meditations on a cat and his nasty ass

Living in Vermont, my family seemed to go through cats like we went through tubs of mink oil, which is to say quickly and without much attachment. My first pet was a cat named Brillig; I’m too young to remember him because when my mom fled her abusive husband on that May day almost exactly 46 years ago she also abandoned Brillig. The next pet was also a cat whose name has gone the way of all cat-flesh, as did the cat. The next one was named Sammy Davis Jr., as were the next three or four, who were named Sammy Davis Jr II, III, and IV. One was killed by Parvo, another by a car, yet another by something unknown, and the last died of old age.

I have owned seven cats myself. The first, named Ms, a testament to my very early feminism, lived with my family after I went to college, and she lived long enough to grow swaybacked and bald. She also grew demented, thus leading my sister to buy a refrigerator magnet that read, “A cat by any other name is a horrid little fleabag that shits behind the couch,” a sentiment that rarely fails to make me giggle. 

After I left Ms to my family, I got, successively, Grant, Pig and Jasmine, all of whom drifted away, as cats are wont to do. I once saw Pig and Jasmine after they abandoned me; they both gave me the feline stink eye, turned their tails at me, and flashed their anuses as one. I’m pretty sure their body language meant precisely what it seemed to say. When I lived with Eff, we adopted Sam Shepard, the Cowboy Kitty. I moved to Gotham to be with Eff, and Sam accompanied me. He hated it, the indoor kept-kitty lifestyle, and Sam blew up until he looked like Walter Matthau in a cat-suit. I brought him back to Vermont to live out his days with my parents in suburban splendor. He died a few years ago; he was old and still glorious.

Living with and without cats, I discovered something I never thought possible: I am a dog person. In high school and college, when the choice between cats and dogs defines you as much as whether you wear Sweet Honesty or Charlie, drink Coke or Pepsi, or listen to Devo or Motörhead, my choice was firmly feline. I collected cat poems (Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,/are changeable, marry too many wives,/ desert their children, chill all dinner tables/ with tales of their nine lives./ Well, they are lucky. Let them be/nine-lived and contradictory) and made a chapbook. I had the B. Kliban books, the B. Kliban mugs and the B. Kliban posters. I held a staunchly pro-cat agenda. I was all about the cat.

Growing up, I’d had dogs, two of them, both St. Bernards and both hairy, drooling, stinky and much beloved. But in wanting to give myself the insouciant, tail-flipping independence of the cat, I renounced dogs and all their shaggy, needy fidelity. I embraced the cat within, which is to say that I often treated people poorly, was conscious only of my needs, and held no compunction about gacking on anyone’s floor and leaving it to them to clean up.

I’m not exactly sure what changed—maybe it was living in an alienating city for a year in a small apartment with a man I no longer loved.  But at 28 I made the conversion to Dog Person. As with most converts, I became a zealot. I was all-dogs-all-the-time, even working as a dog walker for a year and a half. During that time, I got the Legendary Spencer, and while the canine fervency has cooled, I would describe myself doggy. I love dogs, can’t live without them, want a man who is a dog; pro-dog, that’s me.

And yet I have a cat. His name is blott. He’s black, and he’s evil, which is to say that he isn’t, but being bound by his genetics, as we all are, he can’t help but be evil. Cats haven’t much of an innate desire toward altruism, and no matter how many heart-warming reports of cats dragging babies out of fires I read, I’m not going to alter my views on the intrinsic, and not unpleasurable, evilness of cats.

Cats can see things we don’t. I’m convinced my cat, who routinely sits in corners and stares at the wall with great intent, communes with Other Beings. Blott is odd, and black, and dark, but as cats go, blott’s pretty good. He is friendly and he doesn’t bite much. He is also, finally, old. He’s seventeen, maybe sixteen, and he’s lived with me in this apartment almost as long as I have. He has seen Spencer live and die, and he’s seen another cat, Smudge, a cat who was notable for his stickiness and stupidity and torpor, come and go. He’s seen many boyfriends and born witness to much pain and bad behavior. He doesn’t care. Blott’s indifference is the stuff of legend.

Blott was spry and gorgeous and now he’s old and evil and, I fear, a wee bit senile. Of late, it’s felt like I live in Alistair Crowley’s Shady Pines, a geriatric home for aging Satanists. Daily there is poo and there is goo. This morning I woke at about 6:00 to the scent of doody and a carefully deposited tiny turd under my pillow. I had been visited by the Shit Fairy or, more likely, my cat’s dexterous ass had defied inertia to plop that pinky-nail sized poop on my bed. Later, when I rose, I found a seven-foot long trail of cat gack trailing a slimy path through the kitchen into the bathroom; this line was punctuated by a hairball the size of a gerbil.

My cat is old, 84 human years, if websites can be believed. He has grown extra intensively cantankerous and privileged, which in a cat is saying something. He cries like a banshee in the night, and I answer with food. It’s clear that his death is nigh, and sometimes I feel like it’s not nearly fucking nigh enough. Night after night blott wakes me with caterwauling and bad smells, and I imagine my hands closing around his ancient little neck and snapping it like a sere twig.

I won’t, of course. That would be “wrong,” and “immoral,” and “illegal,” but to not admit my urge would be to refuse the whole story and to renege both my feelings for this cat and my own humanity. Aged dogs look wise and gentle; they look at you with love and the patience of eons. Cats just look more calcified in their spite. Their entitlement grows a stony carapace around them, and we—or at least I—bend to the old cat’s will. I kowtow and placate and scratch behind the ears and beneath the chin. I pick up the shit where I find it, and I’m finding it everywhere. I mop up the goo, and I rub the snot from the cat’s nose. I buy the canned food, and I open the stinky tins at ungodly hours. I do it all because I feel an unlikely, reluctant love, and because I know that when that day comes, and I find blott hard and still and quiet and dead, I will be sad.

I will miss him, that evil little fuck.

Comments

[ChiaLynn]

As the caretaker of a 17-year-old brown tabby, who won't eat if don't mix cat treats into the soft food she would have refused until quite recently, who develops a new UTI every other week, and whose always-dodgy volume control has now completely cracked - I empathize.

[Allison]

my cat sat down next to me and peed one day...i saw blood in it and called my vet...the vet asked me if my cat ever looked at me in worry...it's its way of telling something is wrong(my cat had an uriniary tract infection, most male cats get this)...or, if things are fine with your pet, another vet suggested Bach Flower Rescue Remedy two drops in its mouth or soft food twice a day...this should calm him down or clam him up (whichever cames first)...of course, you should always get a second opinion before giving a pet anything.

[chelsea g.]

Oh, blott is frisky enough for an old dude. He plays, headbutts me for attention, climbs on the keyboard when I'm typing, the whole range of happy cat behaviour. He's just, well, old, and I'm not going to be taking any massive measures to prolong his life. Others may disagree with this decision, and I can understand why. I'll enjoy him (in my own truculent way), until he goes, and if it's necessary, I'll do what I have to in order to ease him gently into that good night.

[minstrel hussain boy]

i'm responding to this while my german shepherd is parked on my bed, and the siamese is in my lap jealously trying to take my attention away from the keyboard...

i like my critters, cats, dogs, horses, and a mean tempered rescue burro much more than i like people.

[The Underblawger]

Five years ago, I brought home a Devon Rex. A few months later, I brought home another one.

Those may be the only utterly correct decisions that I have made in my life.

[Mishi]

My family has been adopted by a cat. I'm sure she's evil by nature, but rebelling against it at the moment. We took our 2 year old daughter to an animal shelter to see how'd she'd be around cats, intending to pick up a kitten after the post-Christmas dump. Kitty walked up and claimed Jadzia. She ignored all others as well as the food being set out in front of her. We took her home, and she's been chasing and cleaning our weimaraner ever since.

If blott's in pain, give him the Bach Flower Rescue Remedy or a small nip of vodka in his water. Just be careful with the vodka, thats how my mother accidentally killed her rather old cat.

[Svasti]

Great post! I am both a cat and a dog person. Was mostly brought up with cats, although by the time I was 6 or 7, our old golden lab Sandy was mostly skin and bone, and dying of cancer. A great dog, was Sandy. But I've never owned another one since.

Actually, I didn't own a cat for years either, after leaving my parents' home at the age of 19. We had cats a-plenty there, and then I moved interstate and was always a little too transient for pet-owning. When I moved back to Melbourne, it was a priority. But my now beloved cat, Cleopatra, came to me before I even had a home of my own. She is not so much the ornery type of feline as the needy/love me type. She's anxious and adoring and needs much petting.

She's been fantastic. That said, I wonder if I'll get to see her live out her years, given my gypsy nature. I've contemplated that I may very well end up leaving my home town once again, and if I'm headed overseas (a strong possibility) then she would not come. I know she would adapt, but it pains my heart to think of the anxiety she'd experience should I leave.

But then, they always tend to leave us first, mostly, don't they?

[HoneyScan]

i love cats... i used to have dog before but i hate the idea of taking them for a bath... cats are so beautiful and sexy... i like how they play...

[G]

I <3 blott. It makes me sad to hear he is aging poorly. :-(

Also, the term "Shit Fairy" made me laugh out loud, literally.

[Gary]

the whole "Shit Fairy" paragraph makes me cry with laughter every time I read it, big fat tears, rolling down my face, thank you for that.

I remember a cat my mother had, originally called jet (because she was black as a kitten, then turned grey in adolescence) was renamed Pepe (as in Pepe-le-Phew, because of her bushy tail, which was amputated after a brush with a car).

I guess my mum didn't have the heart to find a new name, but she lived up to it in old age by lifting the corner of carpets to leave stinky deposits for me and then attacked me everytime I tried to clean them up... a binbag in next doors dustbin didn't come too quickly when she passed, although we found her special hiding places for years after.