actually swaggered out and growled at the intruder dog (I thought it was stupid of them to bring their dog in, anyway). Newt just moseyed up to the dog that was easily three times his weight and he'd whack her with his paws. She came from a house with a cat and only wanted to be friends, but Newt was having none of it. Newt was named from the character, "Newt," from ALIENS, which we'd watched maybe the weekend before getting him and his sister. I don't really remember how we decided on Newt, but it stuck, and everybody was calling him Newt in short order, our peers from college in our college town, where we got him. When we took him and his sister from the cages and let'em roam around the pet store, kitten-Newt terrified these guinea pigs -- Newt ran up to them (they were in their cages) and peeked at them and they did that guinea pig distress-trilling, which was funny, since they dwarfed Newt back in the day. I remember as kittens, Newt and his sister would cuddle up by my shoulders and purr during the night, before they grew up and got too cool for that, although even as an adult, Newt would crawl up onto my chest and peer at me (usually at night, with that white fur of his and his eyes all dark in the night, very "Ghost Cat") and he'd sometimes lay down on my chest, touching my chin with his paws, or he'd just stand there and give me an interrogative meow.
Newt loved when I'd comb him -- he'd just sit there very patiently and let me groom him, in this Sphinxlike pose with his legs out. Sometimes he'd hold that pose and fall asleep, and his head would droop down between his paws, which was adorable. Most of my pix of Newt are from the old days, before the digital camera came along. Around 1993, the day before Exene was going to get her state ID photograph, Newt used her face as a springboard to launch himself to a windowsill, which scratched her face. She got up, jolted awake by that, and then promptly fainted. She was chagrined that her ID picture had her with this fresh scar on her face. Newt really was a great cat. I put his picture (above) on our wall -- it was a photograph taken by a mutual friend from the "Summer of Love" (as I ironically called the summer after college graduation, when our group of college peers hung out and just basically partied and had a good time, everybody still friends, all of that -- me stupidly deciding on getting married at 22 years -- dumbass). Anyway, that friend managed to capture Newt's essence perfectly in that photograph. It's quintessential Newt, as a young cat, laying there, curious, paw extended, wanting to explore. Totally, totally him (there's a companion shot of Jinx, too, which is also very her -- but Newt's open expression is just so sweetly him). Anybody who met Newt knows how sweet a cat he was. He'd just come out and say "Hi" and want to be petted. He wasn't afraid of anybody, loved everybody.
Later, Newtral. I love you, lil' guy. *NOSETOUCH*
