We had originally gone to the SPCA shelter that day (long before we’d started working with Happy Tails) intending to adopt a little kitten, but when I passed Nutmeg’s cage, she reached out a paw at me and patted me on the shoulder. So while Jennifer tried to coax a shy black and white kitten out of its cage, the attendant took out Nutmeg (called Monet at the shelter) so we could get acquainted. She clambered up one of my arms, across my shoulders, behind my neck, down the other, and let me hold her, purring all the while. So, it was decided: we would adopt her.

We brought her home, and she fit in well with the crew that we already had. The vet’s exam showed she was healthy, and she was friendly to the vet and staff, so the vet remarked that she had a good personality, though she was a bit on the portly side. She was definitely friendly, though she didn’t like to be held for very long by anyone (besides me, which made me feel good).

For the first few years, she slept with me, even followed me downstairs like a puppy whenever I went to bed. As she grew older and less mobile, she tended to stay either upstairs or downstairs during the day, depending on where she was placed in the morning.

Nutmeg was kind of a strange cat when it came to her diet. She was picky. While our cat Ingrid-the-Weird would scarf down wet food and people food and any stray veggies that she fancied, Nutmeg would eat only kibble. No wet food. No people food. Jennifer once put a dab of tuna juice on Nutmeg’s nose, and she acted as though we’d tried to poison her. The only time I ever saw her interested in non-kibble was when she stuck her nose into Jennifer’s root beer float, and even then I think she was mostly interested in how the foam bubbled in front of her.

She was never an active cat, and we ended up calling her “Potato Cat”. She was a floor potato, a couch potato, a chair potato, a potato anywhere she sat (the photograph above shows her with a potato bearing an image of her likeness drawn on it). “Lazy Potato”, we’d sing to her. “She’s our lazy Potato Cat!”

A few weeks ago she stopped eating and started losing weight. Definitely peculiar for our lazy potato cat. She didn’t mind having food put into her mouth and she would eat that, but she wouldn’t go to her food bowl on her own. We took her to the vet, but he initially found nothing physically wrong with her. When he did an X-ray and a more thorough physical exam a few days later, he found a number of lumps spread throughout her body, on her spleen and liver and in her abdomen.

So after that, it was just about keeping her comfortable and happy. The vet gave us Prednisalone for her, and that brought back her appetite. We had a few weeks with her after that.

But then she peed in her bed, and didn’t move out of it. She’d always had a problem with inappropriate peeing, but she’d always moved away from it. This time, she didn’t. We finally picked her up and put her in one of her favorite spots, on a pad on the floor in front of the refrigerator. We noticed that while her stomach was large as always, we could feel her pronounced backbone, which is not a good sign in a cat. So on Sunday morning, we made the painful decision to take her to the vet’s office to have her euthanized. I’m so grateful that Jennifer came with me, and that the vet allowed us into the room where they would perform the procedure — I’d been terrified that we’d have to wait outside because of COVID-19 restrictions. And, of course, I was a wreck the whole time, but I held her and hugged her while it happened.

She was one of the first cats we’d adopted since moving to Sacramento (Rupert and Ingrid were the first), and she was the first one we adopted with the intention of bonding to me. And we did bond.

Goodbye Nutmeg, my lazy potato — also known as Miss Chumbly Wumbly, Chumbles, Chumbelina, and other nicknames I can’t quite bring to mind right now. You were a spiffy cat, and I will always love you.