"We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more
temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often
breached.
Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way.
We cherish memory as the only certain immortality,
never fully understanding the necessary plan."
~ Irving Townsend
My
cat, Seadog, disappeared last week. We've been together for thirteen
years. In memory terms it is his intense orange fuzziness, his throaty
purr and tendency to sleep on my head, his intimidating size and
penetrating glare, and the way he could hold three six foot veterinary
assistants at bay. It is the fear in the vet's eyes when I brought him
in for his yearly checkup, and the warnings written in his file:
"EXTREMELY FIESTY" and "DANGER. DO NOT APPROACH ALONE." Amazingly, he
accomplished all this with two and a half fangs, having lost the other
one and half while staying alive next to the British Columbia forests,
home to things obviously worse than a mere veterinarian. It is unclear
exactly when he lost his teeth, perhaps it was during the mysterious
events that led him to spend three days fifty feet up a douglas fir
while we were vacationing in Hawaii. Our valiant friend in shining
armor, Kevin, finally coaxed him down using only tuna, a bucket, and a
rope.
That was not the only tree Seadog got stuck in, there was also a cedar, a blue spruce, and a telephone pole.
The
cedar was first. Resulting in my first on-the-brink-of-tears call to
the fire department. The firefighter on the phone was very sympathetic.
He explained that only strict regulations kept him from jumping in the
district's only fire engine and racing to my home to spend an hour
trying to coax a starving seventeen pound ball of claws down a ladder
in order to calm the hysterical woman at the bottom.
"Ma'am," he said patiently, "if he got up there, he'll find a way down. They always do."
At
this point Seadog was still yowling his head off in the tree. I hung up
the phone, got out a can of tuna and opened it. I placed it calmly at
the bottom of the tree and went back inside, not wishing to watch. Sure
enough, about fifteen seconds later I heard a 'thump' like a big bag of
flour falling out of a cedar tree. And there he was eating the tuna.
He would go a long way for tuna. Or cantaloupe, or
papaya, or mushrooms, or bananas, or even cat food if you were
offering. I am not pulling your leg. His mewling hysteria if I began to
chop up mushrooms was at least as great as when he heard the can
opener. And my daughter, Kyna, always shared her bananas with him.
Whenever we moved into a new place he would introduce himself to all
the neighbors as a poor neglected alley cat in desperate need of love
and sustenance. A trick he could pull off easily with his two and a
half teeth, ratty ears and lack of a collar. I tried to keep him in a
collar, but due to his appetite his neck was larger than his head and
they went missing almost as soon as I put them on. The last one I ever
bought was red with a dangly heart engraved with his name. That
afternoon, from the upstairs bathroom window, I saw it lying on the
neighbor's skylight.
Needless to say the folks in our neighborhood bought
his tale of woe hook, line, and sinker. He would eat four bites of his
uber-dry-organic-vegan-diet-cat-food that I gave him for his health,
and head out the door to do his rounds. Occasionally a neighbor would
hold out, someone who had kitties and didn't want to pay to feed any
more (especially a Seadog size one). In circumstances like this Seadog
wouldn't bother with the 'poor me' shtick, he would just barge through
the cat door, claws blazing, and uttering a long low growl, eat all
their cat food.
Soon we had to move again. We packed cat, baby and coffee maker into the car and headed south.
In
the car, each day of the three-day drive down to San Diego we were
treated to a two-hour meowing session. Meows so loud and so intense
that people in other cars on the freeway craned their heads to peer at
what we were murdering in ours. Most of his meowing took place on the
diver's lap, until exhausted and hoarse he'd drop where he was and have
a nap.
There was only one time when he had to be an
inside only cat. We hunted high and low for an apartment that would let
us both a) have a cat, and b) let said cat out to wander. Finally a
condo complex relented and granted Seadog his freedom providing he
didn't bother anyone. Seadog promptly tried to ingratiate himself with
the staff by accompanying them through the show home with prospective
clients, only needing to be carried out if he happened to find a cozy
chair to curl up on during the sales pitch. He also took to patrolling
the perimeter of the complex every night. During his watch he often
found rats lurking in the underbrush and further proving his good
Samaritanship, killed them and brought his trophies home. Or almost. We
lived on the third floor and more often than not Seadog would only make
it to the door directly below us on the second floor before stopping to
eat the good bits.
The Manager's call woke me up. Apparently the
father and his four year old daughter directly downstairs didn't
appreciate the skill and community service that the small skinned rat
on their doormat exemplified.
There were tender moments too. Seadog wasn't all
missing tufts of fur and vet bills. Thirteen years is over a third of
my life. When relationships got tough he was there. When I stressed
about exams he was always happy to sleep on my textbook to give me a
break. He lived through my first marriage and it's dissolution, through
roommates and roomcats, jobs, a second marriage, and the incredibly
lonely first years as a stay at home mom for my daughter. He was a
wonderful comfort. I would hug him crying tears of frustration and
anger and loss, tears for bombed tests and arguments, for an aching
heart or the sweet release of relief, for things that brought me joy
and pain, often at the same time. Soft against my face, he would try to
lick my hair. Which was always too long for him to properly groom, so
he would resort to trying to chew the excess off, like a stubborn patch
of fur. I would kiss his head and he would rest it on my shoulder and
heave a big shuddering sigh of a purr and through my tears I would
smile. He was my solace when it seemed to hurt the most and his
endearing presence offered hope, because if this world could contain
something as wonderful as him, it couldn't be all bad.
And now, when I face my deepest loss and the
hurt is at times unbearable, my source of comfort and unconditional
hope is gone. I feel him curl up around my head at night only to
realize it is just the curve of the pillow and my chest tightens and it
is hard to breathe for a while. But through the ache and tears, the
trees and the vet bills, I recognize that I would do it over again in a
heartbeat. If a little orange ball of fuzz appeared on my doorstep I
would welcome it with open arms, because that is what Seadog taught me,
to love unconditionally, to jump into that abyss with both feet and
never look back, because while the bottom may hurt, the fall will be
sublime.
To Seadog, my best friend.
