three dollar cat

(i wrote this one night in 1986 on an old-fashioned typewriter and haven't changed a thing just because. it's nothing more than my farewell to my devoted cat, from childhood to adulthood.)

i remember how i cut off his long white whiskers and kept them in an old cardboard jewelry store box so that if he ever died i would have something to remember him by. that was when he was barely more than a kitten, a three dollar cat my father bought for me to replace a cat that disappeared on Halloween night. now the three dollar cat and i are sixteen years older and we are looking at each other over expanse of of my white sheeted bed. i start to cry and Fearless looks at me, his yellow-green eyes rheumy with age. understanding.

he is dying and i no longer have the long white whiskers to keep to remember him by. i lost them years ago, perhaps believing that he would live forever. other cats have come and gone, but Fearless has alwaysbeen here. he's never been sick, never injured, never beat up. he's always been a fat lump of black fur sitting at the edge of the garage, waiting for somebody to let him in and feed him. he's led an ever-hopeful life, walking in his funny stiff-legged way to meet me half-way up the driveway. looking expectantly up at my face as if this was the night he was sure he'd be let in. that fat cat never knew when to stop eating, and when he'd demolished everything within his reach he'd settle his bulk at the end of my bed so that i would have to arrange my sleeping position to lay around him. "Put him on a diet," my family would say as Fearless benignly licked the last of a Friskies Buffet dinner from his lips, his stomach nearly hanging down to the floor. but how do you put a cat on a diet? i took for granted that Fearless would live forever and remain fat even if he were starving.

my opinion is changed now. my poor, ravaged cat sits before me with bones sticking out. his black fur is dull and lifeless. he is dusty looking and constantly shedding. he seems so very old. i lay with my head close to his, talking to him and petting him, telling him how glad i am to have had him for my cat and how i love him. his back ripples and his purr rumbles throughout his body. he loves me right back. he has been my friend for sixteen years, my buddy. a cat so full of personality you couldn't help but like him, even when he drives you crazy.

i remember leaving him at the vet's to be declawed because he was destroying the front of my parents' house. when i went to pick him up the veterinarian and his assistants gathered to say goodbye to Fearless, telling me they could hardly bear to see him go he was such a characer. i wanted to say "well if he was such a joy, how 'bout destroying his bill?"

Fearless would put up with anything as long as i was paying some semblance of attention to him. when we cut wood and brought it in to the house he would follow me back and forth out to the woods, over and over. "stay," i'd tell him, "i'll be right back." but he'd accompany me roundtrip over and over again. he would hobble out to the pool on the hottest days and sprawl his body under the lounge chair i was sunning myself on so he could shield his black fur from the sun. he was happy as long as i talked to him periodically and didn't splash him when i jumped in the water.

i have a picture of him on my bulletin board. he is buried up to his nek in a pile of fall leaves. he didn't mind it any more than he minded being dressed in a doll's dress and bonnet when i was a girl. he didn't mind it at all compared to the time i dropped him in the pool to see if cats could swim. or as much as he minds it every spring when i put the hose on him and lather him up with shampoo. he always submits with resignation, then looks at me in disgust as he stalks across the patio shaking off droplets of water and licking his fur dry.

he is never mad at me for long. he has always adored me even when i ignored him or refused to let him in. he has always been so definitely my cat and i am reminded of this whenever he does anything particularly offensive like use the bathtub as a litterbox. i am always urged to take him whenever i've moved away from home, though i am torn because he is so used to that place and its safety. Fearless doesn't fare well away from home. in my first apartment he disappeared for hours and not even the mention of food would draw him out. when he'd grown accustomed to the place he decided that night-time was cat-party-time. he'd howl songs to the moon, bat at the stereo's speaker wires, and scrape kitty litter out of the box and onto the cold bathroom tile just for fun. all this would routine occur at one o'clock in the morning. at another of my apartments he had a horror of the sound of traffic so close to the house. after all, he'd never heard any before. he would press te bulk of his body against the screen door, squawking like a row until i let him in off the porch. it was funny to see him scared of something because he'd always led such a casual 'fearless' life. even my mother's large German Shepards would give up on Fearless when they realized the large lump of black fur would pay them no mind. Fearless even managed to be home by dinner time the day my mother dumped him off on a dirt road over a mile from home after he'd devoured a bag of deli meat left out on the counter. i sat tearfully at the back window that night until i saw the recognizable blur of black and white fur that was his face march with determination across the back pasture.

Fearless eats his can of Friskies in his usual way. with one white paw he scoops out the meat and eats it. He acts like a person. I wish he could talk. i think he would be a riot, witty and sarcastic, commenting sardonically on his failing faculties.

he always seemed so ageless, but age has caught up with him this year. he is an old and decrepit cat now. he seems deaf to anything other than the sound of an electric can opener. his arthritis makes him look like he is walking on eggshells. Fearless has slowed down, if indeed that is possible.

But what a long, rich life he has led. he's been around a lot longer than most cats. he has lived out his nine lives, i am quite sure. yet his impending death to me is like the end of an era. i cannot imagine life without Fearless.

tonight may be the last night we spend together. i am going to shut out my light and pet my old friend until he falls asleep.

i'm sorry

i'm sorry. those are the words you find yourself screaming and sobbing sooner or later when you lose someone or some thing precious to you. it may make no sense whatsoever. you may have done nothing to cause their death, you may have done everything to prevent it, you may have taken the very best care of them. somehow, though, deep in your psyche you feel responsible. sometimes. not always. but when it comes it's devastating.

that's how i've felt.

i can't say i'm sorry enough.

when bob first complained of a gagging sensation and inability to swallow i can look back and reassure myself that i did urge him right then to go to the doctor. but he wouldn't. he was TOO BUSY. maybe that's why i hate those words now. they are such bullshit words. i hate people who are too busy. they're too busy running away, whether it be from emotions or illness. if you stay busy enough you can keep pain at bay. so you think. but in the end it will get you. so spare yourself, be brave and make time for it now. while it counts. in bob's case we missed the chance to find out he had cancer 3 months earlier. maybe it would have made a difference. i'll never know now.

i urged him to go to the doctor every time it happened, but he wouldn't go. maybe he was scared to find out why. maybe he knew it was bad and didn't want to know for sure. he used to say "if you go to a doctor they'll find something wrong with you". as if you'd always be fine...as long as you never went to that doctor. why didn't i make him go? i tried, i know i did, but you can't make a grown and stubborn man do anything. and he was, after all, too busy. he had a job he felt responsible for reporting to every day on time, just like he had at every job before that. he never took an extended lunch hour. sometimes he reported back for work before he was even due.

i didn't know it, but he was actually going to lunch that summer more than he ever had before at any time in his history. i know why now. he was trying to eat as much as he could to battle the way the cancer was whittling his body away. candy, potato chips, fried chicken. after his death i found candy wrappers and empty chip bags in his truck. he was battling cancer with junk food. he should have spent one lunch hour in the doctor's office instead of Zee Mart's parking lot, enjoying their fried chicken. the doctor would have sent him in for an endoscopy right then. maybe before the cancer had the chance to network its way down to his liver.

i stupidly waited the marina season out and cancer had that much more feeding time. he would not agree to go until late october, even delaying one appointment by one week. but by then it was too late. i used to yell at him in a rage when he'd be incapable of finishing his dinner. when he'd dart into the bathroom as it came up immediately. i'd yell "do you want to end up talking through a hole in your throat with a computer voice?" obviously, i had the wrong tube, and may have known it, but i wanted to make some impact, however crass. i actually think that was the very thing that got him to finally agree to a doctor. that and the fact that by then his knees and his back hurt too.on halloween eve he told me the doctor didn't seem to care much about his swallowing, she was more concerned with the fact that his liver felt enlarged. "don't tell my daughter", he said. she was heading over to the house with the children for halloween. "she'll worry."

that was our last night of innocence. blissful ignorance.

when his blood test results came in he was impossibly anemic and soon a CT scan showed 3 tumors in his liver, one six inches in diameter. and then an endoscopy showed esophageal cancer. stage four cancer. and ten weeks later bob was dead.

why didn't i take better care of him? i am not sure why we do it, why we blame ourselves sooner or later. i am sure i am not alone. other 'survivors' must feel this way too. i know so. you can't explain it to a shrink much less a friend or family. in fact, i feel certain others must blame me too. as much as i blame myself. why didn't she take better care of him? how did she not notice all the weight he was losing or his abrupt and odd appetite for high calorie food? anybody else would have gotten him to a doctor sooner. he wouldn't have died. i guess it's easier to blame myself than it is to blame bob because he already suffered the ultimate price. and it's hard to comprehend that maybe no one is to blame. doesn't it have to be someone's fault?

but the 'i'm sorry" isn't just for failing to keep him alive. it's for every single wrong i ever committed. it's just that the worst was that i couldnt save him.

sometimes, crying, you need something to say. something that means something, something you can blurt between gasps for air. "i'm sorry" is perfect and, like the tears, relieves some of the pain.

until next time.