Nena

by James Thompson
(Rotten Groton, CT, USA)

Nena was a bundle of love that I had rescued when she was a few weeks home. I found her when I was driving home around 1 am on a somewhat rainy night, when I was stationed in Goose Creek, SC.

I was making about 45MPH along the main road leading from work to my house in base housing (Speed limit was 55MPH, but with the light rain and the Geo Tracker's love of tipping over in bad conditions made me slow down).

I had just turned the brights on after a car went past me in the other direction. I noticed something white creeping along the road. I rapidly turned off the ignition, put the Tracker into 2nd gear, and forced the engine to restart using the clutch, while pumping the brakes.

With manual steering, no effect on control was had by doing that. Besides, using the rapid engine restart/braking procedure will yield a faster stop, but is very hard on the clutch and the engine.

Set the parking brake, pulled out my flashlight, and started to look around for the animal that I had spotted. I heard a faint miaowing from under the engine area. I thought I had hit a cat, at first, and in anger, kicked the grill on the tracker, breaking it.

I looked and found a small calico kitten hunkered over next to the driver's side front tire. With the angle the tire was at, I had just missed it. Had I not angled wheels to try to throw off some momentum, the kitten would have been it.

I picked the kitten up, to find that her eyes had just opened up and she was shaking hard. I looked around for the mother cat, to find that she had been hit by another motorist. I looked for siblings, to find that they had also met the same fate.

I took her home and fed her some warm milk. Our "mama cat", Satan took her in and started to nurse her within a few hours.

Over the course of the following months, she went from a shaky little kitten to a furry thunderbolt. She would come to the door when she heard me pull into the driveway, and would not leave me alone when I was at home. When I took a bath, she would perch on the side of the tub.

We did all sorts of things together. We would play with model trains, she even learned how to control them herself, a skill that she would use later.

She even had a plate at the dinner table, on top of a stool next to my chair.

When we took her out and about, she was a model of a well behaved cat.

When I received my orders to Rotten Groton, CT, she was insistant that she ride with me in the moving truck and not with my wife in the Tracker.

After about a month of being in Groton, I went on my first 6 month deployment with the USS Annapolis (SSN-760). Nena did not take that too well. She stopped eating entirely. After about two weeks at sea, we stopped in La Maddalena, Italy where I made my first call home. Nena yanked the cell phone away from my wife and started to miaow and purr into the phone.

Nena resumed eating that night. Each time we pulled into a port, Nena would "talk" to me. With about 2 months left in the deployment, Nena was taken into the vet for shots. She tested positive for feline leukemia. The vet gave her a few weeks to live, and asked my wife if she wanted Nena put down. She said to wait until I got home.

Over the next few weeks, her health deteriorated fast. I knew nothing about it, as my wife decided that it would destroy me to hear about Nena's condition while I was still at sea.

On March 8th, 2006 I returned home with my ship. Nena was waiting for me at the door when I came home. She promptly shed all over my dress blue uniform, which is made of wool.

That night she was full of energy, and only after she had exhausted me out did she show me how she really was feeling like. She did not leave my side that night. If she needed to use the litter box, she would tell me, and I would bring her to the litter box and wait for her to finish up.

We cuddled up together for the last time around 2am. Around 3am, she made a series of loud and plaintive miaows, which woke me up. My wife did not even stir. I started to scratch Nena's ears and neck, and she started to purr. About a half hour later, the purring Nena died while she was purring.

She had just missed two years of age.

My wife woke up to find me crying hard and holding my "baby" tight. She told me about how Nena was doing during her last months, and how Nena had made a bed out of unwashed clothing of mine that she hidden.

Since then, we had Nena cremated. I had part of the ashes sealed into a locket that I have brought with me each time I have put to sea.

The remainder of the ashes reside in a ceramic cat that I had bought in Bahrain because it looked so much like Nena.

In my will I have specified that I also be cremated, and mixed with Nena's ashes, to reside in that ceramic calico cat.

It has been over two years, and it is a memory that brings me feelings of great joy and sorrow.

One of the things that has helped me cope with this loss has been to share it with others. I have lost cats before, but this loss is one that I am having a hard time reconciling with still.