Nova Passes

June 6th, 2007 was a little hard for us. Our cat, Nova, died rather quickly and without warning.

Nova, for those who knew him, was the lighter of our two cats and was about 12 years old. Ever since he was a kitten, he displayed numerous engineering traits that were fairly odd for a cat. In particular, he’d open things. I don’t mean he’d push against a door and get lucky, I mean he’d reach under with his paw, and pull a door open — something that required a great deal of force if the air conditioner was on and pressurized the room.

He’s also open kitchen cabinets the same way. He’d open the pantry to get to treats. He’s even slide open the screen door to get a better view of the birds outside.

In particular, his most amazing stunt was opening drawers.

We discovered this feat when we put his some play mice away. When we came back, he had gotten into them all and the drawer was open. Given that the drawer was fairly heavy and had a knob on it, we saw no way he could have done this without an opposable thumb.

So, we put the toys back in the drawer, turned on a video camera, and sat quietly.

Nova looked up as us, realized we wanted him to go in the drawer, so he walked under the end-table, stood on his hind legs, and pushed the drawer from the bottom. It slid out an inch. Then he walked to the front of the end table, put his paws on the lip of the drawer, and pulled backwards. At that point, he stood up further, reached in and got the mice, and dropped them on the floor in front of him, turning to look at us.

This wasn’t an accident. He did it repeatedly. And more so with praise. I have lots of video footage of him doing this, and other things of similar caliber. He was an intelligent problem solver, a trait that couldn’t be said of his orange twin brother.

Everything ended at 6:05pm that Wednesday.

I came home from work, he got out of his sunbeam, walked into the room with us, and then let out an unexpected elongated cry, fell on his left side going into seizures. Withing 45 seconds, he was dead and lifeless. No warning. No notice. No sickness. Nothing. Just, gone.