Ellie (1991-2007)

I, like Anna Quindlen's editor in a recent article, hate dead dog stories. Her recent column covered celebrating her living, but old, dog's life. In that article she commented on how his eyes were going, his ears were gone, but his tail lived on in those happy, wagging moments when he smelled food. A funny, warm, bitter sweet story about the life of aging pets.

I have a different story. I had to put my sixteen year old cat down last night. This is a dead cat story.

Elvira (Eillie for short, or Elle Bell, as we came to call her) came to us as a playmate for our then one year old buff tiger, Peanut. The little gray furball was my decision, my choice, and I picked her out with glee from the pet store window at Crossgates mall- the old one by JC Penney's. She was the wild kitten, full of play and life, that was the one jumping and rolling over her litter mates. Taking her home, stroking her eversoft fur, pulling her razor sharp claws out of my hand and letting her gnaw on my finger with those dagger-like kitten teeth, I knew at once that she would give us a run for our money. We named her that night- well, actually a friend of ours suggested Elvira- you know, the plunging neckline, large busted, raven haired hostess of late-night gross out theater- because of her black lips. The year was 1991, we were a year away from marriage, and now we had two kittens to tear up the apartment.

Marriage, two apartments, an aborted attempt to own a sweet Welsh Corgi (both cats hated him, so he went back), two kids, one goofy yellow lab, two houses later, and, finally, the present. Ellie and Peanut lived through it all. They were our time markers, family friends, companions, mousers and general vermin erradicators. And then last night came.

We got home from visiting friends late and went to feed the two. You could tell Ellie was having trouble breathing and was very weak, so I rushed her at 11:30 to the emergency animal hospital. The vet analyzed the x-rays and gave me the heartbreaking and inevitable news: she had a massive tumor that was pushing against her heart and lungs and distending her trachea. She had lost weight (we thought she was just getting old, because she appeared to be eating and drinking and all that other good stuff really well, but apparently it's amazing how animals will fool you.), and was shocky and in distress. The vet said she might make it to Monday to get an ultrasound to confirm her diagnosis, but that it would be a really hard weekend for Ellie, and the vet was still 99% sure she wouldn't make it. I called home, broke the news and allowed the family to grieve (they opted no to come down to say their last goodbyes, preferring to remember her as she was), and tried to steel myself for what would be my final moments with my little cat.

The vet brought her in wrapped in a royal red blanket, very fuzzy and warm. She was still in distress, but seemed bright eyed, and was still yapping at me like she did when she wanted a treat, or a surreptitious bit from the tuna can. The kitty heparin well was still in her front leg from the fluids they had been giving her, and her fur on her chest was matted from the fluid she apparently was trying to expel. Through it all, she never stopped looking at me: not when I cradled her in my arms, not when the vet inserted the needle, and not when I watched the life slip quickly from her beautiful green eyes. I cried. I can't help it, I'm crying now when I write this. I'll never forget that look of trust and love and confusion, and distress that she gave me, and if you've never done this thing, never been there with a pet you have made part of your family, you will probably be spared one of the most excruciating moments of your lfe.

The vet let me stay with her after she died for as long as I needed to. I know it sounds funny because this was only a cat, but I have to say that she was so much more than that. She was a family member, a friend, and she was mine. She may have been close to my wife and kids, but I picked her out, and I'll always believe that she knew in her heart that she and I had a special bond. Waiting for treats at our clandestine evening encounters in the kitchen after she had just been trying to lick the butter on the counter, running through the house with her night crazies, even as little ago as last week, or rubbing on your legs in order to get you to pick her up, she was a character whose personality will be forever etched on my family.

I miss her. I feel bad for Peanut, who will probably soon follow her now that his cohort is gone, and still doesn't really realize that she is gone. We'll cut him some slack, though. He's seventeen (that's 85 in human years). But I do miss her, and, as I rapidly approach 40 and begin to see pieces of my life change, drop off, transform, I have to add her death to the inevitable changes awaiting me in middle age. Things begin to change, and the death of pets is just one of those many changes.

So it goes...

RIP Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Yet another life philosophy heard from, or silenced, as it were. It's kind of funny, really. This idea seems to be front and center in my life right now, and damn it it sucks. The crushing inevitability of it all, the grinding hurt and ultimate sadness of it all...it really hurts. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that the words that I live for (hide behind sometimes) don't help at all when faced with the human reality of life. Words for Dineson can help carry the sorrow, but I guess you have to be able to put them in a story first. Don't know if I'm ready for that, or if I fully believe that it's time to do that. Ah, the eternal optimist. Not too helpful today.

Isak Dineson and Sorrow

Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

Wow...now that's a writer's life philosophy. The real bear is putting it into practice.

When You're Sick, Look to Emily Dickinson

Driving from my doctor's office to the pharmacy to pick up my antibiotics for a lovely upper respiratory infection I picked up in Florida last week, I happened to hear Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. I love the radio spot, probably as much for Keillor's voice as the literature he showcases. Today, he read a poem by Emily Dickinson, and, in the infection weakened state that I've existed in for the last four days (Yeah, I know, guys are wimps. Quit whining. Trust me, I've heard it all, but I have the mucus and infection to prove my point, so there!), the poem hit home. Dickinson, while not a huge favorite of mine, focuses on the abstract in such interesting ways. She seems to have the ability to cut to the core of the matter and reveal it in startling ways.

Nothing new there, no major glimpses of literary criticism, just a cool poem for this raw, rainy, windy day in upstate New York.

I was saddened by the deaths at Virginia Tech., as well, as I'm sure we all were. It seems that this poem resonates within the grief I feel for those families, too. The loss of a child has to be staggering, and is one experience I pray never to experience.

Oh well, here it is:

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Poetry should do that, though, shouldn't it? It should distill the nuances of human experience into a compact form. It should capture the essence of the pain and joy and love that we experience and present it back to us so we can learn from it. Some days, like today, all I have to bring is my heart and all the fields.

And some days that just has to be enough.