Dave's random storytime...not that any of you should have to endure this (seriously, a tl;dr is coming, skip it) but I've had animals around me my whole life. My black lab lived to be almost 16 (way too long in Labrador years), but due to rental restrictions and an abhorrence of cat-sized dogs I've only had cats lately. This one I published a few years ago, when I was still smoking and had to kill one of my cats on Christmas...
It’s 5:35 in the morning, December 26, when I finally begin to type. I’ve been sitting here for almost four hours now, operating on something like three hours’ sleep in as many days waiting for the words to start flowing, or for the bottle of rum at my side to take effect and begin to lull me off to a dreamless sleep.
Last night was Christmas Eve – even though we’re not a true Christian family as much as we are a sloppy mixture of agnosticism and Wicca with a dose of traditional Christian values thrown in (the love thy neighbor type, not the ‘God hates Fags’ type), we subscribe to the purely secular version of the holiday that says you should dupe your kids into believing that a fat guy in a flying sled hooks them up on tons of shit overnight. I spent the wee hours yesterday building a three story off-brand dollhouse so my seven year-old daughter would find it under the tree the next morning, no assembly required.
After four Christmases (my parents, my nuclear family, my fiancée’s mom’s and then her dad’s), plus the assembly project that would make building an entire living room out of Ikea furniture seem tame crammed into a 28 hour block from Friday evening to Saturday night, I’d expect to be so dead to the world that no sleep aid would be necessary. But once all that got done, I came home and had to kill my cat.
I killed my cat. That seems kind of brutal, when you break it down to the basic essence of what went down tonight. And even though I have no regrets about the end result, it very well could be that brutality that’s keeping me up right now.
Some of the people that will eventually read this may not get it – maybe you’re a dog person and hate cats. If that’s the case, try and think about losing your dog – I went through this a few years back when the black lab I’d cared for since I was seven years old decided a decade and a half was long enough to grace the world with her presence, and it’s no different. Maybe you don’t understand the bond humans can form with the animals in their lives – in that case I pity you for all you’ve missed out on.
Roulette was born in a barn in Lakeside and came to live with my family when she was about two months old. I’d recently broken up with an on-again, off-again high school girlfriend who was destined to disappear from my life for about a decade before coming back around to stay. This blotchy little mackerel tabby (who I’d called a tortoiseshell her whole life, only to learn the true name of her coat in the hours after her passing) took to me immediately. Even though I was the stereotypical ‘dog guy,’ she insisted on sneaking into my bedroom every morning, swatting at my face until I’d wake up or simply plopping down across my neck until involuntary asphyxiation got me moving.
It was her fighting spirit that got me to come around. Anyone who knows cats knows that, pound for pound, they’ve got ten times the fight in them as any dog. And my cat was big – over twenty pounds of big. On average, your typical housecat tips the scales at nine to twelve. Roulette had a fierce streak too – hardly a day went by when I was a kid that she didn’t show up dragging home a lizard, mouse, garden snake, gopher, wild rabbit, or even the occasional chicken out of the neighbor’s coop (I hid those pretty quick). But nothing topped the time I heard one helluva ruckus around the edge of our property line and rushed over to see this cat beating a full-grown coyote into submission. This cat wanted nothing to do with running up a tree, she went toe-to-toe with a forty pound wild dog and sent it off yelping for mercy. I guess she was lucky to have caught him alone, as my mom lost one or two cats a year to those damned critters that roamed the neighborhood in packs.
When I moved out at 18, I left Roulette at my parents’ house – I was stuck in a low-rent apartment she’d have hated, and they didn’t allow pets anyhow. Fast forward through a marriage, divorce, and reunification with that girlfriend from a long time ago, who brought with her a beautiful little girl who melts my heart when she calls me Daddy. My cat was getting older, and not getting along so well with the younger, weaker animals she had to share the property with (by now the coyotes had picked off all of her old friends). Since I was still going back home every day, given that the family business is run out of my dad’s basement, I eventually got suckered into taking her to live with me, where she only had to learn to get along with my girlfriend’s cat.
Moe happens to be the only domesticated feline I’ve ever met that’s bigger than Roulette, and by a considerable amount. It didn’t matter much, within a week she’d established boundaries – upstairs where the people spent most of their indoor time was hers, Moe wasn’t welcome. Downstairs, where the food and litter box were located, was Moe’s exclusive domain – except when she wanted to come down.
When we lost the house and moved into a little apartment (this one allowing pets), I don’t know what kind of truce they worked out, but somehow they figured a way to get along in about half the space they had before. Roulette got Kenzi’s room (she was now my daughter’s cat as much as she ever was mine), Moe got to sit at the screen door and watch the world pass him by. The kitchen, living room, and bathroom were gladiatorial arenas where battles occurred whenever both animals were trying to occupy the same space.
This worked out great for a couple years. And then Roulette started hanging out in the corner, behind the bar. She was always kind of a foul-tempered, grumpy sumbitch, so we didn’t take too much offense to her reclusiveness, and she always rushed out of her solitude whenever there was the possibility of scoring some kind of non-kibble food, and she would always rush to Kenzi’s door at bedtime to curl up for a story and to stay the night.
The old girl, now past 13 and getting up there in cat years, started developing a hobble in her walk. We got her some joint medication, which helped for a while. Then she started losing weight. We fed her canned food and leftover meat scraps from dinner, and she kept shrinking. The joint meds didn’t seem to be working as well as before. And she had to be coaxed into our daughter’s room at night instead of jumping at the chance to hop into bed. She couldn’t jump high enough anymore.
Tearful conversations were had – was it time to let her go? Could a doctor help? Could we afford a doctor for our cat, given that I didn’t even have health care myself? I swear she looked up from her corner and watched me hold my fiancée as she collapsed into tears. That look said to me “I’m trying, Dad!”