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 20th 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.
