Julia and Kurtis at Home: February 2009

The Story of a cat named Pleko

Pleko, Pleko, Pleko, my dear sweet Pleko,

I love you with all my heart and always will.

We lost a very god friend and member of our family this weekend. We had to put our little boy Pleko down. We discovered that he had a large aggressive tumor in his stomach. He had lost so much weight and was in so much pain that we made the very painful decision to put him out of his suffering on Saturday February 21.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I held him like a baby as the vet administered the drugs. Kurtis stood next to me holding me up and scratching Pleko on the head. Through tears and sobs I kept telling him. “You’re ok baby, you’re ok. Look at me, just keep looking at me.” The drugs worked quickly and he looked at us the whole time while he slipped away.

Is has been devastating to loose Pleko. The house is too quiet.

Pleko had a rough beginning; he came to me full grown. (I am sure he would have been a cutie pie as a kitten) In 1995 I was living in an apartment in Kansas City with my college boyfriend. The man across the hall from us had died of AIDS and his family came to clean out the apartment. They threw everything in the trash, washed the entire apartment with bleach, shooed his three cats out side and left. It was horrible. 14 years later and I still can’t believe that a family would do that. But I digress. When we came home from school Pleko was sitting on his back porch meowing and meowing. He wanted back in the apartment. We felt bad for the little kitty and tried to approach him. Pleko took off like a shot and we didn’t see him again until the next afternoon. He was on the back porch meowing and meowing to be let in. It was breaking my heart and I tried to approach him and again he took off. The next afternoon Pleko was back meowing with more force and determination. I put a little bowl of food and water out for him and waited. Pleko could smell the food and tentatively came over to our porch to check it out. My heart broke at the sight of him. The poor thing was so hungry, tired and scared. He looked awful, but from that point on he was my cat and best friend. Todd suggested his name, plecostomus or Pleko for short, after the plecostomus fish (you have seen these fish before. They are the ones that suck to the side of the tank) Pleko sucked on to me like the fish and the name stuck.

He was a great cat. He loved to curl up and snuggle down on the couch especially if there was a person their to sleep with. He had this amazing ability that I called “I’ve been Pleko’ed” You could be wide awake sitting on the couch watching TV drinking a triple espresso and if Pleko jumped up and snuggled with you, I can guarantee you would be sound asleep minutes later. I think it was his purr. Even up to his dying day he had an alluring purr. Pleko stuck with me through college, graduate school, roommates, boyfriends, marriage, other cats, dogs and 12 moves. He took it all in stride, and was always ready for a new adventure.

Pleko loved to talk and he would talk all the time. You could ask him questions and he would respond... We started everyday with a little chat. He would follow Kurtis and I into the bathroom and hang out on the rug while we got ready. Here is a typical morning conversation that we would have. Hi Pleko, how are you this morning. “Meow” Oh, good. Did you sleep ok? “Meow” Are you hungry? “meow meow” If we were getting dressed you could ask him… what do you think? “meow” Red or Pink? “meow” You’re right Red, I don’t know what I was thinking either. … or other questions you could ask him. Hey, Pleko, how was your day today? “meow” I love you Pleko. “meow”

Pleko would answer all of our questions and each answer would have a different kind of meow. Different pitch, length, emphasis… etc. I swear that he could understand what we were saying.

Pleko loved all food but chicken was his favorite. He would do anything for chicken and sometimes he knew we were going to have chicken for dinner before we did. He loved to sit at the dinner table in my lap. He would sit just like a little kid with his front paws on the table. When I had a desktop computer he would sit like that while I typed my college papers. He would get tired and put his little head down and go to sleep.

He was not a cold weather cat so when Kurtis and I moved to the East Coast, Pleko had a rude awakening. In our apartment in Buffalo he spent the entire winter wrapped around the steam radiator in the bathroom. He would lie on his back and put his back feet into the radiator and when he got too hot he would swing around and put his head and tummy right next to it. In our apartment in Rochester he would sit / sleep on the floor vent. If he heard the heater click on he would come running from whatever room he was in and hunker down. The rest of us would get cold but Pleko was warm and toasty. He would dry himself out and be a huge ball of static electricity. You couldn’t pet him with out shocking your self; he couldn’t rub up against anything without shocking himself. Everyone once in a while the charge would build up enough that he would really zap himself. If the heater wasn’t on and the oven was he would curl up in front of it and sleep on the floor. Kurtis and I used to tease that when Pleko got to retirement age we would have to set him up with a winter house in Florida.

Until 2002 Pleko was an indoor outdoor cat. He loved to sit on the porch or sit in the flowerbed and watch the world go buy. He would disappear for days in Buffalo only to show up in the evening meowing to be fed and loved. I have no idea where he went. I always wanted to put a little camera on him to see where his adventures took him.

Pleko loved boxes, any kind of cardboard box and he loved to sleep in them. No blanket or cushion, just the box. We always had on average 3-4 Pleko boxes around the house, one or two in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. The smaller the box the better. He loved to squeeze himself into the tiniest of boxes, curl up, put his paw over his eyes to block the light (it always looked like he was sleeping on his head when he did this) and go to sleep.

He had 2 arch nemesis … Plastic bags and rubber bands. He loved to chew on rubber bands. When he found one he would hook one end around his tooth and put his paw in the other end and pull back and forth. He would pull that rubber band farther and farther until it snapped and hit him in the nose. He would jump up in surprise slap the rubber band a few times and start all over again, determined to get the upper hand.

When I lived in the Midwest one of Pleko’s favorite things to do was sit in the paper bag from the grocery store. Just like any cat it was a favorite past time, especially if I rattled the bag and played with him. When I moved to the East Coast I went to the grocery store and noticed that they would put the paper bag inside a plastic bag. One day when I came home from the grocery store I put the paper / plastic bag on the floor for Pleko. He immediately crawled into it but crawled in between the plastic bag and the paper bag. He was very confused and didn’t like the sound the plastic bag made. He tried to back out but ended backing up out the handle of the plastic bag. Since he was a fatty at that point he got stuck. He panicked. He took off like a shot and the paper and plastic bag went with him. He was growling and hissing at the bags and whapping them with his paw. He was loosing the fight and he knew it so he took off trying to run away from the bags. Since the handle of the bag was caught around his middle the bags were not going to go away. He panicked more. He ran faster and faster, jumping up in the air to try and escape the bag. I heard this entire ruckus went to see what was going on. What I saw was a howling kitty attached to a paper and plastic bag running a million miles an hour running under the dinning room chairs, successfully knocking them over adding to the noise and confusion and leaping in to the air like a gazelle. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe let alone help Pleko with the enemy. Finally I calmed down and found him under the couch panicked beyond panicked. I got him out, took him into the bedroom and took off the bags. He curled up in my arms for a few minuets and then wanted down. He jumped to the floor and saw his new arch nemesis… the plastic bag. He raised his hackles, poofed out his tail and gave that bag the best warning growl he could muster. When the bag didn’t move he figured he had the upper hand. He crept forward and whacked the bag. It flew up in the air and Pleko being the big scaredy cat that he was took off like a shot. I didn’t see him for a couple of hours.

He loved to play with twinkle balls. What is a twinkle ball?? …It is a sparkly pom pom ball. He would chase these all over the house. At one point we must have had 20 of them. I kept them in a little bowl in the living room and when he decided he wanted to play he would go pick one out and bat it around, chew on it and chase it. But his favorite this was to play with Kurtis or I. You could toss the ball at him and he would whack it back. Over and over and over. He had the most amazing hand eye reflex… I guess that would be paw eye reflex.

In his later years Pleko didn’t clean himself like he should of. I ended up having to give him regular baths. (Giving a bath to a cat? I thought they hated water!) Well.. Initially he did, but then he got used to it. He would sit in the tub or the sink and holler and holler like he was dying but he wouldn’t move. I could lather him up and put the 3min deep conditioning on him and he wouldn’t care. I tried to not wash him in the winter, as it was just too cold. One winter it just had to be done, he was stinky. I washed him in the kitchen sink and he put up such a fight until I used the sprayer on him. All of a sudden he had a jet of hot water on him…. Just like a massage. He flopped down in the sink and rolled over so I could spray his belly.

Besides Kurtis and I (and a few select humans) Pleko had 2 animal friends. Zoey the cat and Pablo the dog, here is a little background info. During college I lived with my college boyfriend. One place we lived was a huge loft with Zoey and Pleko. We decided to get a puppy and Pablo The Great (and yes, that was his full name) showed up in our lives. He was a great dog (I will have to write an entry for him as he passed away this summer) Pleko and Pablo got along amazing well. My theory was Pleko finally had someone under him and a crony. They used to play for hours running back and forth chasing each other. When Pablo was a puppy Pleko had the upper hand. He could sit on the puppy and pin him to the ground when they were playing. But as Pablo grew and got stronger Pleko could no longer tackle him. One day I was doing dishes in the kitchen and heard a very strange muffled meow, I turned around and Pablo had Pleko’s entire head in his mouth lovingly sucking on it like he was a Popsicle. I told Pablo to let go, out popped Pleko’s sopping wet head covered in dog drool. Poor thing. His equilibrium was all off because his ears were full of dog spit.

Zoey was his girlfriend. They had an off on relationship but were always buddies. They would play fight. Pleko always laid on the floor and let Zoey wail on him. Even though Pleko was declawed in the front he could still hold his own. Kurtis and I used to call him Joe Frazier. He would hook his paw around Zoey’s neck pull her down, spin around and kick her with his rear feet. Amazing move and it would get her every time. When Zoey died in October Pleko’s health started to go down hill. It seemed like he became an old cat overnight.

Pleko was very grouchy last week, growling and hissing when I would pick him up, which was not like him at all. I took him to the vet on Wednesday and that is when we discovered the large tumor in his stomach. We were devastated. The vet gave me some painkillers and fluids, said to call if we needed anything and I took our boy home. The painkillers worked really well for the first day but after that he was still in pain even with the drugs. I took Friday off from work and spent the entire day with him at home. We talked, and took a nap on the couch. He couldn’t snuggle like he used to, as it was too painful for him. So he and I were content on holding hand and paw and catching a few winks. Saturday morning it was obvious that the decision had to be made. He was growling more and more and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was in immense pain. Kurtis and I made the decision to help our boy and we took him to the vet. He was a wonderful kitty and best friend. I will always miss him.

Good night my sweet prince,

I hope you are playing with Pablo and Zoey among the stars.