Mu's Story: Anything but Average

I've been thinking a lot lately about how fast time slips by. TJ and I play FFXIV, and we were talking about our oldest son's interests in video games as a 9 year old with our raid team (the 6 other people we play with) and realized that it has been over 8 years since we all started playing together. Different members recalled hearing my son cry in the background, or me asking for a moment to adjust as I rocked him in my arms while juggling a controller during fights we all realized were three full expansions old. It just doesn't feel like that much time has passed, yet I take a good look around and realize I'm coming up my 13th wedding anniversary! I've done a lot of things in that time and it just kind of hit me, like a slap in the face!

One of the most obvious markers of the passage of time in my life was Mu. I found her as a kitten on a cold October Sunday in 2005 during my last year in high school. She had gotten stuck in a gap between a retaining wall and my neighbors yard that had pulled away from the wall in the cold. We didn't know how she'd gotten there, or how long she'd been there, but she was so small she fit in half of my palm. We picked her up, put her on our back deck, and went off to our Sunday chores, thinking maybe the adult cat she'd been following would come back for her. We were wrong because she was still there when we returned and ended up sticking around for several weeks afterward. Come November, I brought her inside out of the cold, and she began her life as an indoor cat.

It took almost three weeks for me to settle on a name. Initially, my brother wanted to name her "TLO" for "The Little One" because she was so small compared to our monster of a Siamese inside and all the other barn cats on my grandfathers farm. I'd often sit out on my back deck while talking with friends trying to think of what to call her. I'd let her climb up and down the leg of my jeans because any attempt to hold her wound up with her needle like kitten claws sunk into my hands to get free. She was definitely a "you will hold me only on my terms" kind of cat. I almost called her Stubborn out of sheer frustration. Eventually, after a late night study session of my advanced statistics AP homework, I was working on the population averages, which were represented by the lowercase Greek letter mu (μ), and I liked the way it was written. Looking over at her asleep on my bed, it felt like the name fit. Mu, the very un-average, average little cat.

That was over 19 years ago. I was still in high school back, hundreds of miles away from where I live now. Over the course of our time together, Mu survived being snuck into my dorm room (while I waited for an apartment), two apartments moves during college, my in-laws house while I looked for a job post under-grad, another apartment during grad school and my engagement, and two separate home purchases. She's lived through us bringing both our boys home from the hospital, and the cohabitation with many other cats and a few dogs along the way. She had a long and busy life beside me, and saw a lot of my ups and downs through it all.

In 2023, I noticed her weight had started to drop and her behavior changed, so I boxed her up and went to the vet, scared out of my mind she was close to the end of her time and was beyond saving. I wasn't ready to give her up yet. Thankfully her time wasn't up yet, but it wasn't all good news either. Mu was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which is actually pretty common in older cats and can be treated with regular medication. But in her recent checkups, they also noticed signs of heart and liver problems. While there are tests and diagnostics we could have done to get a definitive answer, the costs outweighed the benefits for her in her old age. Any diagnostic test would have just been a confirmation and treatment only slightly beneficial. Given her age and the amount of stress it would put on her, her survival during some of the tests wasn't a guarantee. So, we opted not to put her through the stress and did what we could to make her comfortable.

After the initial diagnosis, we cleaned out the chair she'd been sleeping in, and determined part of her issues (because she also had a UTI) were around her not feeling safe when eating and using the litter box. Circe and Apollo, who are often very curious about her behavior, would sneak up on her just to see what she was doing. We're pretty certain she had lost her hearing and was deaf so the other two cats spooked her often. I took an old six panel playpen that we'd used for my younger son and an old cardboard box TJ had at work, and made an Old Kitty's Retirement corner in my living room. She got new bowls just for her, a new bed, and a small covered litter box all to herself. While it wasn't the most spacious environment, it kept her protected from the others, and made it so we didn't have to worry about her trying to jump heights that were too much for her (like up on the couch). After about a month in her Kitty Retirement Home, her bloodwork came back better (not great, but better) and she was acting a bit more like her old self.

But I wasn't delusional about her age and medical troubles. She had a small heart murmur that could potentially get worse. A complication of treating hyperthyroidism was that she could eventually fall into renal failure. I knew we were getting to the end of the road, but I did my best to stay positive and work through making sure she took her medicine twice a day, even if I had to force feed her. Mu was with me for over half my life at the time of her passing, and there were a lot of memories tied up with her little furry image. Its been hard to let her go.

Mu reminds me of all the things that happened in my life and that makes me smile a little, in a sad sort of way. So many people have come in and out of my life and she's was always there, somewhat of a steady presence, even if a loud and obnoxious one. It makes me value the now a little bit more. I put down my work, make plans with my kids, reach out to old friends, and go for coffee on the weekends. You never know when that time is going to be up and that being will be gone for good. My son will never be 8 again and I need to make sure I enjoy him as a 9 year old because before I know it, he'll be 10, and my little baby will be gone, replaced by an energetic, and very opinionated pre-teen.

This reminds me of a Japanese concept mono-no-aware (物の哀れ) or the pathos of things, and is a idiom about appreciating the ephemeral nature of things. Its a wistfulness around the nature of impermanence and how nothing ever really stays the same as time marches relentlessly forward. And that's how I feel when I look at her pictures these days. Happy that she came into my life, glad I got to share my life with her, and sad that I had to say goodbye forever in the summer of 2024. But life will continue on, and I look back on the memory of her fondly. I'm not saying I miss her, but I remember her with a smile.

So, if anything, keep in mind that you can't bring back the past, and worrying about tomorrow is wasting the time of today. Enjoy the moments you have now because you'll never get this time back, and time waits for no one. Call an old friend, spend some time with your family, play with your pet. Take care with the now because before you know it, it'll be gone and everything could be very different.