Goodbye to Mimi the Cat – A Charming, Funny Feline Friend
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, May 2nd, 2020
Salaroche

This is my second time in Parikia, Paros Island. This time around, almost since the day I arrived I’ve been befriending some of the feral cats that roam around my neighborhood. First, there was Groucho, then there was Mimi, and then there were Quincy and Birdie.

I’ve been feeding these four little guys twice a day for almost three months and now they often follow me around the neighborhood whenever I go for a walk, provided I don’t go too far. I feed them canned fish, chicken or turkey food of the kind you find in almost any supermarket. Sometimes I feed them some cat pâté too.

Talking to an American lady who is somewhat in charge of the administrative aspects of an association called PAWS, which stands for Paros Animal Welfare Association, she told me I was spoiling those little feline guys because I was feeding them “luxury” food. But the fact is that the other kinds of cat food they have on the island are like dry pellets that cats sometimes even have a hard time chewing on, so I feed them meaty foods that come bathed in gravy that my little friends usually relish on.

Among my group of friendly cats, Mimi was the one who became more attached to me. She would often come close to me and rub herself against my legs, purring at will. Then she would stretch herself on the ground under my eyes and rollover a few times with obvious delight, to the point of making me think maybe she thought she was Cleopatra.

Everything was fine between my four little friends and I, particularly between Mimi and me. Five days ago, however, Mimi abruptly stopped eating anything, refusing even to drink water. She would just lay there on the floor, sometimes close to the other cats, sometimes away from them, but always like sulking.

I immediately noticed she wasn’t eating anything. At first, I thought she was just going somewhere else to eat so that she was no longer hungry at the moment I served lunch or dinner. But when the second and the third days went by and she still wasn’t grabbing a single bite to eat, I became concerned. So, I called the American lady from PAWS to ask for her advice and she gave me a few phone numbers where she said I could find the right answer to my questions.

In a nutshell, a German lady in charge of animal health issues gave me the phone number for a local veterinary of her trust, I called the vet, and ended up going to his office this morning carrying Mimi in a cage with me.

Once at the vet clinic, the doctor took her to a room where they injected her with something that basically paralyzed her. They tested her temperature, took a blood sample and then tested the blood in their own small lab and, Alas! There was nothing they could do to save her.

Her UREA was >300 mg/dl when it should have been no more than <82 mg/dl and her CREA was >10 mg/dl when it should have been no more than <1.8 mg/dl. In plain English, it meant she was in the last stage of kidney failure and the humane thing to do was to put her to sleep.

I insisted in asking whether that was really the only solution and they told me that even if they were to put her under treatment the most they would do is alleviate her pain a little and prolong her life for a matter of days only. On top of that, the whole process would be very expensive.

Under such circumstances, I agreed for them to put her to sleep, which they did immediately after. Then they asked me whether I wanted to take her dead body with me and I said no, so they just put her inside a plastic bag and took her out the back door.

So simple. So uneventful. So seemingly irrelevant. Just another life that came to an end today. I just couldn’t help but be reminded once again of my own, inevitable mortality.

Farewell, my amusing feline friend. Thank you for the fun times we shared together.

Salaroche

01.Mimi when we first met. Feb-May 2020

02.Mimi hanging around my door. Feb-May 2020

03.Mimi attentive. Feb-May 2020

04.Mimi Cleopatra. Feb-May 2020