I regret that I don’t have the artistic or musical aptitude to properly express my love for Spock and IKEA, or how much their loss has pained me. Someday I’ll find the means, if I’m lucky. Fortunately I can at least string a few words together and try to tell a bit of their story, and maybe they’ll also be remembered by the people I wish could have met them.
Spock 🔗
I still vividly remember the day I brought Spock home.
I had spent much of my 20s in apartments which either forbade pets entirely or charged exorbitant monthly fees on top of a large up-front pet deposit. When my lease ended I somehow managed to scrounge together enough for a downpayment and landed a house mere months before the big housing bubble burst.
As exciting as that was, the prospect of being able to finally have a cat of my own was what I looked forward to the most. I hadn’t even finished unpacking my things before I set off to visit the local animal shelter.
They led me into a room with around a dozen cats, where I spent a few minutes petting each one and letting them get to know me. As soon as I sat down on a bench, though, a little black cat came over and planted herself in my lap.
She was around six or seven months old, still recovering from being spayed. There used to be a bit of a stigma about black cats, more so in the 90s and a bit in the early oughts. Looking down at that purring ball of fuzz I could hardly imagine anyone disliking her, but my area is notoriously superstitious. I made the decision then to adopt her, though it was something like half an hour later before she finished her nap and let me go fill out the paperwork.
I was a little surprised to learn I wouldn’t be able to take her home that day, but it was just as well. She still needed a bit more recovery time from her spaying, and although I had the basics at home I still ended up spending a week stocking up on cat toys, treats, scratching posts, and cat furniture.
When the day finally came the shelter gave her to me in a disposable cardboard pet carrier. For all my preparations a proper carrier still managed to slip my mind, but the shelter was quite used to such things, fortunately.
One of the first things I learned about Spock was how much she hated car rides. It was roughly a 40 minute trip back to my home, and I spent the majority of it making soothing noises as she angrily ranted about my driving. Or maybe about my taste in music.
I forget where I got the advice, either online or from the shelter, but someone recommended that when I get home I simply set the pet carrier on the floor and open it up, letting her come out and explore on her own time without me hovering over her. I set her down someplace I could see her, and where she could see me, then took a seat on the sofa and fired up Flow on the PS3, which was rather new at the time.
I only managed to play for about five minutes before she came out of the carrier, climbed up my leg with her needle-sharp kitten claws, and curled up into a ball under my chin, purring up a storm.
Flow only let you use the gyroscope controls at the time, and moving my arms around too much would’ve disturbed her, so I set the controller aside and the two of us napped for a few hours listening to the Flow OST.
That was when I fell in love with her.
The precedent was set, and from that point on she slept on top of me every chance she got. At night she would curl up on my head or chest, and some mornings I even woke to find her laying across my neck like a furry necklace.
During the day she also insisted on riding around on my shoulders. Sometimes perched like a parrot, but typically draped across them. She also loved kneading, meaning I went through quite a few shirts over the years. Luckily she learned to tone it down to only “mildly uncomfortable” after her claws went a bit deeper than necessary a few too many times.
I soon learned that even more than car rides, her most hated foe was closed doors. When I was on the other side of them, at least. It was a good many years before I could once again use the bathroom in peace.
Showers, especially, as she usually sat on the toilet lid and screamed for me to stop torturing myself. Sometimes she’d even claw the curtains back and peek in to make sure I was okay. After I was done she’d almost always hop in to find whatever fiend dragged me into such a plight.
She enjoyed a variety of toys, including the classic laser pointer, feather on a string, and ball with a bell inside. But what she loved most of all were the bite-sized catnip mice. She would happily play fetch with them, letting me toss one across the room for her to chase down and bring back to me.
She also loved swatting them under furniture, especially the fridge and the stove. When she hid the last mouse she’d stand there and scream at me to get down on the floor and fish them back out with a ruler, which I think was her revenge for the whole “fetch” thing.
I decided I’d get clever, and I bought a bunch of extras since they’re relatively cheap. I put them into a drawer on a writing desk, and when she “misplaced” her last one I’d open the drawer and toss a few out for her to play with until she lost them again, which usually took a few days.
She decided she’d get cleverer, though, and learned how to open that drawer within a couple of weeks.
I was still commuting at the time. “Work From Home” was a rather foreign concept in those days, at least as far as middle management was concerned. That meant I was away from home for roughly 9 hours a day. Every single time I pulled into my driveway, I spotted Spock sitting in the window watching for me. She’d hop down to meet me at the door, screaming for attention as soon as I walked in, and occasionally even literally leaping up into my arms whether I was prepared to catch her or not.
She might also have been excited for dinner, but I prefer to think she missed me as much as I missed her.
The thought of leaving her home alone for so long each day concerned me, though, and I made the decision to adopt another cat. I reasoned the house was plenty large enough for two, and hopefully they’d keep each other company when I was away.
At the same time, a pair of friends from overseas had made plans to visit now that I could host them. One was from London and the other from Sweden. Both of them were downright appalled that I’d never even glimpsed an IKEA before, and they saw it as the perfect opportunity to furnish my new home properly.
The closest IKEA was 8 hours away, but no matter. When they arrived I rented a truck and we set off on a road trip. It was mostly uneventful—except for when I got pulled over for suspected drug smuggling—and the next day we returned loaded up with cheap affordable flat-pack Swedish furniture.
IKEA 🔗
After returning from the trip I shared my plans to pick up a second cat, and both of my friends were enthusiastic about joining me to pick one out from the shelter. We soon found a gorgeous kitten who was friendly and roughly the same age as Spock.
It should be noted that I have rather awful naming sense. When I first picked up Spock I had floated some rather generic ideas to a friend, like Midnight or Shadow. She was understandably outraged and insisted that whatever I named her, she would simply call her Spock. I decided to listen to reason and adopted that name outright.
With my newfound self-awareness, when we got home with the new kitten I, of course, placed all the responsibility of naming her on my visiting friends. Considering where we’d just returned from, it should come as no surprise that one of them said “How about IKEA?”
There were no objections.
Introductions went well. Both cats came from the same shelter, where they were often socialized in a room with plenty of other cats. They may well have met there previously, even.
IKEA’s personality was much more aloof than Spock’s. She liked attention, and demanded it often and loudly, but it was always on her very specific terms, which took me some time to decipher. She loved being pet, but only with just the right amount of pressure. Often she would nip at our hands a little if we went overboard. After a while I started just holding my hand out and letting her pet herself with it, which seemed to be what she liked the most.
She still nipped at it, but it felt more playful than punitive.
She didn’t particularly enjoy being picked up and carried. She didn’t protest very much, but after a few seconds she’d start wriggling free and hop down. Fortunately if you sat down she would often enough climb into your lap. Petting was often verboten, but you could lay your hand on her as long as you held it still.
Given all of that, you can imagine my surprise when I learned she loved belly rubs. She would frequently run in front of me as I walked, plop herself down on the floor, and start rolling around on her back. In hindsight it sounds obvious enough. And lucky me, because she had the softest, fluffiest damned cat belly you could imagine.
I also discovered she loved birdwatching in the windows, chittering to let everyone know she’d spotted something interesting. Regrettably I was never quite fast enough to get it on camera when she did. She spent a good deal of time sitting in the windowsills enjoying the view, though. I always admired how her tail curled, almost like the golden ratio.
Though I never caught her chittering on camera, her everyday meows were something special all on their own. It seemed like she couldn’t stop purring, even to speak her mind.
Life with Cats 🔗
Spock and IKEA fortunately got along well enough, but over time it became more of a “mutual tolerance” sort of relationship. They never fought, thankfully, but IKEA’s touch aversion meant that Spock’s attempts to get closer to her usually ended up with a mild warning hiss followed by IKEA moving away.
On top of that, I learned that Spock was what I would generously call a “jealous bitch” when it came to my attention. If IKEA was in my lap then Spock would often run over to join her. Of course this resulted in IKEA getting scared away, so I got into the habit of just grabbing Spock and putting her up on my shoulders while IKEA got the lap, which was fairly ideal for everyone involved.
They never fought over food, and I simply gave them separate pairs of food and water bowls to stay ahead of that. Multiple litter boxes as well, since that can sometimes be a point of contention in multi-cat households.
They also sorted out their nighttime sleeping arrangements easily enough. Both of them found a favorite spot on or near me on the bed and let each other be.
A couple of years and some regular vet visits later, I brought up that I felt like the cats coughed up hairballs a bit more often than I would expect. Of course it’s normal for there to be some hairballs, but apparently there’s no real consensus on what the “proper” frequency should be. The vet said it was likely fine, but I wasn’t too sure.
Since it was happening to both cats I could only assume it was something environmental, and I noted that when I vacuumed I tended to collect an inordinate number of carpet fibers, no matter how often I vacuumed. Since the house is the typical cookie-cutter suburban home (built a dozen at a time by the lowest bidder) I decided the cheap carpet must be the culprit. I unhesitatingly ripped it all out, living on the bare concrete foundation for a while until I could afford to install some hardwood flooring with the help of some amazing friends.
The hairballs stopped almost entirely.
Saying Goodbye 🔗
The next 15 years passed all too quickly. I went through countless cat toys, dozens of cat trees, hundreds of boxes, and a fair few sacrificial couches from Goodwill, all of which fell to the pair’s relentless claws.
It wasn’t until December of 2021 that I was forced to contend with their mortality.
One day I noticed that it was already 5:30pm, and I hadn’t yet fed the cats their dinner. Normally Spock would scream about it as early as 4pm, though some days she was patient enough to wait for 5pm. But 5:30? Unheard of.
I went to the kitchen to feed them and ran into Spock along the way. She meowed up at me like she always did, but no sound came out, like she’d lost her voice. I scheduled an emergency vet visit for the next morning, and on December 23rd she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
The vet prescribed a potent anti-inflammatory and said it was impossible to give an accurate estimate, but realistically I should expect “weeks to months” before she passed.
The next few weeks were some of the most stressful in my life. The vet assured me that cats are naturally averse to showing any outward signs of pain or illness, which is why I didn’t notice anything earlier. It also made it difficult to judge how well she was taking to the medication, and more importantly if it was just prolonging her suffering.
Miraculously the medication seemed to work wonders. Her previously waning appetite was back in full force, she seemed more energetic than usual, and she definitely didn’t seem to show any signs of pain even though I was watching more closely than ever.
I hardly ever let her out of my arms or my sight, spoiling her with as much food, treats, and attention as she could ever want.
Somehow the one pill bottle that was predicted to outlast her got refilled again and again, and “weeks to months” turned into two and a half years.
IKEA’s passing was quite sudden, but not so much that I didn’t get to say my goodbyes. She was as active and energetic as ever, frequently making use of her favorite cat tree to climb up to the ceiling and look down on us peasants.
Then one day she simply showed no interest in her nightly cat treats. I noticed her food and water bowl was relatively untouched as well.
The vet said it was end-stage kidney failure. All I could do was try to make her comfortable until she passed away in another day or two. She passed peacefully in her favorite cat bed not long after.
I kept a close eye on Spock after that, and unfortunately her condition started to worsen only a week later. She had difficulty staying upright for very long and walked with a noticeable wobble. She was still as ravenous as ever at first, which gave me hope.
Sadly her appetite also started to wane, and she was showing signs of discomfort. When she showed no interest at all in a freshly opened can of food I knew it was her time, and I scheduled an appointment to make sure she passed peacefully.
I can hardly remember my life before Spock and IKEA, and it’s even harder to imagine what my life will be like now that they’re gone. I’ve had them for very nearly half of my life now, and as painful as it is to have lost them, I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. Many days I even felt unworthy of them, all the more so lately, and I think the greatest service I can do them now is to see to it they’re appreciated and remembered as best as I’m able.
If you’ve read this far then you’ve done me a great honor. All I ask now is that you please remember them fondly.