From Summer, 1999
It’s one of those bright, hot days of early summer when the light is so sharp you long for darkness. It pierces through colors and drains them dry so all you’re left with is their bleached underbellies. Here in the mountains we don’t have many early summer days that I want to hide from, but this was one of them. However, hiding is not an option on this day. We’re having company. Mickey’s cousin Michael is coming from Japan for a very rare visit and we’ve cleaned our worn farmhouse, shopped and cooked and are ready for the occasion. Michael is arriving at 1pm for lunch..
At 12:30 I become anxious and develop this gnawing hand-wringing desire to wash our winter quilts, several of them. Too many to do in our washer at home. What a good idea it soon becomes to drive the 40 minutes to town and get those quilts clean. Does it matter we aren’t using them? I mean, it’s almost 90 degrees out in the sun and a light blanket and sheet are enough for the cooler nights. But the desire blossoms into an increasingly brilliant, mesmerizing idea dominating my mind. Mickey is not much of one to talk me out of things, no matter how bizarre. I haven’t quite decided if it’s wisdom or apathy on his part. But since there is no obstacle of common sense to overcome from any direction, I load up the car and drive to town with our not-even-dirty quilts.
As I get close to town I debate between the two laundromats---the older, shabby one I’m familiar with or the newer one with drink machines, air-conditioning and TV. No real wavering here. Any opportunity to avoid television and the rattle of air conditioning is a blessing so I go for hot and shabby.
As I pull up in front of the old, tired laundry, an emaciated black and white cat hobbles out. Hobbling because he’s missing one of his legs. Oh, what a thin razor-edged shadow of a cat he is. But his eyes lock dead onto me and he walks purposefully right up as if he’s been watching the clock, tapping his not-to-be-spared furry foot, expecting me to arrive any moment. He looks at me with a flower of openness to his narrow cat face that conveys such a sense of easy comfort with me already, just for having arrived on time. Maybe it’s a rather single-minded need that makes him so brave as to approach me with such a sense of familiarity. As I get out of my car, he signals in that subtle language of all cats I’ve ever known that he’d really like to be picked up. He can’t signify this by reaching up for me as so many cats do, but the message is still coming through.
He is long in the body. His bones are heavy as bones go. He has the sort of angularity that makes me sort of afraid to hold him in certain ways because I don’t want to hurt him, cause him any discomfort. But I sit back in my car with him and release my clogged breath with the growing awareness that says, oh yes, here is the subject of my desire to wash my clean winter quilts on a hot summer day when I’m having company, all translated into the meager flesh of an obviously starving, three legged kitty. And as I lean back against the car seat and hold him closer, he releases a long stream of tan fluid from his bowels. I just hold him for a while after this, then start to look for something with which to clean us both up. As always, I have cat food in the car since I’m always having to buy some for our dozen kitties at home and also because you just never know who you’re going to run into that might be hungry. I put some out on the seat for him and he noses it around a bit, many even chews a few pieces, but doesn’t seem all that interested for a cat who is so desperately thin. Then he has more fluid running out of him, and then more. It sinks in slowly that he must be not just starving, but sick. As I sit with this kitty the part of me that is very quiet, so quiet that it’s often ignored by the monologue in my mind, tells me that all this cat wants is to be loved for a while. There is a calmness here--a peace--that tries to get my attention and help me make the best decision for this sweetie pie. I keep saying it softly over in my mind, ‘He just needs to be loved, that’s all.’ But I can’t let this in in ways that subdue my adrenaline or that deter my inclination to try to save him in any way possible. So, after sitting in the parking lot for awhile, I drive off with this cat to my vet’s office.
My vet Nash, when examining the cat, slides his thick-lidded eyes at me with that look that says, ‘don’t hope for much---this is probably bad news.’ And it is. He’s in advanced stages of Feline Leukemia and it’s too late to do anything. With most of his clients Nash would suggest euthanasia at this point but he knows better than to go there right away with me. I prod and probe and double and triple check all options. Are there any chances he could recover enough to have a good life for awhile? Nash reluctantly agrees to try it with some new nutritional items and some other standard efforts. As he always does when I’m pushing him in what he feels to be a hopeless direction– and I always push– Nash comes around the exam table and pats me a long time on my back with one eternally blood-stained and piss soaked hand. It’s not condescension but more a weariness of futile hope that Nash translates into this visceral, wordless ritual. I finally notice that his lovely, usually silver-streaked long hair is all black today. His much younger second wife likes for him to look younger too, but to me it just makes him look severe and uncomfortable with himself. When the patting session is over Nash calls a vet tech to come take this kitty to the isolation ward down in the basement. The “isolation ward” at my country vets’ office is the professional term for what is really a tiny basement cubicle about 4 by 5 feet with a very low ceiling and a crooked, bare light bulb dimly hanging from it. There are a few cages on a narrow table on one side and a stack of smaller cages crammed against the other side where almost none of the light even touches. On the floor is a step-stool.
I keep the cat there for 2 1/2 days, during which time I go and sit with him for most of each day. I cook fish, beef, chicken in various ways to see if I can tempt his palate and he, indeed, gets a bit excited by the smells and starts to eat each time I come in, which in turn gets me all excited and hopeful. But then he very quickly loses interest and just nudges up against the bars of the kennel to be let into my arms. I’ve brought water proof pads and lay one against my chest and lap and sit on that step- stool close to the floor with my leaking kitty. His bowels just run and run but up near my face, where all the other action is happening, he purrs and purrs like he has a big quota to use up in a short amount of time, and he nuzzles my face while kneading my sternum. We sit like this for countless hours, my new kitty and I.
On the second day, late in the afternoon there’s a new resident of the isolation ward, a beagle puppy who has Parvo. Nash comes into the ward to check on the puppy. Standing there quietly with a look of thoughtful and long worn compassion etched into the lines of his face he lets me know he has little hope for the puppy’s recovery. In the patterned web of Nash’s face is also the story of his long, uninterrupted work trying to ease the pain and sorrow of creatures who have no power or voice, and it is in these brief but frequent moments with Nash that I am struck by his devotion. This is not a job for Nash, or a marketing opportunity for veterinary products, it’s a calling. He is a Healer.
After he leaves, it’s just the three of us again under the sickly lemon-gray lightbulb. The puppy is listless in the very back corner of his kennel. The kitty and I are on the stool right next to him. It feels so still and sad in here. I want to bring something to the room that it is lacking but don’t know what. I’m not religious in any definable terms. I have no comforting or stand-by rituals to bring to such a moment. But I do know the words to Amazing Grace and since I can carry a tune enough to pass, I sing. Very softly, as well as slowly. At the end of the first verse the little beagle slowly pulls himself to his feet. He comes to the front of the kennel and raises his muzzle in the air. Then he begins to sing. I can only call the sounds that come out a song because it’s not like a regular howl or a growl. Is not a bark or huff or keen. It is a song of doggie notes going up and down, and sung with feeling. Anyone listening to this dog would recognize he is truly singing. I can’t quite understand the words but there is no missing the meaning. Being such a natural creature, he is totally in the moment and in that moment his whole body knows what is happening. He stops and looks at me, at us. I sing the next verse. Then he raises his muzzle and sings again. We trade off singing, verse after verse, chorus after chorus, repeat after repeat. Then finally, everything feels full and done. The beagle appears to be done too, sighs, and lies back down and we all just sit there in some kind of suspended space where time doesn’t seem to matter, or even sickness or death. We’re just animals here together with the echoes of our voices. The cat purrs.
On the morning of the third day a vet tech tells me there’s no longer a reason to keep the cat there. I can’t give up on him so soon, so get him out of isolation to take him home with me and say a sorrowful good bye to the empty space that now loudly fills the beagle’s kennel.
I know with the Feline Leuk I can’t let this kitty in the rest of the house with all our other cats. I’m not sure what I’ll eventually do if he lives, but for awhile I can keep him in an upstairs bedroom and take him out on the upstairs porch to sit in the sun. Mickey got the room all ready. A bed down low the cat can easily climb onto. A stack of waterproof pads for lots of holding. Diapers. Clean bowls, towels, litter box and lots of cat toys. Mickey is waiting upstairs in the room when I get home and as I walk in the bedroom with this kitty there is a brief moment in which the cat looks around to see just where he’s landed. I put him on the floor and he instantly hobbles over to Mickey and bats at him to pick him up. Mickey’s face first tenses then breaks into tears. He continues to quietly cry but the cat is in total comfort once again. Mickey holds him tightly and protectively the way a wise child would and it makes the cat happy. But now the cat has a name--Sid, for Siddhartha Gautama. We keep the abbreviated version for it feels like less of a burden for this small being to carry.
Sid loves to play. He bats at all the toys. I sleep in the room with him at night and we lie in front of the open window together. The moths that land on the screen fascinate him and he does his best to catch them. He lunges, falls, lunges some more. He rolls with delight, purrs, mews, does the best 3-legged impersonation of a scamper I’ve even seen. He pushes himself against my face over and over. There is moonlight falling through the window on us. Of course there is. We laugh and play during the nights. Very very early mornings we nestle and fall asleep. The nights are cool but the days get hot. During the nights I’m able to really be with Sid in a loose, dreamy way. I don’t think so much about what’s wrong with him or what I might be able to do about it. We just hang out together and have a good time. During the days I feel more pressed. I keep trying to figure out what I might do for him that would help. I try to make his space more inviting. I spend some time contacting people about FeLeuk to see if I’m doing everything possible. And I sit in the black leather office chair with Sid on my chest and we hold onto each other for all we’re worth.
After three forever days of this, something starts to feel different. I’m not sure what it is but I stop doing anything to try to make him better. I just sit and sit with him. I take him out onto the porch where there’s a willow tree brushing it’s thin, papery limbs against the railing and birds--mostly goldfinches-- flying and chittering all about. Sid stares fascinated and seems happy. We’re both happy. In the afternoon, nothing really seems outwardly to have changed except Sid seems less interested in movement, in birds, and more interested in stillness and watching my face. Then suddenly I become aware that he’s not going to make it, not even one more day. This afternoon will be it. I can have a hard time trusting my feelings like this but they’re insistent and won’t let go. I tell Mickey so he can be with us. It’s so quiet but for the birds. The shade has covered the eastern porch and we sit cool and calm. I hold Sid and hold him. He looks in my eyes. I can’t take my eyes off of him nor he me. Mickey has the phone to call the vet in case we need advice. He calls once to ask about some movement Sid has made to see if it means he’s in pain but are told, no, it should be okay.
Occasionally Sid will stretch his body out very long. He reaches with his legs and stretches. He shakes from somewhere deep inside. Fluid comes out of his bowels, then some feces. He stretches more and then some more. He shakes very subtly and lifts his head. His eyes are on me. His eyes stay on me. Then he stretches and shakes a bit harder and his eyes, which had been focused on me, are slowly moving onto something else, even though he hasn’t physically moved them. I can tell he’s not looking at me anymore. He shakes, shakes, and then his whole body elongates and sighs. My eyes haven’t left his face. I hold him. We all stay very quiet. This passing feels so sacred, so real. I’ve touched a space of being I’ve never touched before. I don’t know what it means or what to do with it but it doesn’t matter. He is gone but I am still in that space of no time, no space, like in the isolation ward with the beagle. I can sit and hold him forever it feels like.
Several days pass before we finally bury Sid out near the old antique apple tree. He’s been lying in the rough oak box Mickey built surrounded by so many wildflowers from our fields. I am in a space of deep numbness. I can’t find my will to live or to care about anything. I keep forgetting to breathe and startle myself. Everything in life seems meaningless to me. I cry, but it seems pointless to do so and devoid of any passion. I can’t feel my life since after that afternoon when Sid died in my arms and I felt such vast eternity inhabit me for a while. I lost touch with that place and found myself in the place of insignificance. It’s an effort to just keep going enough to take care of all my other animals. I find no delight and not even the energy to feel sad or guilty about this. I wait for change but not with hope.
Late that same summer a tough green stalk rises from the center of Sid’s grave. It gets a bud and then opens into a sunflower. It’s one of those hybrid sunflowers I’ve seen in the seed catalogs with a big, bright green heart. It’s not a wild variety and I’ve never planted anything like it. We have no gardening neighbors, no neighbors hardly to speak of out in the mountains where we live and I can’t imagine how that one sunflower got there. Just one special one with a green heart growing from the very center of Sid’s grave. I take a roll of pictures, then wonder what a sunflower is a symbol of. I have a book of symbols packed away somewhere and when I find it and pick it up it falls. It’s a thick book and I’m nervous. It lands splayed open on the floor and when I pick it up and turn it over it is open to the word Sid, which in this book has as it’s meaning “ a heavenly being....an otherworldly place.” Then I find Sunflower and it is the flower of many things, but it is also the flower of cats.
A few years later I’m leaning against the counter at the local video store. Pat, the woman checking out my movie, has problems with her aging mother similar to the problems I have taking care of my dad. Every once in awhile we talk about it if there’s time. Pat seems repressed, blaming, not willing to look at herself clearly whereas I’m simply all lit up with the quivering demands of hyper-consciousness, another term for relentless crippling perfectionism So, it doesn’t really go anywhere and despite meeting for lunch once at the park we don’t really become friends. But in the course of one conversation I find out she lives right across from the laundromat where I got Sid. Very casually I remark...”oh, yeah, a few years ago I went to that laundromat and found a 3 legged cat that was really sick and took him home to love him while he died.” Her worn blue turtle eyes get big and she moves her head slowly like it’s resting precariously on a tiny ball bearing to look at me and says, “ You took my Tripod?”
Tripod? Her Tripod? I try to imagine Sid as Tripod as well as being a cat belonging to someone, and belonging to someone who wasn’t doting on him, and although the name doesn’t work for me, they’re clearly the same cat. Pat tells me he was always an outside cat but had not been close to the house in days. She was starting to worry about him because she thought he looked pretty sick and thin and knew she needed to do something about it. But she was having serious domestic problems and was scattered and absorbed just trying to survive. Instead of being angry that I took her cat, she’s really glad to know what happened to him and grateful that someone stepped in and helped him when she was having such a hard time being responsible for him. I bring her pictures I took and she keeps a few. She doesn’t appear to be very moved by our remembrances because, as I said, survival overwhelm has taken its toll. Still, somehow sharing this feels like it brings it all home, that Sid’s circle is complete. He is no longer my cat or Pat’s or even ours; he’s his own mysterious heavenly being who moved through like a dream who I get to always cherish.