Kaddish for Ti

Our dearest, most cherished circus kitty, Ti, was put to rest

It was a good death- held close to L’s heart

Our grief is unbound


Ti owned several names- “escort kitty”, “no frills kitty”, “zen kitty”, “little Seabiscuit”, “the great hunter” and of course, "Her Majesty/The Queen".

For the first year Ti lived with someone else, and her name remains lost to time. Then L found her as a rescue in Venice, California and took her home because she was so friendly. For the first two weeks Ti was kept indoors for her own safety, and hence, briefly retained the suitably eponymous moniker of “Tiger”. Once she was let loose to roam outdoors, about the grounds of a safe interior garden of the apartment complex, she mellowed out and became forever known as Ti. That other name, her secret one, only Ti knows.

Ti was not much to look at - in that first year she must have been malnourished. She was little, had a pot belly, overlarge rib cage which made her look underfed, and bowed spindly legs; people always kept asking if she were pregnant. Her happy tail was a crooked, almost held aloft pipecleaner of fur, bent at an angle- that’s as far as she could raise it. The tip of her left ear was missing- slashed neatly across. Ti did not look like other cats, the thoroughbreds, even the mutts, and that was her singular charm.

Into the night, Ti would go, and proudly bring home praying mantises, crickets, giant, iridescent black beetles- bugs alive and kicking, or squirming, crawling, hopping, fluttering or lifeless, and straws (sometimes with the lids attached). Many an evening was spent with L screeching about wayward crickets in sinks and bathtubs and under beds, begging for their prompt removal and release. Buggy body parts were disposed of with a loud “eewww”. The straws stayed for a while, in the garbage.

She was called “escort kitty” because her greatest pleasure and duty in life was to escort people along the myriad pathways and byways of the complex. Day or night, you could depend on “escort kitty” to see you along your way. She didn’t ask for much- not even a pat on the head- just the pleasure of your company and a destination.



She was called “circus kitty” because when Barefoot came to live, Ti took great delight in jumping across Barefoot's head in the middle of the night, when she wasn't using Barefoot's stomach for a springboard. In time, Ti, the meek and unobtrusive, fashioned for herself a human doormat and 3-ring fairground, and would raise the tent high, in the last years, when Auntie Barefoot came to visit.

Ti was a “no frills kitty” at the beginning of Barefoot's sojourn in Ti's apartment. She was safe, had food and love and a place to explore; not for her the cute and woolly ways of ordinary cats. She talked very little if at all. She went about her business and industry in a solemn manner, while Mama worked. But Ti was a quick study. She wanted the screen door opened, Then she wanted in. Then she wanted out. She would gleefully announce her latest prize. Never one much for the purr thing, she learned to love skritches, to sit on chests and laps, to sleep on heads and arms and feet, and her little purrs filled the air. Ti became articulate. And ringmistress extraordinaire.

In another incarnation, Ti must have been a dog. Her favourite other past time was to go for walks. Without a leash. The three of us would saunter down the pathways, while Ti ever kept to the pavement, exploring things on the lawn and then returning. Her favourite game was to wait until we were far ahead of her, and when we turned and called her, she would dash up to us and past at the speed of light. It became a ritual- time to walk the cat. On her final day, Ti still wanted to go for a walk, but her legs didn’t.

In the last few years, Ti became known as “little Seabiscuit”. Sure, she was kinda plain, no thoroughbred, easily overlooked. No one would have guessed that behind that modest exterior, the skinny, knobby legs and little ball of a belly, what great character and heart she possessed. How she withstood the ingress and egress of various annoying ferals and kittens and strays who snatched her food and commandeered her toys, unruffled. For she was feisty to a fault when it came to her turf. At the same time, she learned to eat peacefully with them, including a possum.

In these last 2 years, when she suffered with chronic renal failure, she endured frequent tests at the vet’s, subcutaneous fluids almost every day, various nasty potions, a ton of antibiotics, raging thirst, acid stomach, and sniffles and coughs to the edge of congestive heart symptoms. And through it all, she remained mistress of all she surveyed, and she did it with little complaint. Her biggest kvetch was not getting out enough. Meanwhile, she remained a master hunter of straws.

She was the kitty of zen. Quietly accepting most things, except other cats in her home, and sub-Q fluids. She slept by her mistress’s side all of her life and forgave her for visiting Long Island and leaving her behind 3 times; she did not hold a grudge, and never reminded her.

I think that Ti was a no frills kitty because she had secrets, from her mysterious beginnings. She never did tell us what happened, and it doesn’t really matter., She got what she needed - someone to know her and to love her, and she received it with gratitude. And so, Ti blossomed into lambent beauty.

It is thanks to my best friend/sister, L, that Ti found home, a soulmate, and learned her true name(s). No one could have been a better Mama, a better companion, a better steward of G-d’s heaven on earth, than L. Ti and L were bashert. Her last moments were so fitting, resting against L’s warm, beating heart.

Have you ever heard a mockingbird improvising wildly and rapturously in the middle of the night right outside your window, from the highest branch of a blooming white bottlebrush tree? If you have not, you have not known heaven. When I remember the mockingbird’s ravishing vocabulary, I think of Ti. Who fooled us all by doing things so quietly and modestly and who slipped from this world with the same unassuming and perfect grace.



On Shabbat. On the 18th of February. Ti H. 1994-2006. May peace and bliss be granted her in the world of eternal life.

"We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
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-- Henry Beston, circa 1925