Ifrit (2011-2023)

This has been too painful to post before, but I’ve been able to finally push through it.

Ifrit, the orange tabby who I’ve occasionally posted about, and who has graced my social-media avatars for years, died last week, twelve years and one day after we first brought him home, of complications from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Ifrit was the smartest, funniest, most affectionate cat to ever share our home. He was an orangeboi through and through. If you stayed at our house, he’d try to sleep on your head (or, if you were lucky, he’d crawl into your arms instead).

When the cats started their campaign for an earlier breakfast, I found that I could trick his sisters into running down the stairs just by walking toward the door. The moment they were out of the room, I’d close the door after them.

It didn’t take long for Ifrit to wise up, and if I tried to remove him ‘by force’ he’d run under the bed, where he would stay out of reach.

So I tried walking partway down the stairs—and then darting back to the bedroom before the cats could change their trajectory. That worked on Ifrit… maybe twice.

I next proceeded all the way to the kitchen before doubling back. He only fell for that once.

The first few times I (loudly) opened the bin of dry food he showed up, which allowed me to flee back to the bedroom. That soon failed. This process—I’d try a new gambit, Ifrit would deduce that no food was actually forthcoming—continued until the only thing that worked was capitulation. He’d appear once the bowl of canned food touched the ground.

Ifrit’s strategy, it turned out, was to sneak down after me. He’d camp out in the dining room, just out of my sight. If I left the kitchen without putting food down, he’d run back upstairs and hide under the bed.

Leaving an unfed Ifrit in our bedroom just wasn’t an option. He’d sneak onto my nightstand, where he would proceed to push, one at a time, every moveable object off the surface. Once in a while, I could successfully feign sleep and manage to grab him. But he usually made it back underneath the bed.

Ifrit was a big fan of the “nice drinking glass you got here, shame if anything should happen to it” approach to getting what he wanted. Anything left on my nightstand in the morning was doomed, of course, but otherwise our glasses were safe… if Ifrit didn’t see you see him. The moment you noticed his paw next to the glass, though, he would start, ever so deliberately, to nudge it toward the edge.

It wasn’t always about food, though. Sometimes he just wanted attention.

Ifrit’s favorite time to get in your lap was when he saw that you were holding a tablet or a computer. Sometimes he’d simply push your hands off of the keyboard. Other times he’d lay his paws on it.

Ifrit, not unlike many other cats, liked to join in on the typing, especially if you were working at your desk. That’s also when he most liked to climb onto your shoulder—although he’d usually wait until you were in a virtual meeting before doing that.

Ifrit didn’t go through a long period of decline. He was twelve years old, and had naturally slowed down a bit. Otherwise he was his usual self. He spent his penultimate day snuggling with each of us in turn. Then, in the late afternoon, Maia was at her desk when she heard Io and Lilith keening. They were in the kitchen, just upstairs from where Ifrit had collapsed in the basement. He couldn’t move his rear legs.

The vets as the ER did what they could, but by morning it was clear that Ifrit’s heart was failing. They brought him to us in the “comfort room.” He meowed and pulled himself into my daughter’s arms.

That’s where he was, in the embrace of his favorite person in the world, with his right paw placed on Maia’s arm, when his pain ended. It’s a small blessing that my daughter was back from college; Ifrit got to spend his last weeks cuddling and playing with her.

To honor Ifrit’s memory, we intend to make a non-trivial donation to the rescue organization from which we adopted him. We’ve also acquired two kittens from a different group — a void named Allanni and an orangeboi named Bennu.

Ifrit was a tolerant ‘older brother’ to Io and Lilith. I’m sure that he would have accepted Allanni and Bennu as well.

We’re bringing Bennu home on Wednesday. Allanni is already acclimating to my daughter’s bedroom, which will be the kittens’ place until they’ve been successfully integrated with our other cats. And yes, that low-frequency rumble in the background is her purr.