A
Farewell to Ani:
Fifteen Years of Unconditional Love
by Felina Lune Kavi
Journals: Venus-lit Vixen, The 2004 Venusian Octave (Music of the Spheres), Blue Moon Sea Change, Earth Mother, Speaker for the Soul, and Cup of Kavi
Date: 6-14-2019
"Guardians
of love and light, stand by this cat
and ease her
fight, for she
has been a guardian too, and now needs help to pass on through."
My
husband and I chanted while holding our dying cat, my familiar, Ani.
I have been here before, holding the paw of a familiar in her last
breaths of life. It
never gets any easier. I played a song just for her, just for this
moment because Ani and I were always connected by our love for music.
That’s why I named her Ani...she shared my love for Ani DiFranco
since the day we met, 15 years ago. But Ani DiFranco doesn’t have
the perfect song for saying goodbye to this beautiful being I love so
deeply. ‘I Hold You’ by Clann was her goodbye song. Clann is
Old Irish for ‘family’...even the band’s name is appropriate.
Ani’s
full name was Anikka Maxine ‘Fuzzknuckle’ Kavi. Anikka is the
name of the lead singer of The Gathering, who sang ‘The May
Song’...which I was playing in May 2004 when Ani came to live with
me in Oklahoma City. Ani was a kitten then, born at the beginning of
May (my little Beltane baby). A guy that went
to the baptist bible college found her in a dumpster, but they didn’t
allow cats at the dorm...so he gave her to my ex, who gave her to me.
I fell in love with her immediately. Though it did take a few years
for my familiar, Jasmine, to warm up to this rambunctious little one
who was always trying to snuggle in with her where ever she sat.
She
reminded me of my mom’s familiar, Max, who was Jasmine’s brother.
So her middle name became Maxine. Her ‘Jellicle’ name,
‘Fuzzknuckle’ was
the word I used in a play called ‘Sylvia’ to replace the F-word
that Sylvia (a dog) yelled threateningly at a cat. The
theatre
board
members
thought
the more colorful language my character used in the cat scene would
offend their older audience members...so
I made up many of my own words to replace them and shouted them as if
shouting profanity. It worked to make the laugh lines even funnier
for the audience. And because Ani showed a hilarious sense of humor
from the start, she was quite proud to adopt the name Fuzzknuckle as
a term of endearment.
She
even looked a little goofy in her kitten days...still beautiful and
adorable, but also goofy. She had kind of a wonky shaped head, a
tongue that (at first) seemed a bit too large for her mouth,
a
gap in the middle of her tiny front teeth, a scraggly voice, and a
crooked tail. This all matched her wild and goofy antics as a
kitten. Naturally, she became a character in my ongoing LiveJournal
story series which started from the point-of-view of Jasmine (whose
Jellicle name was ‘Blue’) and became the ‘Fuzzknuckle and Blue’
series. Fuzzknuckle was Blue’s enthusiastic and somewhat chaotic
sidekick, whom Blue reluctantly took on her adventures (but also,
deep down, Blue
loved her). Like Batman and Robin...if Batman was a wise and chubby
cat, and Robin was a scrawny goofball kitten with an exaggerated lisp
and a penchant for causing more trouble than Batman was comfortable
with.
 |
| Jasmine, Ani, and Baby Alyrica in 2006 |
When
Jasmine was 9, and Ani was almost 2...my first child, Alyrica Rayven,
was born. So, I wrote a story for Alyrica called ‘Fuzzknuckle and
Blue’ where the cats tried to teach the baby (Alyrica Rayne) to
talk. There were many times when Jasmine and Ani would be sitting
near baby Alyrica while she’d babble at them and they would be
staring at her intently...as if trying to discern what she was trying
to say. So the story was loosely based on real-life scenes.
Ani
was a wonderfully sweet ‘babysitter’ for Alyrica too. And she
took that job literally. When I was nursing Alyrica, Ani would come
up on the chair and plop down right on any part of the baby that was
sticking out. Then she’d look up lovingly at me like ‘See, Mama,
I can babysit!’
 |
| Ani with Felix, because I never got any photos of Ani sitting on baby Lyra |
When
Alyrica was 2 years old, Jasmine passed away...from a urinary issue
similar to what sent Ani downhill this year. Lyra doesn’t remember
much about Jasmine...so she still thinks of her as wise old ‘Blue’
from her story. But Jasmine was also a beautiful and compassionate
familiar to me...she would wipe my tears with her fur whenever I
cried (which I did a lot in those tumultuous 11 years that Jasmine
was with me in my transition to adulthood and then parenthood).
As
soon as Jasmine died, that very same day in March of 2008, Ani’s
personality began to shift into ‘Familiar Mode’. She
started doing things that Jasmine used to do for me, as
if immediately maturing by adopting some of Jasmine’s wisdom. She
calmed down a bit, likely
to keep me calm after losing my first baby. Familiars
are very intuitive that way. She
kept some of her own expressions of love (but heightened them), like
coming to me from any room whenever I would sing or
lying down across my chest and purring while we were heart-to-heart.
But she also started wiping my tears with her fur on that day that
Jasmine died. It seemed Jasmine had given Ani her blessing to
inherit the role of familiar...a last act of love between the three
of us.
 |
| Fuzzknuckles Out! Zephyr, Zen, and Ani |
When
Ani was 6, we adopted two kittens we named Zephyr and Zen from our
friends (or, Zephyrus Albus ‘Dandelion’ Kavi and Zenya Iris
‘Patchouli’ Kavi). Zephyr became Michael’s familiar and Zen
became Alyrica’s familiar. Ani, then, became the wise old Grandma
to these kittens...just as Jasmine did for her.
Ani
loved Alyrica too. She especially loved her when we were reading,
singing bedtime songs, or Alyrica was sleepy. She kept a watchful
distance from her when she was first toddling around on two legs
though...because Alyrica had a habit of falling hard on her
diaper-padded butt in those days and Ani was smart enough not to get
pinned by ‘the giant
Sumo-baby’. Ani
was 10 by the time Felix was born, and she loved him too. She did
the same ‘babysitting’ for Felix when he was little. Of course,
once Felix could walk...she was even more cautious around him. He
was a little more dangerous than Alyrica ever was, because he thought
of cat’s tails as toys.
 |
| Another photo of Ani 'babysitting' Felix |
But
Ani’s love for her daddy was undeniable. Soon after Jasmine died
in 2008, Ani chose my husband for me. I mean, I was in love with
Michael already...but she gave him her blessing during a pivotal
conversation where she sat on his lap as if to make the choice for
me. So wise she was, because Michael was the perfect Daddy for Ani
and Alyrica. And while I didn’t completely know that this
36-year-old bachelor I was in love with had any inherent
understanding of what it took to be a good father...Ani could foresee
his future.
In
these last months of Ani’s life, Michael was a blessing to her. He
loved Ani so much, and it showed in the way he took care of her when
she was in her worst health and doing things that many other people
would find frustrating and inconvenient. He
cared for both of us during this time with such love and
compassion...it was just like losing a child for him too.
Michael
and I both cried together through the worst of it. Just as we’ll
heal together now. On the morning before Ani died, I took the kids
to Lauritzen Gardens as promised. I didn’t want to leave. Felix
was making it all harder than it needed to be with his four-year-old
resistance to arriving places on time and without hassle...but I also
felt like I was supposed to be with Ani all day again. She had just
had an ultrasound the previous day and had been in extreme pain ever
since. They found it wasn’t a tumor or stones...it was a ‘very
angry bladder’ (apparently the lining of her bladder was in the top
three of thickness that the ultrasound tech had ever seen). Michael
was supposed to go to work, but he ended up staying home with Ani
because she quickly got worse after we left for the Gardens. Michael
called me on our way home and told me to get there as fast as we
could. He thought Ani would die before I got one more chance to see
her.
But
when I got home, and went into our bedroom, Ani raised her head and
looked right at me. It was as if she was waiting for me so she could
start her transition.
As
soon as we saw that she was giving up the last of her 9 lives,
Michael held her body as I held her paw. We cried for her and kissed
her and told her how much we love her. We didn’t want her life to
end with such suffering, but we held out our hope for too long...so
we made the best of our goodbye to our loving furbaby. Tragic as it
was, her send off across the Rainbow Bridge was also deeply
beautiful.
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