An Ode to Shmooey

Today was a bit of a tough day. My wife and I had to put our cat, Shmooey, to sleep after 12 years of being part of our family and seeing me through so much in those amazing 12 years.
My wife adopted Shmooey when I was living in San Diego serving at Temple Beth Sholom in Chula Vista. I had just been hired at this lovely small shul in a San Diego suburb and I was extremely fresh as a Rabbi, having just been ordained in Israel three months prior.
I was dating this cute girl from Phoenix named Naomi and she came down to visit me on one weekend in September. A small cat no more than 4 or 5 months old that was probably left by the pervious tenant of my parsonage kept sneaking in my house.
I noticed whenever I would leave out hamburger to defrost (I know you do it in the fridge but I was a single guy at the time) I kept finding pieces of it missing. One day I came home and saw this orange little face staring at me on my very used couch and I ran to chase her out.
When my girlfriend came to visit me she heard a bunch of sad meows from just outside my house and there was this little cat and her heart melted. She put out some milk for this little cat and we were hooked. We later figured out that the cat was sneaking in and out of the house through a hole in the wall behind the washing machine.
I figured I was about to make a big life decision that weekend so why not adopt the cat. I proposed to Naomi that weekend and as our first act as a couple we would adopt this little orange calico cat. I said since Naomi fell in love with the cat she could name her so after returning from the vet she thought of a cute name from an episode of the tv show The Nanny in which, at a party, a character pretends it is his Bar Mitzvah to get gifts and the grandmother runs around calling him Shmooey (a Yiddish nickname for Samuel). Every time Naomi thought of that name, she laughed, so she thought having a cat by that name would make her laugh whenever she said it.
Shmooey was, like all cats, very independent. She was an indoor/outdoor cat for the first six years we had her. Cats are different than dogs in that they give you love on their terms and are not the open receptacle of affection that most dogs are.
Shmooey was her own cat self and for the first year of our marriage she was the perfect child, always sleeping on my wife throughout the night. In 2004 my brother David died and it crushed me in so many ways. I decided to expand our family and bought a dog, Jessie.
She was a big mutt full of love, but Shmooey and Jessie did not see eye to eye. It turned into a tense truce with Shmooey upstairs and Jessie downstairs.
Pets always know when we need them for some strange reason. When I would sit for days being sad about my brother, Shmooey would show up in her independent spirit trying to offer what a cat could offer, but Jessie was nothing but love. With Jessie needing constant attention we figured we were ready to try for a child.
We had trouble getting pregnant and with each month of waiting Jessie would sit on the couch comforting my wife and then at night Shmooey would lie on her head as she slept.
After six years of living in San Diego I was offered a new job in Wildwood at Beth Judah Temple and we decided to make the move, especially with finally some good news, we were expecting a child in the summer, a boy.
In June of 2008 we packed up the house and loaded up the car and the four of us trekked across the country stopping at many rest stops due to Naomi being eight months pregnant. The four of us rolled into Wildwood like a storm and fell in love with this lovely synagogue and amazing town. The first three weeks we loved walking the dog up to the beach, hearing the coasters and smelling the fried food. Soon we were five as Ari was born July 30, 2008 and Shmooey and Jessie had new competition.
I find it amazing how pets adopt us as much as we adopt them. As the years went on Shmooey eventually left my wife’s side and started to sleep at my son’s feet. Jessie and Ari often had a language of their own.
Before Ari could talk, they seemed to be able to communicate to each other and I often wondered what went through their minds. Our second son, Alex came along in October 2011. He loved to chase her around the house and liked playing with an animal app on our Kindle that would make cat sounds. Jessie left us in December 2012, and again Shmooey had us all to herself.
I find it strange saying goodbye to Shmooey today because as quiet as cats are, I always saw her as the chronicler of my family since she was there from the very beginning. In Judaism we don’t speak much of pets in our life, only as beasts of burden.
There is no funeral for cats or dogs and we don’t say Kaddish (prayer of mourning) for them because as much as we love our animals, they are not human beings. However, we do have an important mitzvah in the Torah called Tsar Balley Chaim, not causing needless pain to an animal.
In the Talmud it states that Tsar Balley Chaim is one of the greatest mitzvoth in the Torah because just as God has given us his protection, we are in charge of the lives of these animals and their suffering or lack of it is our responsibility. In fact, even in the section of Noah when the covenant of peace is given to humanity and we are told we can eat animals, one of the seven Naohide laws is forbidding needless suffering in the preparation of our animals. I see its meaning these weeks as we made the sad decision to let Shmooey go and stop her suffering.
I know I can’t say Kaddish for these important animals in my life but I do have this column and I can write an Ode to Jessie and Shmooey, who may not have been human but gave me so much. I can’t imagine Shmooey not being around, she has always just been there.
I will always remember the drive to Wildwood from California with Jessie in the back seat and Shmooey sitting at the feet of my very pregnant wife from coast to coast. In our prayer before eating bread we say we give thanks to God for Bread.
In Hebrew school a friend of mine as a joke would say we give thanks to dog for bread and thus I would sing to Jessie ‘we give thanks to God for dog’. With Shmooey I say I give thanks to God for you. Goodbye Shmooey. Love Jeff, Naomi, Ari and Alex.
Rabbi Jeffrey Lipschultz is the spiritual leader of Beth Judah Temple in Wildwood NJ. He welcomes your comments at dvjewish@rof.net and http://www.bethjudahtemple.com.