Two Old Survivors

Kate Stone Lombardi
Human Parts
Published in
5 min readOct 12, 2021

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“I’m ready for a new cat,” my 97-year-old Mom tells me.

“Dixie,” my mother’s last cat, had died two months earlier. Back when the beloved cat was still alive, mom had said it was her last. But she’d said the same thing about Dixie’s predecessor, “Curry” and before that, “Lucky.”

To be clear, Dixie was only “beloved” by my mother. That cat used to scare the bejesus out of me with its screeching. I swear this cat knew my mother was deaf and vocalized at a hair-raising volume. And I’m a cat person.

Dixie was a very pretty cat; I’ll give her that. She was a Bengal or what I sneeringly refer to as a “designer cat.” My cats have been either strays or shelter animals, and I take issue with paying for a bred animal when so many others need a home. Whatever. But my mother adored her, and Dixie was a huge comfort to her for well over a decade.

At age 14, elderly for a cat, Dixie got cancer. My mom kept her alive for awhile, but eventually the cat was so thin and meowing so piteously that my mom knew she had to be put down.

That was it; the last cat.

Still, I wasn’t surprised when Mom wanted a new one. For someone born in 1924, my Mom is in pretty good shape. But most of her friends have died; we lost my Dad four years ago, and a cat staved off loneliness. Also, as she likes to point out to me…

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Kate Stone Lombardi
Human Parts

Journalist/author. Contributor NYT 20+ years. Also WSJ, Time.com, GH, AARP, more. Author: Mama’s Boy Myth (Penguin/Avery 2012). Cook. Besotted grandmother.