Visions and Revisions

One of the first lesson sets in my ninth-grade art class focused on Henri Matisse, the French artist who pioneered Fauvism around the turn of the twentiety century. I had a hell of a time imitating or even appreciating his cut-paper style--it was one of Mr Krauchi's many failed attempts to improve my sense of composition--but when Mom came home with a brightly-colored, energetic kitten that October, it didn't take long for me to dub our beautiful new "wild beast" Matisse.


And it seems that she was well named, because Matisse found her way into most of my artistic endeavors. Black and white photography suited her striking markings well; black and white drawings even more so. As Dad never tires of remembering, she once walked across an oil painting that I had foolishly set out to dry on the floor, and left a trail of paw-prints that were a hundred times prettier than the painting itself. The bulk of my AP Studio portfolio, put together during a hectic and sleepless three-day drawing marathon, concentrated on my ever-present model; and even my senior thesis was not complete without the inclusion of my feline alter-ego.



She had kittens once--three very different babies that we dubbed Chaos, Phaeton, and Cezanne--before we got her spayed. After the kittens found new homes (in their various fashions) we spent a while looking for a companion for Matisse, and eventually we wound up with Morgan, a runty black kitten with huge yellow eyes. Morgan never quite outgrew her kittenish ways, but turned into a massive cat and positively adored Matisse, who would have none of it. They were a bit like the Odd Couple of the feline world; Matisse never lost a chance to grouse that Morgan was breathing loudly or crowding her peripheral vision, but every so often you'd find them sleeping within the same ten feet of one another.

In 2002, my family and I returned from a weekend trip to Heidelberg and found Matisse lying in the grass in front of the house. We never found out what had happened, or how long she had been lying there--she may have been kicked, attacked by a dog, hit by a car, who knows--but her hip was broken, and she had dragged herself home. We fully expected to have to put her down--any American vet wouldn't have thought twice, given the extent of the damage and the unlikelihood that Matisse would ever walk again--but the German vet carefully put our girl back together, and returned her to us. I don't think any of us expected that she would recover as completely as she did; until quite recently, she rarely evidenced signs of stiffness or pain, or favored one leg over the other. We liked to joke about her titianium hip, her lead bottom. She was our Miracle Cat!


I think we all knew, however, that the kind of trauma she had survived had likely shortened her life. For perhaps a year now, one of the cats had been peeing in the bath tub instead of the litterbox, an anomaly that Mom and Dad hadn't been able to puzzle out. A few months ago Mom mentioned that Matisse was getting very skinny, a sure sign that something was amiss because Matisse was a cat who clamored loudly for her treats every morning, and would sell her soul for a lick of cream cheese. A few weeks ago she couldn't hold her food down any longer, and when Mom and Dad took her to the vet he reported that Matisse's kidneys were failing. When Kim and I visited New York last weekend Matisse was a scarecrow of the spoiled cat-princess I was used to seeing. She seemed pleased to see me and happy to be petted and coddled, but all of the fight had gone out of her. It seemed to me that in the quietly definitive way of cats, she'd made her decision. So it came as no surprise last night when Mom called and said they'd gotten home to find Matisse curled up to sleep in a quiet corner.


We'll miss you, Teazer.
1999-2009