Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

Never Is the Next New Thing

Purrkoy and the Wonderful People of Catstagram

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A cat-loving Instagram friend named Julia reminded me that it’s a year to the day since I posted the best-ever video of my younger exotic shorthair cat, the late, great Purrkoy the kitten. PK was such a character! Among his many quirks:

  • He loved to sing the song of his people at the top of his lungs …
  • … but he hated it when I tried to record his purrformance.
  • He had a funny “RUN AWAY!” move that his aunt Stacy Lomman described as the “high-up-booty run.”

On April 7, 2018, I got all those things in one video, which has over 98,000 views on Instagram. I’ve posted it on the blog before, but it’s the record-a-versary, so let’s enjoy it again. Turn your volume up, and watch for him peeking around the corner at me.

We helped PK cross over the Rainbow Bridge on December 18 when he was only four years old, after he had a stroke and the vet neurologists at the Animal Medical Center in New York couldn’t get his symptoms under control. I got a preliminary necropsy (that’s the term for an animal autopsy) pretty quickly, but that is a basic physical examination. I had to wait till mid-February to get the final necropsy report with all the results from microscopic examination. In the interval, I became a stroke expert with the help of Dr. Poodle, as one does. (Did you know babies can have strokes in the womb?) I learned that the exact cause of a stroke may never be known, so I was prepared when the final report didn’t indicate a cause. There was no underlying heart problem, no cancer. The biggest news for me was finding out that the stroke had led to brain herniation, which usually leads to death or brain death in animals and people alike. My big fear in December was that I missed out on a miracle because I didn’t keep pursuing aggressive treatment. Now I knew for certain that nothing would have helped. Feeling weirdly relieved, I initially brushed off my vet’s concern that I would be troubled by the lack of a reason for it all.

Emotions are so sneaky though. If you banish them in relation to one thing, they’ll just attach themselves to something else. It hit me that I had been waiting for the final report for weeks — looking forward to it in a way — and now there would be no more messages from or about PK, not on this plane, anyway. The final report from AMC was The Final Report. Now PK was really gone. I was devastated.

One big consolation has been the continuing kindness of the cat lovers of Instagram, aka Catstagram, from the moment I brought PK to the hospital for sudden paralysis. So many tributes were posted after his death and there was even fan art. Then #Catstagram tiptoed out of my phone (presumably on little cat feet) and into the physical world: The day after PK transitioned from a wee devil to a #babycat angel, I was amazed to receive a huge bouquet of white roses that had been organized overnight by the Catstagram family.

More roses came from Max and Abigail, the pawrents of Agnes and Hobbes, as well as my friend Elizabeth Wurtzel. Cards arrived by snail mail. The AMC donated a tree to the Chippewa National Forest in his name. And I’ve continued posting on PK’s account and people still leave likes and cute messages for their favorite opurra singer.

Who could ask for — or imagine — anything more? When MrB, Aunt Stacy, and I ventured to Mew Purrsey in February to meet Jamie, the organizer of the white roses, it was just to snug her four exotic shorthairs: Teagues, Oliver, Graham, and Jaspur.

But after cat snugs and dinner, Jamie, on behalf of the rest of Catstagram, surprised me with this framed tribute art by my fellow jewelry designer and exotic shorthair lover Jessica Herner.

Everything about it is purrfect: The New Yorker font, the musical notes, the cityscape, the dates. I said to Jamie, “I have to thank everypawdy by name!” When she sent me the link to the webpage where she organized everything, it turned out that more than 60 Catstagram people had contributed. Thank you to:

It makes me happy that PK touched so many hearts, but this outpouring represents something bigger to me. We live in a difficult (and sometimes downright evil) world, and it’s easy to feel despair. The fact that dozens of people took the time to show compassion to the bereft owner of a mischievous cat — a small loss in grand scheme of things, albeit one that is deeply felt — gives me a spark of hope whenever I think of it. Thank you to each and every one of you!

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