The Cats of My Life: Bobo

Photo Copyright: victoryachasegoestotherapy.blogspot.com

In terms of my journey, this is the last cat. She was a foster that I didn’t want. I had been searching for something after Penny died and got in touch with a local rescue group to help them. Basically, what I wanted to do was sit with them during the adoption events, take photographs for the website, etc.

This guy I met ended up being a manipulative bastard, and I was an easy mark. He told me of how many cats were dying in his cramped apartment, how they needed someplace else to stay – just for a few months. Some place like. . my apartment After a month or so of guilt trips I relented, and he brought over two not one cat—and the trouble began.

That first night Bobo shredded the bottom of my box spring and climbed in. Now, this was the first bed I ever bought. This was the first bed that was purely MY bed, not a hand me down, not my mother’s old bed, not an air bed, not a futon. I was livid, I had to get the cat out (ever try sleeping with an animal climbing around inside your mattress?) then duct tape the box spring.

“When are you going to adopt her out” was a common phrase with me, but he didn’t even bring her down to show her on weekends, where I was still helping out. Then, I think as he realized my guilt associated with the animals he began to delve deeper, telling me how all his money is spent solely for the good of the felines, and how the money I spent on my camera (which I was using to take photos of the cats then edit for the website) should have been given to him instead, as he wouldn’t be as frivolous as I obviously was. Luckily, I saw that as a warning sign and stopped helping him. Up to that point I had been donating a lot of time and energy, after that, I just wanted the cats out.

Then he admitted it was his tactic, to get people to foster but with no intention of adopting them to someone else. “After a while people get used to the cats and generally keep them,” he told me. So I figured, fine, I’ll keep them then send them to another adoption agency and told him I’d adopt them. “Then you owe me $200” he told me. “What the F*ck” was my reply. I’d given tons of time and energy, these animals were supposed to have already been wormed and yet the first week worms crawled out of one’s rear end (in full view of me, and on me) and I had to pay for worming, leukemia testing, etc., to the tune of over $300 already. Plus, the contract stated he could sue me if I got rid of the animal (like the recent Ellen debacle) and he had such a big ego, he would do it.

One of the cats then got adopted, but Bobo was tougher. She was unstable. She’d be sweet and cute and cuddly, getting up on my lap, and then turn and bite me or scratch me. She liked to snuggle up in my armpit at night, but half way through she’d grab my arm and kick, and the scars still aren’t fully faded. This was the cat that drove me over the edge.

I had her for over a year, I was trying to anticipate her moods. What did I do that caused her to act out? I bought her a cat condo, she took my favorite silk pillow as her bed, she was fed only organic cat food. I tried everything, but her mood would shift without provocation. Things would be good for a day or two, and then she'd attack me again. It got to the point where I’d just look at her and cry. For three days straight I cried, even missing work.

And that’s when it hit me – She was just like my mother, and I needed help. That’s when I started asking around for a psychiatrist and told the guy to get her out of my house that weekend (I also called other shelters, but all were full). That’s when I decided “screw it, I’m being railroaded and manipulated by a cat and an ass with a God complex that just uses other people to deify himself as some savior. I need to put myself first.”

Bobo was the bottom I reached before realizing I needed to find that rope to climb back up and find myself. That was when I started therapy.

And the first thing the therapist said?

“Geez, do I really need to tell you that she was your mother?”

Nope, I had figured it out, and that’s why I called for help.

The Cats of My Life: Einstein

One year when I was in college my brother tried to get a job, and worked at a veterinarian’s office. I think he was just one of the animal caretakers there; we weren’t really talking that much then. I heard the stories though – that he was attacked by a pitbull and needed stitches in his neck, then a couple weeks later was bit by a cat that had one of those institutionalized bacteria’s and a black streak went up his arm and to his heart.

Out of this came a cat – Einstein. He was one of the donor cats and, as my brother’s story goes, “he was in a cage so small he couldn’t stand up straight and they were going to kill him because they couldn’t find any good veins anymore.”

Indeed, he walked with a stoop, a bit of the hunchback action going on, and kept his claws out at all times, like he thought he needed them for traction. When you pet him, you could feel the scabs across his wiry frame.

But he was so happy, always happy. That sweet thing loved human company and was in whatever lap could be found. He purred whenever anyone entered the room and was just so content with his life. I think he drooled too, I don’t remember. Somewhere in my life was a cat that drooled when he was happy. Wait, it was Einstein as he had few teeth left.

When my brother moved out he took Einstein with him, as it was his rescue. I remember asking about him later. My brother told me that he had a horrible death- that he just yowled and yowled as another cat attacked him and punctured his lung. I really don’t believe that story, by that time my brother was saying what he could to hurt me, and he knew I cared for our little rescue cat. I also don’t like to think of the smile he had when he told me this story, or that he would enjoy the poor cat’s pain as much as he enjoyed telling me about it.

Instead, I like to think that Einstein passed away quietly, after a couple years of peace and love outside his cage.

The Cats of My Life: Penny

After her death, I went to two different therapists. One, a grief counselor specializing in the human/animal bond and the other one of the leaders in interpersonal therapy who dealt mostly with dysthymia (constant low-grade depression). Both agreed: She was my real mother.

I started a charity drive to help save her life, as when her cancer returned I was told it would be $1,000 a session of radiation therapy. I had already spent all my savings to have the first tumours removed, and that was supposed to be all that was needed.

Many celebrities sent me items in support, I was able to raise about $500, but by then it was obvious God was calling his favorite angel home. I found this on the way to work a couple days before the end:

There are so many stories. Stories of how my mother did try to kill her too.

"Honey, your cat fell off the balcony!" she called one day.

"How?" I asked.

"I don't know, I think the wind knocked the door open, lifted her up and over the edge. I heard scratching, and there she was falling down."

But God wouldn't let her go until I was ready, even though I still sometimes feel like I never could be ready for her to leave.

Other stories involve her wanting to be near me so much that she'd crawl into the bathtub with me, purring as the water wicked up her fur.

When my mother or that 'bad friend' R. would yell at me, Penny would get inbetween us and start just screaming her head off at the other person.

In that end, that's the memory. The cancer is there, but she was love. She was understanding. She was constant devotion and protection. She stayed up all night to keep the demons at bay so I could sleep. When my alarm went off in the morning, after our joint constitutional (yes, she always went to the bathroom the same time as I) she'd curl up on my pillow. She stayed in the doorways and fought back the shadows that lurk there and try to escape. She made me stronger.

And she fought valiantly to stay with me as long as possible, even as her body failed her mind never did. She'd stare up at me with her emerald eyes and crawl into my lap. The vets had never seen anything like it, no matter how many tumors she had (and they spread incredibly fast, even a doctor in Italy was interested because it just wasn't seen before) she still purred, wanted to be held, to love. After all, it was only her flesh that was dying, not her soul. And while the vets said that cats get angry and hide when they are sick, Penny never did. Because she was my angel. When we went to the vet that last time, she just lay her head in my palm and didn't fight. She purred, comforted by my touch. This, even though the vet had trouble finding a vein because of the tumours. She was going home, and knew that I was safe and she had done her duty.

Warning: This video may be disturbing to some. It's of one of her last days.

(Note to David: This is one of the posts I have had a lot of trouble pulling together.)

The Trip - Part One

Taken by Wing-Chi Poon on 19th December 2004

I think I mentioned that as my brother and I were spending our days selling everything we owned at the Park and Swap we really didn’t realize the truth behind what was happening. We were young, and we were spending time with our mother, and we were ingesting a hell of a lot of sugar.

The sad part was our animals. I had a rabbit still (my brother’s had died earlier) and she went to a neighbor I think. I liked her, she was big and fluffy. When we first got her we were warned she was a cat killer, but we kept her (mostly) in her hutch. I think my father made the hutch. I remember this one thunderstorm where we had to take the rabbits into our rooms. My brother’s rabbit left so many ‘presents’ all around the room, and mine (Snuffy, named after my favorite Sesame Street character) left only one. She was a good rabbit.

The turtles went to someone, I don’t remember. We also had fish. The birds had died long ago, as had the dog (another case of my mom taking an animal to the pound for some reason of the other). The only animal we were going to take was Georgie. One bi-polar mother, two kids, and a cat in a car for two weeks as they traveled across the United States. Such a recipe for excitement.

My brother had this giant stuffed pink snake, I still remember it. I used to sit in the center of its coils. My brother offered to trade it to me for batteries, and I agreed imagining myself sitting safe in its coils in the back seat of the car. Of course that night my mother tossed it out, and my brother stood by laughing. It was too big to bring in the car, and he had been warned earlier. Cheeky bugger just got free batteries.

A lot of stuff was tossed. The day we left, I clung to my closet door looking around my empty yellow room and cried so hard. My mother told me it was too late, I had agreed. She told me not to cry, I had even helped sell off everything. I don’t think she had the capacity to understand that I didn’t really know what forever meant, what leaving meant. I would never see my friends again, they were moving soon and we didn’t have a house or address at all, just the car cruising on the highways.

The car was once a burgundy red, but the Arizona sun had faded it. It had a pretty big trunk. The cat was in the back seat, I think I spent most of the time sleeping in the back seat too. I remember there were somethings we forgot:

My mothers new swimsuit, and it was the first one she bought that fit her in years.

The porta potty that consisted of some metal contraption and blue bags.

Sunday Special: Icanhascheezburger

I don't know when I first discovered the lol cats. Simply put, they are silly pictures of animals with captions in haxor language (basically, bad spelling). The captions are often hilarious. And the biggest repository of lol cat images is I Can Has Cheezburger. There you can surf page after page of photos and chuckle with delight, though some do have me laughing out loud.







I can spend more than a day just going through all the images. And hope it helps to make your Sunday Special.

If you have a site you think would make Sunday Special, please leave me a link. This is something I'd like to continue each Sunday. Be it filled with cuteness, happiness, awesome artwork, or just plain positive energy feel free to let me know! Anything that would be of interest on a lazy hazy Sunday morning is up for review.

Happy Sunday!

The Cats of My Life: Cleo

Cleo was a white cat with gray spots. The white on her forehead happened to form the first initial of my mother’s name, so she loved that. We had been mourning the loss of Yentl for a while and, except for One-Day Kitty hadn’t had much feline companionship. A friend of my mother told her how her neighbor was going to throw out a cat she got for a valentines gift. So, instead, we took her in.

Cleo was skittish at first. We were informed that the person who had her hadn’t fed her so all Cleo had eaten was what she could steal around the house. She was very smart and able to get into all sorts of food which she’d hide in corners and under rugs throughout the house. We named her Cleopatra because when we first got her she was sleek and long with big ears and that perfect cat face with sharp cheekbones and she looked every bit like a Pharaoh’s dream cat.

Even after Cleo became fat with our open feline food policy she still hid things around the apartment. We’d be walking and hear a ‘crunch’ and see nothing under our feet, but a closer examination would reveal a bump in the rug and a cracker underneath it. Once it was to the point where she would even raid the popcorn bowl taking up kernels in her cheeks as if she was a chipmunk.

We had Cleo spade through a clinic and she never looked the same afterwards, as her stomach just kind of hung.

Cleo had this huge green eyes that were just so full of life and energy and inquisitiveness. She loved to nurture things (like my stuffed bear) and would sit there grooming it until it was sopping wet. She licked the hair off of every fake mouse we gave her. She would also come up and pet you and she loved stroking her paws through my long hair. However, her true love was my brother. Never have I seen such devotion to him.

My mother and I joked how sickening it was. Cleo would follow him around like a lovesick teen and would start to cry if a door closed between them. Whenever he had a girlfriend over Cleo would stay in between the two of them and just glare with the evilest of cat eyes at the poor thing until she left. Then, to show my brother her displeasure she would turn her back on him the rest of the evening. Although, she always forgave him by bedtime and still curled up next to him.

One of Cleo’s favorite foods was cinnamon donuts. Whenever we left donuts on the counter we’d see nibbles taken out of the cinnamon sugared donuts, or sometimes a trail of cinnamon dust that led to her latest spot to hide food. These were also my brother’s favorite donut.

My brother used to love seeing how much he could do to Cleo. For example, he’d pick her up and wrap her around his neck like a mink stole. Then he’d drape her down his legs by her hind legs and all the while she’d just purr so loud the neighbors could probably hear.
She smiled too, this huge grin came on her face when she saw my brother.

Cleo was a cat ruled by her passions. She loved my brother, and she loved Whiskas cat treats. She would attack you if she even saw the can and would stretch up your leg to reach for them. She was very long and would pass my hip when she fully extended. However, if you didn’t give her the treat in time she would scale you with her mighty claws to get it. The joke was to hide them in a family members pocket or drop the treats down each others shirts as Cleo would be on you like a piranha.

The funny thing about Cleo was, as much as she adored my brother, she really just loved all men. I recall a time when the plumber came over and we heard him yelling for help from under the sink. Cleo had gone and lay down across his hands and he was afraid to move her. She ‘presented’ herself to many a man that came through the house. Women, she tolerated only if they didn’t take time away from HER men.

After about two years with Cleo my mother took in Penny. Penny was a lot scrappier a cat but Cleo still got to lick and groom her and we’d often find them curled up together, despite earlier fights. Penny did love to bug her ‘big sister’ though, and a primary way was to take away her fake mice and rip off the fur. I’ll never forget the time that Penny was zooming through the house while Cleo was licking her new mouse. Cleo saw her coming and quickly shoved the mouse under her body and sat on it. Penny sniffed around her a bit but, not seeing the mouse, left her alone.

As mentioned, Penny liked a good fight or two. But Cleo learned quickly how to dominate her. Whenever Penny charged Cleo would get up on her hind legs and grab Penny with her front paws, quickly flipping her over. With each charge Cleo would just turn her like a pro wrestler until Penny got the hint and figured out another way to torment her. One of these involved jumping off the fridge on Cleo’s head. But, as Penny had an incredibly long tail to Cleo’s short stubby one, Cleo took to standing on chairs and biting the tip of Penny’s tail as she sauntered by. However, once the fights were over they’d be cleaning each other’s ears and nestled together like a feline yin-yang symbol.

Cleo waved to you from the window. I loved that. Whenever we left in the morning she’d sit in the window and if you waved to her, her little dainty paw would go up patting the window in her feline wave.

Because my mother loved Cleo so much she got her regular shots. Penny (as she became my cat) did not. Unfortunately, this show of love was the downfall for our wonderful sprite. Feline Injection Site Sarcoma. They didn’t call it that back then, but that’s what it was. Shots were administered at the clinic by pulling up the scruff of the neck and jabbing in the needle, and that’s where the tumor started. I remember how sad my brother was the first time he felt it, but we couldn’t really afford any extra vet care and my mother figured it would go away. But it didn’t take long before the thing was the size of a fist and Cleo couldn’t even hold her head upright. My brother cried and screamed at my mother for not protecting her. Cleo was his true love, the unconditional love that he needed and he wasn’t ready to let her go. Soon the inevitable came and Cleo was put to sleep. I think my brother buried her at his current girlfriend’s house, though I’m not sure. I wasn’t party to her last rites.

I felt sad for my sweet Penny too. For about a week after Cleo passed she went meowing through the house searching every nook and cranny for the only other cat she’d known, and coming up empty. I didn’t have an answer to her inquiries as I, too, didn’t know what happened with the body.

picture taken from encylcopedia brittanica online.

Sunday Special

Viral Cuteness! How can you not love it? These images have been seen on so many sites, it's darn near impossible to find the original source. But darn if they aren't sweet and bring a smile to my face. Sunday smiles are great, so here's a couple more:

Now, for something else I'd like to add - a Sunday Special Site. One that, if you want something uplifting or cute or happy to read and look at, will give it to you in spades.

Today I present - Amel's Realm. I cannot help but smile each and every time I visit her site or read one of her comments on mine. Amel is the personification of positive energy. I love her Three Beautiful Things (and that they often go ABOVE the #3). But it's not just fluff, no siree, as she also tackles questions that come up in her daily life such as questioning cross-gender relationships. All is done with raw energetic honesty and a smile.

So if you want a special place to go online on Sunday's - let me suggest you visit Amel's Realm.

Now, if you have a site you think would make Sunday Special, please leave me a link. This is something I'd like to continue each Sunday. Be it filled with cuteness, happiness, awesome artwork, or just plain positive energy feel free to let me know! Anything that would be of interest on a lazy hazy Sunday morning is up for review.

Happy Sunday!

(Now, back to studying for me.)

The Cats Of My Life: Yentl

Picture from commons.wikimedia.org

After Georgie died my mother was adrift without an anchor. She had had that cat for so much of her life. It was a devastating blow. But, we were in touch with a woman my mother at one time said was her sister, then later said wasn’t. That woman had seven outdoor cats and all gave birth at the same time. Suddenly, her house was my dream, a house filled with cute little fuzzballs.

My brother and I begged our mother to bring us there as often as possible. We helped name them all and loved watching feeding time when the floor of the kitchen became a writhing mass of kittens. My brother and I were very protective of the kittens and when potential adopters came made sure they weren’t researchers (yes, one admitted to wanting the kitten for a research project.) From the litter my mother picked one curious black cat to be her next companion. This is why she said she liked him:

“He was on my lap playing, and then suddenly he just shot off! I didn’t know where he went but found him in the litter box. He’s very clean and held it in until the last possible minute because he wanted to be with me.”

At the time, my mother thought Barbara Streisand was the best thing ever, hence the name.

That cat did love my mother with absolute blind devotion. And he didn’t continue running to the bathroom as he had when he was a kitten. Often times my mother complained of waking up with the cat still nestled in her armpit, and poop extruding from his behind. On multiple occasions he chose her warmth over the litter box. But I think she adored it. What more could she want then such love? Her children couldn’t give her that. As much as we tried we still had free will and she still saw us as hiding things from her, as not trusting or loving her as much as she deserved. After all, we wouldn’t soil ourselves just to remain in her presence.

My mother had gotten a leash to try and train him – as he was an outdoors cat – but it never worked. However, if she flicked the leash back and forth across the rug in an arc, he would jump after it often doing backflips in the process. Oh how her laughter would echo through the apartment as she flipped the leash across the floor. She did this until tears streamed down her face and Yentl, tired, curled up in her lap and fell asleep.

Yentl was a sleek black cat with sunflower yellow eyes. My brother and I joked about him seeing his ‘girlfriends’ around the block. There was the sweet tabby across the street and a calico a few doors down.

At the time we lived on a hill on the second floor of a two story building. Our landlord was old world Italian and kept a key to the place. On more than one occasion we came home to find evidence that she’d been there – and usually the evidence was the cat was let out. I don’t think she was a fan of black cats.

Our downstairs neighbor, well, I only remember my mother calling them ‘white trash’ as they constantly had cars up on cement blocks. They weren’t too fond of us, but my mother was known for insulting people loudly. Not the smartest thing to do.

The thing my brother seemed most fascinated about with Yentl was that despite the deep midnight black of his coat, he had the pinkest little behind. My brother always joked that Yentl had hemorrhoids. It was such a pervading joke, that when I attempted to sew as my grandmother did (but without patterns or a sewing machine) I made a little Yentl doll. It was simple, just cat shaped pieces sewn together. But on the back was a bright pink piece of fabric and when you pulled a thread, it wrinkled and bunched together and made my brother laugh as he repeated, ‘hemorrhoid’ over and over.

As Yentl was an outdoors cat he did get fleas. I remember watching my mother give him flea dip. I was horrified as the fleas ran to his eyes and ears to get away from the water and chemicals.

Yentl always knew when my mother was coming home from work and would run to the door meowing. Thus, when he wasn’t at the door as my mom pulled out of the driveway one night we were worried. I don’t even remember how we found him, just that he was bloody. Very bloody. In searching for something to wrap him in my mother grabbed my coat. My pink coat. My only coat. A coat that we couldn’t afford to replace. There is still some anger over the fact that I had to go to school in a coat with his blood stains on them after this.

But at that time, it was extreme emergency. We wrapped him and held him in the back of the car as my mother somehow drove to the vets amid tears. While driving she concocted the story of what happened to Yentl. “It was those white trash neighbors of ours,” she seethed, “they knew he was our cat and that’s why they hit him with the car.” I forget where she got that idea, but it’s what we believed.

Yentl was rushed into surgery and within a few hours we were told that his jaw was broken and would be wired. The vet went over instructions with my mother and sent us all home. We could not visit him as he still had a lot of work to be done.

The next morning came the call. It was believed that a blood clot moved into his lungs. Either way, he was dead. There would be no more little black cat to poop in my mother’s bed, or make her laugh as he jumped after a leash, or run to greet her when she came home. All that remained was the blood on my jacket.

Yentl was buried in our ‘aunts’ backyard. Or maybe it was our backyard. I think it was ours. Shortly afterwards my brother began burying animal after animal in the yard. He made crosses from sticks and branches and, for Yentl, out of bricks he found. Although he insisted he found the animals already dead, we weren’t entirely sure if that was true.

Sunday Special

On occasion I get the urge to paint. I painted this many years ago and always loved the way it came out.

At the time, I was living with a roommate and it was my first post-college year in New York. My roommate's boss had given her a set of three stacking tables. They were just cheap little things that showed the abuse he had given them. So she gave them to me to see if I could fix them up stating she'd throw them out otherwise.

The other two looked fine with just a little contact paper and cleaning. I don't know what possessed me to paint this one, but like the results. It's easily one of the better paintings I've done.

The Cats Of My Life: One Day Cat

Photo Copyright http://www.bojesphob.com/

That’s what I call the cat in my mind – one day cat. He (or she, I don’t know) was allowed in the house for one day after our cat, who I hadn’t talked about yet, died.

The cat that passed was the one my mother got after Georgie died. She loved the cat and he loved her. But then he was hit by a car. I still remember how upset I was that he was hit – and that my mother decided my coat was the one to wrap him up in as he coughed up blood on the way to the vets office. We thought he was going to live, but alas, he did not.

After he died everyone was distraught. We had only had him for two years, he was so young. Outside was this white cat with a deformed ear that was always friendly. I wanted to keep him – we were now catless anyway. Remembering how my mother woke up every morning with either Georgie or our last cat, she relented.

One Day Cat was sweet – and curled up next to me keeping me warm all night. S/he followed me everywhere in the house and I felt so loved.

The next morning my mother threw the cat back on the street saying that she heard it was a neighbor’s cat and was being looked for. I doubt it, I always saw the kitty on the street.

So then she said the cat was dirty and diseased.

But I liked One Day Cat. I was comforted that night.

The Cats of My Life: Allie

I think I was in sixth grade when I got Allie. It was a big deal. Our previous cat (who I haven’t talked about yet) had died and I’m not sure if we had gotten Cleo yet or not. My mother had a friend at work who ran a rescue group, and for the first time I was to go and pick out a cat for me.

The place was just an apartment overcrowded with cats of every color. I do remember there was this big orange one my mother wanted, but I wasn’t sure, there were just so many! Then this big grey tabby tomcat jumped on a garbage can and called me over. He was the one. Being uncreative in the naming department at the time, he became “Allie” because he was an Alley cat.

When we took him home it turns out he was sick, so he had to stay in my room for a while. At the time I had a ‘big sister’ through the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. We did somethings, but for the post part she just brought me stuff back from her travels, a lot of cat items because at the time my motto was “Animals are my favorite people.” One of the items that she had brought me from Italy was a hand-painted scarf that I used on top of my dresser. Of course, that was Allie’s favorite spot to lie as he drooled out his illness. All the inks ran.

Allie was a big boy, and just a glorious cat. My brother commented on how scared he was all the time. But our house wasn’t exactly quiet. I used to have this one Polaroid picture of Allie curled up in a ball surrounded by my dolls. He was just so beautiful.

Sometime later Allie had urinary blockage and was in the hospital. When he returned I read up on ash and magnesium and how to take care of him so the crystals didn’t build up.

I don’t have any pictures of Allie anymore, I don’t know what happened to them. The only ones I even remember is the one I mentioned above and one where he was, I think, in-between the screen door and main door. My brother used to lock him out on the back porch because Allie would jump up through the hole in the screen door and balance to get our attention.

Should I warn you now, this doesn’t have a happy ending? There is a lot I blank out on about Allie and the memory I do have was the first one I worked on with my current doctor. It’s called ‘Immersion Therapy’ and I have to close my eyes and keep going back into the memory and telling it and connecting to all the emotions and that whole unification process I talked about. I also have to recognize the situation and that what happened wasn’t my fault.

I think there was something to do with cat litter. There is a vague recollection of my mother throwing the litter box into my room, and I put up my hands or feet to deflect it and it spills all over. She’s yelling at me, screaming. I don’t even see her, just the darkness that is her in my memory and those piercing grey-blue thundercloud eyes. She’s raging. Something about not doing my chores, not cleaning the litter box, not being responsible.

The next part I remember is trying to hide Allie and myself. She had threatened to take him away, said I couldn’t take care of him. I know I could take care of him; I already had through two illnesses. But my mother is claiming I don’t deserve the cat.

In the next part I remember I’m screaming, crying. She has taken Allie away, said she was bringing him to the pound to teach me a lesson. I don’t let up all night. How could she do that? How could she take away my animal, one she made such a show of me getting, for whatever her reasoning was? How could she so callously strip me of some living thing I loved?

The next day she says that because I’m being such a brat and to shut me up she’ll go get him back. Nothing about her feeling guilty for what she’s done. I just want her to understand how much she hurt me. That she, the mother, has caused me great pain. When she returns she tells me that he is dead. “They got a lot of animals in that night and put him to sleep,” she tells me. “He was just so frightened they didn’t think he’d do well. You know, if you hadn’t tried to hide him and scared him even more he’d probably be alive right now.” She continues by saying that now we can’t get another cat from the shelter because she has been added to the database of people who bring their pets in.

That was the part that hurt me for so many years – she blamed me. If I hadn’t of tried to hide him, he’d be alive. She shifted all of the blame on me. For so long I carried that burden. If I hadn’t have chosen him but gone with the orange cat, Allie would have lived a longer and happier life. Maybe the orange cat would have died in his place, maybe not. If I had just done the chores my mother told me too, if I had acquiesced, if I hadn’t tried to hide him, if, if, if. They swarmed around.

Bottom line though is she killed my cat and took the coward’s way out by shifting the blame to me, a 12-year old girl, her daughter. Instead of taking responsibility for hurting her children and now, taking a life, she passed the buck and rationalized how she was in the right and everyone else was wrong and ‘caused things to happen’ or ‘caused her to do things.’

How dare she. How dare she take a life that I loved, destroy it, and blame me. It’s taken a while to get to the point where I can say it with conviction, and I’d love to add a few curse words in here, but how dare she ever do such a thing. I think that was a major turning point for me. After Allie died I remember being filled with rage toward everyone. I hated so much. The love in my life was so horrifically taken away and I just blamed myself. However, I think I did begin to realize, somewhere within me, that there was no chance of my mother redeeming herself in my eyes. It started me down the road to total disgust with her, a road that has helped me separate myself from her actions and from believing I could ever be like that monster.

Picture from: http://www.allcrossstitch.co.uk

The Cats of My Life: Georgie

Cats paid a huge role in my development. In fact, the grief therapist I went too after my little tuxedo babe died said it was unusual, but it sounded like the cat was my mother. The therapist I had afterward agreed - Penny showed me love and raised me. Some of the Tall Tales of America have people raised by wolves but no, I was raised by an eleven pound former street cat named Penny.

However, it’s not time for her story yet.

Georgie was a tortoiseshell kitty. This means she was a mishmash of dull oranges, greys and black with no white whatsoever. My mother had the cat since she was nineteen and it was a connection to not just her past life without children, but to her ex-husband, her single life, her days as a dog breeder. From the beginning of time for me there was Georgie as a loved member of the family, but to hear my mother’s story, that’s not the way it started.

“I hated cats,” she said. “I raised German Shepherds. They are great dogs, so intelligent. They can climb fences you know?” she’d ask waiting for my brother and I to nod in shared knowledge. “I had to put fences six feet up with a roof. And then those dogs, they learned how to dig under it! So I had to put the fences deep into the earth too!” She’d chuckle after that, a tear streaming down her face. It wasn’t that funny, I think it was a tear of loss for her dogs. They behaved better than children, that was something else she always said.

“The trouble is, when you have so many dogs, you get rats.” She’d continue. “So I had to get rid of the rats, so I found Georgie. She was such an ugly cat. No pattern, just splotches. I took her in – she could eat the rats. That was what she was there for. I never even fed her.”

At that point we’d look at Georgie who was always wherever my mother was. The cat looked up at her with eyes glazed in love, my mom looked down with wistfulness and devotion. She adored the cat and we all knew it, she did everything for that cat. There were days we wished she would touch us as gently as she did Georgie.

“She was good, that one. A hunter. She knew how to kill and kept the rats out. And I don’t know how, but somewhere along the line she started coming into the house. I remember one night, your father and I were in bed sleeping and Georgie comes in, dragging something on the bed. Lays it right on my feet. She’s sitting there smiling and I feel the wet. I shoot straight up and look down at my feet – it’s a dead rabbit. I start screaming. But now I know it was love. She killed it for me, and I responded wrong.”

All through our childhood there was Georgie. There were the times I (unsuccessfully) tried to give her a bath. There were times she’d come in from the outdoors with a smile on her face and a feather on her whisker and outside I’d find just the bones of a bird. I remember finding the heart once, asking my mother what it was. How my mother would smile. “It must have flown into her open mouth,” she’d chuckle, “Georgie’s too fat to catch a bird nowadays!”

When we packed up and moved cross country my mother drove and we stayed at campgrounds. In the car were the three of us and Georgie. Wherever we went, there she was. It was a constant.

My mother often joked that Georgie was my first word. I’d believe it. As much as that cat loved my mom, she was great around us kids. I don’t remember her scratching me at all, there are no trauma stories from her. In fact, for the most part when Georgie was around or in my mom’s lap my mother was calm.

I remember once, when my family was still together, we were having a nice breakfast. My father had made scrambled eggs. Suddenly, with a fork full in my mouth, I had to sneeze. I turned just in time and sneezed, eggs flew out in a nice spray. Georgie was walking by the stove. As she ran out of the room we all laughed at the cat outline done in scrambled eggs against the stove.

My mother had gotten the cat when she was nineteen, and had Georgie for nineteen years. She had Georgie through two husbands, two children, and three different states. I remember when Georgie first started to get sick. She walked around the house yowling and bumping into things. The vetinarian said she had gone blind. We had to keep the house super clean after that, but never seemed to get it clean enough. It was three people in a small apartment to begin with. Then one day I came home and found Georgie sleeping in a pan of grease on top of the stove. I was terrified. We learned that she had the equivalent of Alzheimers. She was seeking warmth and couldn’t tell the wet. If she had flicked her tail into the pilot light there would have been an end to her, as well as our little place we tried to call home. The vet suggested. . . .

My mother cried. As I looked into her eyes it seemed like there was an infinite depth as big reflective tears pooled and fell down her reddening cheeks. Georgie was a living chronicle of her life and her pain. She embodied the good times and the bad. She was her constant companion and the one who gave her the unconditional life she craved.

We planned one last day. It was sunny and the daffodils were in bloom. My mother took Georgie outside to roam in the grass. She lay in the sun, raised her fuzzy muzzle to the sky and smiled. The next day was the end. I don’t remember where she was buried. No one in our family believed in cremation of animals. In Arizona we had a little spot in our yard where our pets were buried. But we were in New York now. I think she ended up in the backyard of my mom’s foster sister, someone we later never spoke to again.

Shadows boldly stepped out into the light after Georgie died.

Picture taken from:
http://cats.about.com/od/catspicturecalendar/ig/Tortoiseshell/Pif.htm