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.

the energizer bunny

i turned my new-found roof repair skills to the bunnies' winter condo today. all summer they reside under the pear tree in the shade, catching breezes. all winter they live closer to the house in a wood & glass rabbit hutch with a whimsical rabbit shaped window facing south.

bob built both condos probably 15+ years ago when i had my first bunny, elliot, a dwarf dutch bunny. fur the color of a fawn with white wrapped around his shoulders. ellie lived 10 years, long for a rabbit, until he succumbed to some bizarre brain parasite that first made his head tilt then took him away entirely within a week, to die in my arms. i took his death hard and never came to peace with it until perhaps a year later when i lay on my back in the dark, in 'corpse pose' in yoga class. i'd begun to feel that familiar sensation of floating. you know the feeling when you just barely put your palm to water. that sense of being barely connected to surface. when suddenly out of the darkness elliot hopped, not bound to earth in any way, and slipped into the rabbit hole of my heart. from that day on i continued to miss him, but never again felt i'd lost him. instead he'd become a part of me.

then came pippy & gonzo, twin brothers who looked like elliot but unfortunately loved each other more than they'd ever come to love me. they did, however, accept petunia. i inherited petunia when my mother's other rabbit petie's cage had been torn open by some predator. as was petie. thus petunia came to be part of a threesome, and she liked it. the boys loved her and snuggled on either side of her slender body, and i called it a 'tunie sandwich'. collectively they were known as 'the Pippies'. less impersonal than 'the rabbits'. one by one, however, pippy & gonzo eventually died over the years. bob said they ate themselves to death. they were quite fat. finally only petunia was left. she was a happy and loving white bunny with brown/black ears and nose. her red eyes were preternatural and ruined her chances of being a bunny beauty queen. but we loved tunie.

one day i discovered a lump on her belly which turned out to be breast cancer. if female rabbits aren't spayed early on, and live long enough, they are good candidates for this. my parents had never spayed her. when i took her to the vet they removed not only the tumor, but also gave her a hysterectomy since she appeared to have cancer in her uterus as well. they handed her back to me with the warning that she'd probably only live about 3 months despite my best efforts. a year and a half went by. then i found another lump. breast cancer again. as she recovered from her second surgery i thought tunie should be the poster bunny for breast cancer. she deserved a pink ribbon. bob and i dubbed her 'the energizer bunny' because it appeared that nothing could kill her. even the predator who'd taken petie had spared her.

finally, a few months after bob succumbed to cancer of his own, i discovered yet another lump on tunie, this time on her side. by this time she was living with a smaller version of herself named violet. that is until i realized violet was peeing on her and therefore wasn't the girl bunny we thought. and so violet, now a boy and then a eunuch, is what i call my 'transgender bunny'. i had to separate him from his beloved tunie. at 10 years old and stricken again with cancer, she had no energy for the likes of him beyond touching noses through cage walls. this time the news was bad. this cancer had already invaded her lungs and there was nothing they could do. i asked 'how long?' and they shrugged. 'just bring her in to be put down when she appears to be in pain'. i don't know how to tell when a bunny is in pain. they are masters at hiding their weaknesses. how would she let me know? every chance i got i would let tunie hop around in the yard, free in the grass. sometimes it was harder and harder for her to get upright and at last i put her in a box and called mom to please take us to the vet. it was time. i waited for mom on the front lawn and as the SUV pulled up, tunie leapt out of the box and went hopping - as if she hadn't a care in the world - around the front yard. even escaping my attempts to catch her.

it wasn't her day to die.

mom left and i spent the weekend giving tunie the run of the yard under my watchful eye, expecting i would find her dead in her cage every morning. i did battle with myself. was it up to me to decide when she should die? it turns out the leap from the box and the escape from euthanasia was tunie's last hurrah. like bob, she rallied fully to life before death. as with bob, i was there for her death. as with elliot, i held her in a towel in my arms and watched it come. i don't know how she told me it was time, but i knew, and i held her. my energizer bunny's heart stopped beating as she lay next to my own.

and then it was only violet. but not for long. some irresponsible child lost interest in its black & white dwarf bunny and its irresponsible mother was going to set it loose in the woods to fend for itself. my friend called me to spare its life and, sucker that i am, i took it home and named it Gianni. naturally it too was not neutered so that cost me a nice piece of change, but i wasn't about to have violet or gianni succumb to testicular cancer. not after all i'd been through in the bunny department. violet had never lost his Dominant Bunny standing and wouldn't hear of gianni sharing his cage. bunnies may appear to be sweet, but really they are both cruel and gentle things. without my intervention gianni would have been murdered by violet's hand. or teeth, as it were. they are content to sniff one another through the cage wire, close enough company for either, which is unfortunate because they will never know the warmth of a 'tunie sandwich' on a cold winter day.

it is september 1 and before i know it fall will be here. violet had eaten the plywood roof of the bedroom of his condo last winter, perhaps from boredom, and so i set about repairing it today. it looked like the ruins of Katrina, but on a manageable scale for a lone woman and her table saw. i ripped off the old shredded plywood and replaced it with leftover kitchen countertop cut to size. then i screwed leftover roof shingles to the top, triple level! no wind, rain or snow will breach my roof. it took a hammer and nails, a measuring tape and heavy duty scissors, my trusty cordless drill (one of my last gifts from bob) and the Workmate 400, which i hauled up out of the basement with much difficulty. the last step will be the final seal with roofing tar. but i am far too exhausted at this point to carry a huge can of tar down a ladder from the porch roof.

i know it was mostly my labor and ingenuity that resulted in a beautiful new roof for violet, but i also thank bob who taught me how to do these things. maybe i should offer myself up to Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. but in my world animals come before humanity, and my humane society (2 bunnies and 6 cats) is hungry right now. as their keeper, slave and recipient of their boundless love, i must obey their call! this energizer bunny is done for the day.