Old Life
I never really got the "cat person."
My mom always kept about five or so and treated them better than some humans are treated. My job was to sift the feces out of the litter box, so we didn't have to pay for litter each week.
I hated it. And a part of me really didn't like the cats. I wanted her to feel something for somebody. These were easy because they didn't have complicated feelings.
My wife and I headed down to Beaufort out of college to start our newlywed lives together.
For two weeks I waited to for my position to be created at the newspaper while she went to work. I had spare time. Enough time, for whatever reason, to see an ad in the paper for a littler of kittens on the Marine training based.
Easy enough. I dipped shit for years. My new lovely wife can have some kittens.
I brought them to work. She was overtaken.
We named them Tybalt and Juliet. We were into that Shakespeare, Baz Lurhman style.
We went with Tybalt - because Romeo and Juliet shouldn't be brother and sister as cats. That's twisted and I'm not clear what the laws are on such a thing, anyway.
She treated them like children. They were her test run, I guess. If they got outside, full-on manhunt mode ensued. She was scared of even the most-arcane things happening to them. If only all moms could be so conscientious.
Two years later, we found out we were having our first child.
We had to move north. The "kitties" had to come, too.
We got settled here in the Upstate, the first home we owned. My wife four months pregnant, spending the winter getting the baby room ready, we lost a little track of the young cats from time to time.
"Oh no, Tibby's out!" would be a familiar sound.
We'd get him. It was a pain in the ass chasing him. Julie not so much. She wasn't as adventurous.
She never was. And that's in the sense that "never" is truly a term that can apply after today.
It was humorous: Determined cat gets out, runs around, gets caught, tries to go back outside.
Until one cold morning.
We look outside our window and Tibby is hit by a car. The driver stops, feels terrible. He helps to search as Tibby takes off and into a sewer drain, most likely.
For a week we kept looking, hoping he was merely wanting to be to himself to heal.
We got the call. They found him frozen and lifeless down the hill.
Poor guy. My wife was crushed.
And in a way so desperate that she could not accept that it had happened.
That little guy was everything to her.
The snow fell as we wrapped that little creature into a blanket we had bought that was stitched with landmarks of Beaufort.
I dug a hole in the backyard and we put him there, covered it up and ... well I guess that's about all there is to it, right?
So ends that beginning.
But over the next decade, Julie (as we called her, though people didn't always understand that we didn't just name the cat "Julie" like in a human sense), was always there. She minded her business.
The arrival of our two actual human children diminished her role.
But she was content.
For 15 years, she was content.
In recent years, she had begun to pee on carpets and covers and clothes.
We had to move her into a room we rarely used. That kept things sanitary.
We virtually forgot about her.
Some months went by, during this past Christmas break, and we decided to turn that room into a "tween-cave" where the boys could play video games and accommodate friends to do .... whatever kids and tweens do.
As I set up the ladder and mixed the new paint, I remember telling her, "Things are going to get a lot more interesting in here for you."
And it did, and she annoyed the shit out of anyone who came in there.
She was getting old.
But so lean, so small, so happy.
"Demure" would be a good way to describe her.
--
Last month, we decided to sell our house and move into the city.
It's been a time of unsettling uncertainty - but one of newfound promise.
Kind of like graduating college, starting your first professional job, getting married, all in a new town.
Kind of like starting a new life, like we did 15 years ago when we decided to try to take care of some cats.
Our house is half-full of stuff. We've had to leave on a moment's notice for people to "shop" it.
That ended today.
After 10 days on the market, somebody decided to buy our house.
I'll never forget this day - and how sad I could be over a cat.
--
On Sunday, we noticed that Julie had begun to seriously deteriorate. By nighttime, she could no longer walk straight and you could tell she didn't know where she was. She was drinking incessantly, not eating, then peeing all over everything.
We wrapped her up in a blanket.
I told the boys to pet her, that we were taking her to the doctor in the morning.
And - just like I never explicitly told them that Santa Claus was real - I told them that this might be the last day she would be with us.
I slept on the couch and kept her by my side.
I wanted to make sure that if she didn't make it through the night that the boys wouldn't be the first to discover it.
The same night, we were told we had to be out of our house Monday morning so that someone could come look at it (the second person to come through).
I would take the cat to the vet, my wife would take the boys elsewhere.
In the morning, I took a carrier, but it was obvious there was no need for it.
I kept Julie in a beach towel next to me in the truck.
The inevitability of it all was surreal. You feel like you have control over this, like you can choose to end it but that you don't have to. But I knew I had to.
I stopped by the Episcopal church on the way. They do this thing where you walk a labyrinth, a way of meditating.
I walked her through that. Why? I don't know. I just wanted to do something significant, because I knew once we walked into that office, there wouldn't be much significance.
I would then just be left to bury a family pet, just like before.
The vet told me she was suffering from kidney failure, that it's something that happens quickly, and it was why she was drinking so much water.
We tried to feed her some tuna to entice her to eat, and for once she did.
He told me that that simply flooded her brain with protein. That wasn't necessarily the worst thing; it served to put her into a state of disorientation, probably not the worst thing when you don't have much more time left to live.
The guy asked me if I wanted to hold her and have her brought back to me.
I can't speak for others ... but I couldn't imagine them taking her away.
I had cared for that animal for almost half my life. As real and salient as that experience would be, don't you owe it to recognize a life you define as precious?
They did it. It was over. They asked me if I wanted a box or have her cremated.
I had buried the one, no reason to not do the same.
They take her away. Then a lady brings me a credit card bill to sign (I wouldn't charge for such a thing if my profession held such an equivalent).
Then the box. I put the box in the passenger seat and drove home, hoping I could get it buried before my boys came home.
--
I parked in my neighbors' driveway, knowing that somebody was coming with a real estate agent to walk through my house.
The blue Mustang pulled up, behind it a BMW gray SUV.
They went inside.
I'm hoping they're in and out. It's not easy.
They're in there longer than I thought they would be. That was a good sign, I guess.
The young woman comes outside. She's gesturing affectionately. She looks like she likes it.
They go back inside. More waiting, hoping the boys don't come home.
They emerge again, with papers in their hands, then drive off.
I go to start up my truck, but the battery was dead.
My father-in-law brought me some jumper cables and a shovel.
The cables don't work. The battery was old, and he needed to do some work to fix it.
I took the box to the backyard and started digging.
I dug into some fibers, the remnants of the blanket I had buried the other cat in 12 years earlier.
Weird, I know.
I tried to put the box in but it was too big, so I took her out, wrapped in the towel.
My face was wet as I hand-shoveled clay to fill the hole back in, a mixture of tears and the sweat of a hot, humid day.
I repeated one line several times, the realest expression that revealed itself in that moment when you realize that there are inevitable things in life that you simply have to do.
"I'm sorry."
--
Just as I finished, the boys arrive. My father-in-law felt like I had had a rough day.
He bought me a new battery.
The room where she stayed was clean, almost sterile.
And so empty.
I imagined a couple times that she was still in there, with a half-meow, half-squeak and rubbing up against my leg to the point I would shove her away.
I told my wife that I couldn't understand why I was so upset.
"She was a gentle creature. I just want to have her here so we can take care of her, like we always have done. Why can't we do that?"
This is a scene that plays itself out on a grander scale, when a family member or friend passes away. I've experienced it before, in tragic fashion, just before my wedding, in fact.
Still, you don't discount the feeling you have for something. True love for things are beyond comparison.
--
Later in the night, the phone rings.
"Deal."
We agreed to a contract on our house.
I should be happy, and I am, but I feel like I'm leaving more behind than the home I've raised my children in.
New life is ahead.
