A Tribute to Tamara

We buried Tamara last week. A grey-tabby cat, she came into our lives in mid-February, 1988. The litter was purported to be six weeks, by our friend Ace, but I think he might have been pushing time a bit, because they were really tiny. In spite of that she thrived, in human years making it almost to 100.

“That one’s crazy,” Ace said when I stooped to look at the kittens he had brought in a box to our town’s little cafe. He was right about that anyway. Tami, as we called her for short, always did have a bit of a wild streak. But she was sweet, too, and I miss her terribly.

Though she definitely showed her age in recent years, she remained pretty spry and happy until just the last week before we made the hard decision. She would go outside and still catch mice. Ken and I would laugh that those mice must be pretty dumb, and just run into her mouth. She purred madly whenever she was getting pets until the last two days of her life. There was no sign of cancer, and or anything like that. What took her down at last was an abscessed tooth. The infection moved into her eyes and her sinuses, and she couldn’t eat anything solid. Were she a younger animal we would have taken her to the vet, had it extracted and put her on antibiotics. But at her age, she couldn’t have handled that. So Ken dug a hole. I carried her outside. He shot her. She was dead before she knew what hit her. Ken placed her gently in the hole, covering her gently with the rich dirt in a small corner of perennial bed adjacent to the house. We both cried. I carried rocks to protect her resting place. Our friend Tami was gone.


The reason I decided to write about Tami is because she was, in a way, a canary-in-the-coal-mine for our personal environment. She has lived with us so long, breathing the same air, drinking the same water, sleeping on the same furniture and linens. We try to feed our animals as naturally as possible, and with the highest quality food we can, too. So, I think our coal mine must be pretty clean for her to have lasted so long and in such generally good health. We quit using most household chemicals, avoided any use of pesticides or herbicides (no Weed-Be-Gone here), and have eaten mainly organic for the last couple decades. We didn’t start for our health, but because we wanted to help protect the environment. Yet based on our animals’ longevity (we run an old-age home now, with all our animals getting on in life) and generally good health, I hope it bodes well for our own health. And the science supports that it does! More and more research shows that what we have done will indeed reduce our risks. You too can make these decisions. Although our food budget may be higher than some peoples, cutting out all those other chemicals and reducing the amount of other stuff we buy has more than offset it. For example, my trusty gallon jug of white vinegar—the main cleaning product in our house—costs less than $2.00 and lasts a couple months. So start eating as much organic as you can. Avoid those perfumed, synthetic cleaning products. Quit using pesticides. And think of Tami as your inspiration for living to 100.