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Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden

Seuss

Our cat died this morning. She was sixteen. I have had cats my whole life and this is the second one that I didn't love. The first one went to live with my boyfriend's grandfather after six months of us vexing each other. This cat, though, was acquired partly because I wanted my son to grow up in knowledge of caring for something smaller and weaker, so sending it off to live on a farm wasn't an option. And she didn't vex me so much as she just never took my heart. She  was sick in the beginning and suicidal through most of the middle, and though I made her flashcards explaining about how she only got nine lives she continued to jump out the apartment window whenever she got the chance. Possibly I never loved her because I never expected her to stick around for long. I felt bad about it sometimes, not loving this creature who lived with us, but certainly my son loved her and she was fed and petted and brushed. 

We were gone for the summer and five different people took care of her, with five different ideas of how a cat should be cared for. I'm sure that was a factor. But she had been toothless for seven years and always had one thing or another going on with her fur or her digestion, and she was eighty years old in cat years. We came home to a cat that was clearly not long for the world. She licked food off of my fingers for the first day but then even that didn't interest her.

She didn't seem to be in pain; she purred when she was petted and she mewed when she was uncomfortable but mostly she slept on my chest or in my suitcase (a previous battleground, but I decided she could have it this time). I watched her slipping away this past week. I thought I would see if I could let her go naturally, without euthanasia, although I am a big fan of choosing not to suffer needlessly. But it didn't seem like she was suffering. I am incredibly privileged to work from home and be able to spend most of my day checking on a cat every hour to see if she wants to lick water off my fingers or be carried to the cat box, so that's what I did. And somewhere between one hour and the next this morning, she died.

I did not love her. But I did care for her. I hope I have resolved that within myself. I'm not sure she knew or cared, as long as I fed her. She was a quintessential cat in that regard. 

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