It’s Wednesday morning and it’s 5:30 a.m. as I write this. I tried to put my glasses on to work and they were smudged with tears.
There’s someone in my house who’s supposed to be here and he’s not.
In late January 2008, it was cold and snowy in Philadelphia. My friend Alice found a stray cat on her porch and knew it was going to give birth. She had worked in a vet’s office. She brought the cat in, made it comfortable, and then helped give birth to a litter of four cats. One of them didn’t make it. The other three were, to put it no other way, scamps. Little feisty creatures who, once they were past their nursing phase, were rambunctious and fun and so so strange. I went over there as much as I could to play with these cats and realized that I had bonded with them.
There were three of them — an orange female and two grey tabbies. I got the one that had the shinier fur and I named him Atticus. The name never stuck as a roommate’s boyfriend insisted on calling him Tiger Friend. The name was morbid, in its own way. It didn’t come from a cat. It came from his sister’s fish who was dug up from its yard grave and eaten by their family cat. Maybe it was fitting, in its own bizarre way.
Some people have simply narratives about their cats. That they’re sweet and amazing. That they’ve never had a better friend. I’m reminded instead of the movie My Best Fiend about the contentious work relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. He could be such an asshole.
As a kitten, he hunted people. He once attacked my boss’ beard. He used to run behind a roommate, ricochet off a wall, and jump in front of them so he could take a “defensive” posture and hiss at him. He swatted. He hissed. He bit. He broke into things. He stole food. Early on, he would attack my feet in the middle of the night. He stopped once he startled me awake and, not knowing what was going on, I kicked. He flew and hit the wall and I felt so bad when I realized what had happened.
But he also deeply wanted to be held. He wanted to be loved. If I picked him up, he purred like he had never been so happy in this world. He made friends with some of my roommates. He adopted my former partner. He really wanted as much love as we all do in our own ways — and we all have complicated emotions that make us difficult customers at time.
He moved from Philly with me to DC. Then when I fled DC, he went to Lincoln with me. I was tricked into taking on another cat that I thought he was going to kill. Instead, they became best friends. Sometimes a little too close. You’d walk in to one mounting the other. I moved back to Philly and stayed for five years, then off to Wisconsin, back to Nebraska, and out to California. He was my favorite thorn in my side. He loved me so deeply that it was clear he considered me his mother. I sometimes even picked him up and said “mama’s here.”
Early in the spring — just a bit into quarantine — he stopped eating much. “Oh, the change of seasons” seemed to be the prevailing reason. But he never went back to it. He lost four pounds, went from fat cat to gaunt. He was no longer my “Jabba the Hutt-ass dumpster cat.”
I took him to the vet a few weeks ago. “He’s severely dehydrated,” they said. Then he ripped out the IV and hissed at them. I tried everything to get him to drink or eat again and nothing took. On Tuesday, he was under the couch, foaming at the mouth. I took him to the vet again. He was in critical condition. He didn’t fight the vets this time, and he has fought every vet he’s encountered. After a few tests I realized the road ahead was more pain. I made the call. They let me sit with him for his final moments. It was hard to know he had no pulse yet his eyes were open. I went to In ‘n’ Out playing “Real Death” by Mount Eerie on repeat. I came home and held Slimer who could smell TF all over me.
That night I slept maybe four hours. I woke up and I knew he wasn’t going to be on the other side of the door, curled up in his too-small bed, the way he liked it.
He wasn’t the kindest cat. I wasn’t the best owner. But we shared, at the end of the day, a bond that was hard to break. He was 12. I thought he’d live forever. I thought he’d outlast me. I thought he’d spitefully make the Guinness record for oldest cat as an affront to God.
I can’t say my home is quiet now. Slimer is a loud cat. But my apartment is emptier. Some days he was so annoying I’d yell “I’m going to feed you to Dracula.” But when I got home on Tuesday night I wanted him — the old him — to greet me, to make his motorboat purr. I’ll never hear that noise again except in old videos.
I took photos of his last moments. He was hardly there but I wanted the parting shots, which feels morbid. Instead I like to remember our first photo together, of the kitten who would be my parrot as I walked around the house.
Jams
No other furniture items this week. Here’s a song. “Time” by Tom Waits.