The Cryogenic Cat

                The temperature recently dropped to the single digits and the Son, not yet acclimated to Chicago’s new global warming winters, thinks longingly of the neighbor's ice rink and angrily questions the safety of having schools open on such a dangerously cold day.  I tell him that when I was his age, the temperature in Chicago was actually 27 below zero one January day, and that was without the wind chill.  That was the day that we found Radish, the cat, shivering under a pine tree when we were walking to the bakery a few blocks away for our Saturday morning sweet rolls.  As he was clearly a stray, we brought him home and added him to our collection. 

                The first cat we ever had was Mr. O’Toole.  I’m not sure where he came from, but he lived to be over twenty years old.   He was Nanny’s cat and she used to cook him three delicious meals a day.  At one time, he was so big (his white color made him look even bigger), that Sibling #1’s friend refused to walk past him on the stairs, referring to him as “that bobcat”.  When Nanny could no longer take care of him (i.e. cook him three meals a day), he came to live with us.  After him came a long string of cats found hungry in the streets or alleys: Midnight, Manhattan, Spy, Darwin, Darren, Boris, Star, Mother Cat, George, Pig, Slate, Quinn, Lil, Patrick, and probably more whose names I’ve forgotten. 

                Mother Cat was always considered Sibling #4’s cat.  Mother Cat is the most likely culprit that pissed on the box of donuts that had gotten knocked off the bread chair (the chair next to the kitchen table where the bread was stored - - our version of a bread box) and onto the floor.  I still chuckle when I think back to the day I discovered Sibling #4 eating one of the wet, mushy, urine filled donuts that she had retrieved from the box on the floor.  If you’ve ever smelled cat piss, you’ll wonder how it is that Sibling #4 didn’t notice the extraordinarily strong smell off the donut.  Apparently, gluttony knows no bounds.   

                Star was always my cat.  Not particularly fond of birthdays to begin with, I woke up on my 20^th to find Star lying stiff under a chair.  Star was the first of the Russian Blue cats to live with us.  Boris joined the family shortly after.  He liked to jump up on unsuspecting people’s shoulders and sit there, much like a trained parrot would do.  We always found it hysterical when he'd jump onto someone's shoulders and they would become completely terror stricken.        

  

                Ivan is the latest Russian Blue to live at the family homestead.  And poor Ivan is the source of the family’s most recent misadventure in insanity.   A few days ago, Mother called me sounding breathless and in a panic.  About a week prior, Ivan had gone missing.  Mother called to tell me she had just found Ivan, unable to move its back legs, lying in the basement.  She moved him upstairs to a comfortable spot and called me.  I went over, alternately sighing and cursing the entire drive, as I had both offspring with me due to an early dismissal from school.  The last thing I wanted to do was take a half dead cat to the vet to have it put down with the Son and Daughter in tow.   

                When I arrived at the house on my reluctant angel of mercy mission, Mother seemed to think the cat only needed a shot from the vet.   I went and took a look at the cat and it looked at least three-fourths dead to me.  I saw no blood or signs of trauma so suspected the cat had either had a stroke, or more likely, been gripped in Dick’s large jaws and shaken about for sport.  While Dick leaves all the other cats alone, he reportedly had it in for Ivan.  Perhaps it was because Ivan was still a somewhat feral cat that hadn’t been fully incorporated into the household.  Regardless of how it had happened, it was clear Ivan had come to the end of his nine lives.  

                 Father, however, seemed to think differently as he had diagnosed the cat as “frozen” and said that it just needed to “thaw out”.   Why I am stunned by this explanation is beyond me.  And why I felt the need to point out that, while yes, it was bitterly cold, cats don’t become paralyzed from the cold and then just thaw back to their regular selves, however nice an idea, is also beyond me.  You'd think by now I'd know better.  Anyway, when I tell Mother that the vet would either immediately put the cat down or would run expensive tests and then most likely put the cat down, she replies that no tests were needed as they already knew what was wrong with it.  “It’s frozen.  It only needs a shot.”   At this point, I needed at least a double.    

                “Listen,” I replied, “the only shot that cat’s getting is a final shot.”  The parents wouldn’t hear of it, so I left the half dead cat at the house, painfully aware of how leaving a cat to linger on would negatively impact my karma.   I tried unsuccessfully to comfort myself with the fact that it really didn’t seem to be in any pain.  And then there was the whole issue of transporting a mostly dead cat to the vet for its final journey while fielding endless questions from the Daughter and extremely sensitive Son.  Nonetheless, I felt awful about it.  With a heavy heart, I email the siblings to explain the latest situation and to give them the deep freeze theory.  While it is self-evident, I nonetheless point out to them that the deep freeze theory is just further evidence of the fact that we are all well and truly fucked.  

                Later that day, when the phone rang and I could only hear cackling when I answered it, I thought the Devil was calling from hell to congratulate me on my inaction with the cat.  Turns out it is actually Sibling #3.  In between cackles, she explains how she thinks her husband, who enjoys lying about in a blanket on the couch, frequently gets frozen and it takes him a few days to thaw out.  I am not amused.  Then Sibling #1 attempts to clarify the freeze/thaw cycle by emailing how Mr. Freeze came upon his frosty powers that frequently sent Batman into a deep freeze.  He ends the message by stating that none of this will help the poor cat unless Dick has recently come into possession of a freeze gun.  Sibling #4, ever more practical, chimes in with the suggestion that she takes a few days off work and gets a family discount on an airfare/euthanasia package deal to Brussels, the only EU country where doctor assisted suicide is legal.    

                I am sick thinking that I left a cat to possibly suffer and when I call the parents the next day to say I’m coming to get the cat, mercifully sans children, I am greatly relieved to hear Mother tell me the cat has moved on.  I pass on this information to the siblings, along with my concern over what would happen to the body; the ground is frozen solid.  Sibling #3 promises to go over and move the cat into the garage with Louie until a hole can be dug for it.  Only, when Sibling #3 gets to the house Mother tells her that she was wrong and that the cat isn’t actually dad.  Like Betty White and Eddie Murphy, Ivan’s death had been misreported.  Sibling #3 recommends taking the cat in and having it put down, but again, the parents won’t hear of it.  So, she checks on the cat to be sure it isn’t suffering and finds that it isn’t really moving.  She can’t decide if it is still alive or not.  Sibling #3 calls to update me on all of this and I can’t help but to repeatedly ask her what sort of an idiot can’t tell if a cat is dead? Then she says, cackling again, “Oh, and dad said ‘The cat’s fine!  Just leave it alone.  It’ll be fine!  In a few days I’ll dig a whole and bury it in the yard.’”  

                The next day I go over with a pot of chili that I had made and no one in my house would eat as it was really quite awful.  Spices are not exactly my forte.  Oblivious to the unappetizing taste, Father sat down joyfully to devour half the pot while Mother sat on the couch weeping.  I took that as a good sign that the cat had finally moved on.  I had to be sure, though, so after heating up the chili, I snuck down into the bedroom where I feared I’d find the cat body as I doubted anyone had thought to move it out to the garage.  Sure enough, Ivan lies curled up on a blanket on the floor of the closet.  I crouch down and stare at it and, to my great horror, think I detect a slight rise and fall of its midsection.  I crouch lower and get even closer and stare at the cat, hoping I just imagined the movement.  Having to be sure, I poke a finger at its tail and find it is soft and not at all stiff as it should be.  Shit, shit, shit, I think.  Having no choice, I poke the same finger into the cat’s body and it is not cold and stiff, but only sort of cool to the touch.  Ugh.  I don’t think it is moving so it has either just died or is at least 95% dead.  Chagrined and appalled that I am poking at a possibly dead cat, I see Sibling #3’s point; it is a lot harder than I thought to determine if a cat is deceased.  Regardless, I am not carting it off to the vet now, nor can I move it out to the garage until I know for sure it has passed on and so I leave it there again.  This is getting ridiculous.     

                I pass by my place of employment on the way home.  The night prior, my classroom absolutely reeked of weed.  After suggesting that the student or students in question at least air themselves out before coming to class, I had to invite the off duty cop security guards in to remind the students of the school’s no tolerance policy.  After this whole cat saga, however, I hope that whoever reeked badly enough to smell up the whole room comes back to class reeking just as strongly.  I can only hope that the smell  is potent enough to help me get over my finger poke at a possibly dead cat that, ironically, was unfortunately not as frozen as I'd have liked.