We have an old cat in our house.\u00a0 Our children have come and gone and come and gone.\u00a0 But Taffy the cat has been here most of two decades.<\/p>\n
Daughter Abby was always befriending farm cats and bringing them in the house for extended visits when she was young.\u00a0 Kittens born in a closet were a high point and a brief invasion by fleas were a low point in those years.<\/p>\n
When Abby was twelve, she was playing over at Dan and Lisa Steffl\u2019s farm.\u00a0 There was a kitten in a puddle which had somehow lost its mother.\u00a0 Abby asked the Steffl kids if she could take it home.\u00a0 Abby has long been a defender of the downtrodden of all species.\u00a0 Pam and I assumed this kitty she named Taffy was another short-term visitor.<\/p>\n
Eventually Abby left, and Taffy stayed.\u00a0 She\u2019s still here, seventeen years on.\u00a0 As Abby went to University, moved to the West Coast, and then Europe, I had a running joke where Taffy wanted Abby to look for her mother.\u00a0 Abby recently moved to Guatemala City.\u00a0 Perhaps Taffy\u2019s mother is there.<\/p>\n
Now, Taffy looks to be in her twilight.\u00a0 Aging is different from injury and illness.\u00a0 It is a long slow gradual slide.\u00a0 Taffy doesn\u2019t bat the string around anymore that hung on the stair railing.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t sit on the chair across from me when I\u2019m having my morning coffee.<\/p>\n
For many of these columns, Taffy jumped up on our computer desk and laid next to the keyboard when I was writing.\u00a0 It was a little annoying, I had to maneuver the mouse between her paws.\u00a0 But she was social in that way, so I left her.\u00a0 I said she was my editor.\u00a0 A few months ago, she couldn\u2019t make that jump anymore.<\/p>\n
The gradual decline has become steeper lately: not eating much, barely getting up the stairs, even looking tippy sometimes.\u00a0 Just to be sure there wasn\u2019t any simple thing to help, I took Taffy to the vet\u2019s.\u00a0 Christina from Riverside Vet Clinic concurred that Taffy\u2019s condition was a natural state of being near the end.\u00a0 Death is, after all, natural, even if I don\u2019t like to think about it.<\/p>\n
I called the kids to let them know Taffy was on palliative care, hospice provided by Pam and me.\u00a0 And they should prepare for bad news.<\/p>\n
The thing about pets is you see their whole lives play out, from kittenhood to old cat or puppyhood to old dog.\u00a0 It is a life spanned within our own life\u2019s span.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think about that till becoming an older human.\u00a0 But right there in front of us is a metaphor for our own life.\u00a0 Depressing as it may be, watching Taffy\u2019s decline presages my last chapters.\u00a0 Loss of acuity, susceptibility to various ailments, lessening energy are things common to cats and us as we age.<\/p>\n
I hope to be running around for a while.\u00a0 But I know how this fall, climbing on top of bins and crawling underneath equipment were done with less friskiness than in the past.\u00a0 Achiness after a hard day was a little more pronounced.\u00a0 Running for twelve or fourteen hours has gotten more challenging.<\/p>\n
As I describe those phenomena, I\u2019m not glum about that.\u00a0 No way did I anticipate any of it when I was thirty.\u00a0 But now that I\u2019m twice that plus four, I understand that\u2019s the script.\u00a0 I remember my dad moving slower and grunting to climb up on tractors when he was this age.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about this while I was combining corn.\u00a0 Six rows of tall, browned stalks were being whipped down by the snapping rolls, the ears drawn in by the gathering chains.\u00a0 It\u2019s all incredibly fast, almost violent.\u00a0 There\u2019s standing corn in front of you and bits of leaves, stalks, and cobs behind you.<\/p>\n
Hours of this becomes hypnotizing, and your mind has space to wander.\u00a0 It occurred to me that my corn plants were another life spanned.\u00a0 In this case, all within a growing season rather than the unpredictable lifetime of cat or human.<\/p>\n
Six months ago, I gently poured seeds into my planter hoppers.\u00a0 A lot of planning and effort went in to giving each one of those the best seedbed and conditions possible.\u00a0 When the shoots poked out of the ground, there is always a tiny excitement for the farmer.<\/p>\n
After that comes days of green stalks growing skyward, leaves rolling out.\u00a0 Corn standing tall and straight in late summer is impressive and not to be taken for granted.\u00a0 There\u2019s everything we do as farmers and then about 90 per cent what nature does that gives us a crop to put in the bin.<\/p>\n
Cat, corn, farmer.\u00a0 There are seasons for all: a time to be young, a time to grow, and a time to die.\u00a0 Ecclesiastes says it well.<\/p>\n
With some of my own physical ebbing, there comes understanding that I couldn\u2019t have had when I was younger.\u00a0 Understanding and appreciation.\u00a0 These days are gifts given more than earned.<\/p>\n
Taffy looks tireder and tireder.\u00a0 If I am lucky to grow old, observation tells me that will come for me.\u00a0 In the way that the corn plant turns from green to brown, I think we grow tired of this life, exhausted as our bodies wear out.<\/p>\n
The kitten Abby found in a puddle might have had a short life if it hadn\u2019t moved in with us.\u00a0 The life of a farm cat can be tough.\u00a0 The luckiest live in a warm dairy barn with spilled milk for an occasional treat.\u00a0 The less fortunate wander from farm to farm avoiding coyotes, scrounging food to survive.<\/p>\n
I sometimes wonder, would Taffy have chosen that and the chance to bear a couple of litters of kittens over her comfortable but neutered life?\u00a0 The urge to procreate is after all large in nature.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t get that choice, and I appreciate that she gave seventeen years of companionship to our family.<\/p>\n
Taffy is dying of old age.\u00a0 And that is a gift not given to all.\u00a0 If I die of old age, I\u2019m not sure how much I\u2019ll be aware of things.\u00a0 But I hope I can appreciate that.\u00a0 Maybe even celebrate it with whoever might be there at my end.<\/p>\n
(After this was completed, Taffy passed on.\u00a0 I was able to be there at her end, her on a blanket, me on my knees.\u00a0 It felt like a small grace.\u00a0 Burial to follow in the grove.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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We have an old cat in our house.\u00a0 Our children have come and gone and come and gone.\u00a0 But Taffy the cat has been here most of two decades. Daughter Abby was always befriending farm cats and bringing them in the house for extended visits when she was young.\u00a0 Kittens born in a closet were …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 10:25:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120619,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120589\/revisions\/120619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}