Winkie RIP

Winkie Winkerton left her condo above the sink on June 25 after 11 years of happy living in upstate New York. She was at least 16. The good people at Heart of the Catskills, a humane society in Delhi, drove two hours for a prearranged meet and greet at the Kingston Petco, where I waited with a carrier. “Not everyone wants a senior cat,” said her chauffeur. Since no one picked up the black cat sitting in the next cage, I got her too.

Thanks Mom.

In the winter of 2003, I visited my mother Olga Christina Goertz Hoelterhoff at Nyack Hospital with my longtime friend Sheila Nadler, a low-singing operatic contralto who shared mom’s love of unhealthy food. My mother had suffered some kind of seizure. We hung around eating cheeseburgers. Hospital  cafeterias promote heart-stopping, artery clogging, stroke-inducing foods so you come back real soon in a wheelchair or on a stretcher.  

Said my mother looking up from what was in fact her last meal (she died during the night): “You know what you should do? I think you should get some cats! Old cats nobody wants because their owners have gone away. Maybe ten!”

Said Sheila beaming: “What a good idea Mrs. Hoelterhoff.”

I had two cats but for complicated reasons they lived with Terry Teachout and his then wife Liz two blocks north on 84th Street. The cats died well before TT, a most wonderful theater critic -- judicious and sharp yet kind -- for my old alma mater The Wall Street Journal.

Years passed. Then with the departure of Sheila’s Bacchus Bill of Advent Hill, a Russian Blue, we remembered Olga and her last request. That’s how I ended up at Petco with a carrier stuffed with two cats who had never met each other (or me).

Katya looked appropriately geriatric with a left eye that was half the size of her right eye. Housekeeper Gracie quickly renamed her Winkie. Kitty, renamed Michele, looked deceptively youthful but up and died pretty quickly, well before the Obamas left the White House. We’re grieving still, on many levels.

Wink, however, seemed to enjoy eternal middle age. She plumped out a bit – even her squinty eye – and seemed ageless and athletic for a senior citizen. Did a cat ever purr so much? Or care so much about her humans? Sitting on her perch outside the bathroom window she would keep us safe from intruders like Zephyr the stray or Rosalba the opossum. When her favorite human, Amy, stepped through the door, she would drape herself around her shoulders while the beagles pawed her lower down for treats.

Admittedly the chipmunks she hunted were probably happy to chitter-chatter about the disappearance of the beast.

Two weeks before her death, Winkie still managed an awe-inspiring jump to the top of a high bookcase.

Folks, listen to Olga: Adopt an old cat!