Big Guy Tebeau, 1990-2006

Just about anyone who visited our Ann Arbor home will remember our big, fat, loud-mouthed Siamese. His given name, the one he had when we adopted him at the pound, is Guy, but most of the time we just called him Big. (as compared to my foul-tempered bratty cat Haley, also known as Little)

Months after John and I got married in 2000, we went to the pound looking for a kitten. John is a huge cat lover, and since my cat is nasty and unaffectionate, he wanted to have a pet that might actually like him.
While John was off in the kitten room, surrounded by perky little fluff balls, I met a fat, old Siamese coughing and sneezing with an upper respiratory infection, one eye swollen shut and dripping goo. Somehow, through all of that, he was so affectionate, and when I asked to have his cage opened, he crawled out, curled up in my lap and started purring.
John came looking for me, saw that I had this wheezing behemoth in my lap, and knew what was going to happen. I sobbed that they were going to kill him -- an old sick cat at the pound is Dead Kitty Walking, and his position at the far end of the hall, on the bottom, confirmed that -- so John resigned himself to it and said, "Do you want to adopt him?"
"Can we?" I squealed.

We sequestered Guy while we nursed him back to health. Getting him out of the pound and giving him some affection almost immediately improved his condition, but he was always to be a sickly feline. He had a chronic eye infection that required a whole battery of drops and often oozed clear yuck. He had dreadful bowel issues, and would you believe we even took him for kitty enemas?

Though you wouldn't think so after reading that litany, Guy was a terrific pet. He was the people-lovingest, funniest, biggest character you could pack into 15 pounds of furry blubber. He brayed with a full-throated gravelly voice that John described as sounding like an old lady who chain smoked her whole life. He befriended every person who ever walked through our door, including staying under foot when the meter reader would head down to the basement and trying to get in the car of the pizza delivery guy. People who swore they didn't like cats would always ask about Guy.











Haley was less charmed by her roommate, perhaps because he chased her around the house and swatted her while she slept. We became less enamored with both of them when the started what John called excrement wars, Big pooping in numerous spots in the basement and Little peeing on the floor, on rugs, on our bed. After years of the two cats being at war with each other, we finally decided to split them up. One of John's oldest friends, H.T., adopted Big, and they each got to be only cats, as they both seemed to want.

H.T. took fantastic care of Big, ferrying him to frequent vet appointments and buying copious medications and special food to tend to his needs. He reported in after he got a new apartment this summer that Big was the grand poobah of the courtyard, inspiring the respect of all other cats who dared tread foot.

But recently Big's health has taken a turn. His trips to the vet became more frequent, and his improvement was not as marked. It seemed his time had come.

So as I'm writing this, John is booking a ticket to Ann Arbor. He's going to go with H.T. to the vet to put Big down tomorrow.

At times, it's hard to imagine that our Ann Arbor house isn't sitting there waiting for us to return, that we couldn't get off a plane in Detroit, drive west to our house and find everything just as we remember it. It's inconceivable that when we go back to Michigan for the holidays, Big will be gone.