The cat is dead
With my crooked fingers I write:I am not reconciled.From Karen Gershon's painful "Prognosis" (Collected Poems) But what if you just don'tLet me tell you a (long) story: one that I thought had nothing to do with today but does and indeed has everything to do with tomorrow. ⏳ I was at a party with several women I didn't know. Inevitably the subject of cats came up. I once had two cats. Two kitty brothers: Snoop and Oskar. In my old life. In my old house. I remember when I first brought them home, I immediately regretted it. What am I gonna do when they die? I was nearly furious with how much I loved them. I imagined dealing with their inescapable death through a tasteful taxidermy—setting them next to the banister they loved to scratch, each a stair apart, cascading down towards the living room as if simply pausing in a sun spot. A place where I could still see them, still say hello to them every morning. Keep them with me. If you held off from judging me for the whole taxidermy thing, I'm here to challenge your open-heartedness once again! There came a point where I needed to re-home my cats. Meaning: give them up. Remove them from the comfort of their main guardian who had been furious with love for them and promised to be with them until they died and then some. It was a kind of cruelty and brutality that I could only ever wield in that moment because the ship of my life had wrecked and everyone was gonna drown if I didn't make some hard choices. I didn't look too hard or too closely at anything during this time. I didn't let any feelings creep into my movements. I just put myself on autopilot and started cleaning up the wreckage. I found the cats—or rather, my friends helped me find—the perfect new family and perfect new home. Truly, it was a blessing and then it became frightfully easy for me to say out loud the kind of thing that confuses criminality for mercy: they wound up with a much better situation than I could ever provide for them. ⏭️ Fast forward to the present. I'm at the party with women. The shortened story of Snoop and Oskar comes up. I jokingly yell out, "they're probably dead by now!" because jokes are how I Time passes and I forget about cats, I forget about avoided grief, and I just start wolfing down appetizers because I also accidentally took mushrooms disguised as chocolate candies as soon as I walked into this party with women. Suddenly, my friend shouts out loudly above the din of conversation, "Oskar is thriving!" and hands me the phone with a text message thread, beaming her gorgeous smile. Oskar is thriving? Oskar is thriving, I think to myself as my mind starts to run in overtime. Oskar was always the wildly needy brother who clung to me. So great to hear that he was thriving! But wait. There were two cats. I read the bottom of the text thread. It says: >One of them is. Oskar is thriving. I scroll up searching for context. One of what now? The question my friend had texted was: >Kristy wants to know if the cats are still alive. One of them is. Oskar is thriving. It takes a couple of beats but I get it quickly. And publicly. Snoop is dead. I start to sob like I haven't sobbed in ages. A muffled, snotty SNOOP IS DEEEEAD comes out of my body and I start to hear the chorus of "awwwwws" from the crowd surrounding me. ⌛️ Now, I can tell you that my little joke of the cats are probably dead was both a defense mechanism and a recognition that in all likelihood, my cats were not going to live forever and I would not, in fact, be there to say goodbye. I didn't get to say goodbye to my old house either. Or my old life. It just kind of got stuffed into a garbage bag. Removed. In a deeeeeep part of my body, I knew all of this and that part had been begging to come out for years. A bit awkward for me to have it released at a party with women, most of whom I didn't know. All of whom (especially my dear friend who delivered the news) seemed to instantly understand that my profuse was one of loss. Even if long delayed. And so foolishly unexpected. It's like hiding a big bill under a stack of papers on the counter, pretending it will go away. One day, all debts must be paid. I think there's a part two coming to this story. In fact, I feel a turn coming, I'm just not ready to look at which way it'll take me. But yes, this stuff is still happening: |
