Alecto's Ophelia

On being catless

Catless is just weird, weird, weird. I’ve had a cat since I was four years old. There may have been a month or two after I left home before I got another but I’ve always had at least one. My daughter, all her life.

 

Now. No cats, no cats nowhere. We haven’t even removed the litter box yet even though it’s perfectly clean because before she went there was nothing going in and nothing coming out.

 

We don’t even know where she is. That’s the hard part. No smell, no sign, chance she slipped outside but hard to say. We know we have to tear the house up sooner rather than later but there’s been so much going on we’re in avoidance.

 

We talked about getting another but now is not the time. Daughter just wants to know it will happen before she goes to college. She has one more year of high school, I suspect we’ll have another rescue kitty by then.

 

Just not now. Now we are catless. Lets see how that feels for a bit.

Solstice.

 

I just finished a twelve hour tour of duty in my kitchen which came on top of eight hours yesterday. This is Solstice weekend which means every cookie, tomato sauce, jelly, curd, chocolate and loaf of bread, cooked, baked, canned and packaged for the Solstice occurred in the last 36 hours. I did sleep, I watched a movie too. It was I am Legend and it was good (and I LOVE Omega Man, so there).

In the mean time a Christmas tree was acquired and lights and pretty things were hung and the stockings were located and the menorah and the candles and the latkes, sour cream and apple sauce from the last of the wrapped September apples. The Solstice and Hanukkah coincide this year, which is very, very cool.

Last year we lost Sparky on or about the Solstice and it about blew me apart tonight. I wonder how the hell his family keeps breathing sometimes because half the time I feel like I got the wind knocked right out of me and I really just want to know how long it takes to get over someone?

I make things at Solstice. You can call it whatever holiday you want, it's Solstice timewise. I don't like to buy things unless it's something I know you need and can't buy yourself otherwise I'm going to make something and if you receive something I made it's because I give a rat's ass about you.

That's lost on most people these days. A cookie's a cookie, right?

About ten years ago I made my first batch of 1,000 cookies (or whatever), packaged them up and delivered them in person. They were received or not received as a matter of course until I got to Sparky and you know, Sparky got that half assed batch you give somebody you sort of give a shit about but maybe don't know so well. So anyway, Sparky comes all the way over from building one to building two and tells me this story about making stuff for people and how much it matters and all that and how this stupid box of cookies just about blew him away.

And that story he told just about blew me away. Most of the time, really, seriously MOST of the time, we have no real idea that we matter. Not a freaking clue.

I haven't missed a Solstice since.

I love you, Sparky and it hurts a lot still. I guess the way it's meant to hurt.

On cats and kittens and other small things

I have had a cat since I was four years old. Always, at least one cat. My first cat was a calico called Duchess and from Duchess I learned where babies come from first hand (in general mammal terms) and how much small things matter and how easy it is to give it all away.

Once when my mother was showing a litter of puppies to a prospective buyer I burst into the house yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Duchess is making babies in the front yard!"

And she was. I don't know what happened to the buyer but my mother was mortified.

Later in the summer when those kittens were old enough to be played with but maybe not quite so old as to leave their mother entirely I put them in my little red wagon and managed to give one of them away. I think what really happened was a neighbor walked by our yard and asked for a kitten and I said yes. When I told my mother she suggested I might find homes for all of them.

I took my little red wagon around the neighborhood and knocked on doors until every last one of those kittens had homes. The enormity of what I'd done didn't land until I went home with the empty red wagon and proudly told my mother what I'd done.

She cried. I did too.

Waiting

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room with a cat carrier to my right, door right up against my right thigh because it's the only thing keeping my cat from completely losing her shit. Yep, here we go about a cat again.

This cat turned four in October and belonged to my husband's brother Frank who died horribly and alone in his bathroom at home just two years and ten months ago. The last time anybody talked to Frank was Valentine's Day, 2006 and if you want to read about it go here because it's a pretty powerful post and everybody's names are used so please tread with care (I won't edit this post for any reason). Anyway, Nomans found Frank on March 4 and it was as awful as you might expect. It took some time to sort everything out but the net result was a disaster of an apartment full of hazmat that needed to be emptied, the kind of hazmat that happens with a particular flavor of mental illness, and two cats needing homes. Two cats that spent at least two weeks locked up with a body. I'll leave you to work that out on your own.

Shortly after the funeral (and as Jews we should have done this immediately but for what should be obvious reasons, could not) my husband had to go to Switzerland for a week and I, suddenly jobless at that point, chose to stay home. Staying home was the wrong thing to do but half way through the week I put my girls in the car and drove nearly three hours South to bring home what amounted to two feral cats, not much past kitten hood.

One cat made it and one cat did not. By 'did not' I mean he failed to assimilate into the household in any way and had to be removed. His litter mate, named Wicious (because she's 'wicious and fawocious') eventually settled in and did just fine.

A few weeks ago, just as we were becoming painfully aware that we really were in the end game with Chuck, Homer the Dog started behaving badly. He pooped in our bathroom, peed on the couch, peed on our bed and it just went on and on. We assumed Homer (we were right about the bathroom) because it was nearly odorless and Simon can't get up on the furniture by himself to save his life (he just eats it instead). We forgave Homer because he's had a lot to deal with (like a sixty pound baby) and crated him to avoid further issue for the time being. And then there was another odorless puddle on the bed and another after that. You see, she tried the foot of the bed and that didn't work. Then she tried my side and I still didn't pay attention. And then she tried Noman's side when she was accidentally locked in our room and then we knew our last kitty was pretty sick.

And then we noticed that she was always hungry but stopped eating after a mouthful or two and walked away crying. And then we could pick her up and hold her like a baby and she didn't purr and she didn't struggle, she just laid there all snugged up and motionless.

I didn't waste time. I called the vet today, gave symptoms and was told to come in. So the appointment is at 3 and I didn't want to risk not being able to locate or catch her (not like she's moving very fast but she is wicious and fawocious and wiley too. And I'm sitting on this couch with the carrier right against my leg and she's gone to sleep. If I get up and moves she cries like the world might end.

I don't know how this is going to turn out but it can't be good. I only know we love this cat and I will gladly pay the price of fear and pain and possible loneliness to have the right to love and be loved back by this cat. (and the dogs are in the kitchen eating the table legs and I'll probably get over it).

Last Days with Chuck

Note - I have been unclear in the following post. Chuck was euthanized on Saturday, December 6, 2008. The original linked post was written in February, 2007. This post was written Tuesday, December 9, 2008. We got an extra 22 months and we're grateful.

We said good-bye to Squeegie like cowards just past Thanksgiving two years ago by having Oldest who hated the cat take her in to be euthanized. He cried anyway and brought her ashes back in a small tin that sits on the very top shelf of the hall closet so that Youngest can ask strangers if they’d like to see that she keeps her cat in the closet.

After Squeegie died I wrote a piece called Last Days with Chuck and when I look at the photograph of her all curled up in the sunlight on the back of the couch I can see the beginnings of what we saw in the end; her wizened little face curling in on itself all the while letting the sacred cat bits fly back to Bast.

It didn’t get bad until early fall. Chuck peed on Little Girl’s bed and we chalked it up to a not quite clean enough litter box and a not quite tidy enough bedroom. Cats are funny that way. We took her off dry food and forced wet in an effort to reduce any urinary tract infections but that just pissed her off because Chuck doesn’t like change of any sort.

And what began as a gentle Pavane toward the

Rainbow

Bridge

escalated rapidly with recriminations, pointed fingers and bad behavior all around; including the cat but we can’t really blame her for that.  Middle Child, who found the kitties in a wood pile when she was just five years old, about lost her mind over this. She did so in the traditional manner where storm clouds gather in corners of rooms and hover like the threat of disaster.

We limped through Thanksgiving in a state of unraveling denial and every day I told myself I would call the vet from work and every day I did not.

And then one day I did. It was a Wednesday and I dialed the number and when a man answered I blurted out all staccato like “I need to make an appointment to put my cat down.” Stop. Breathe. Air. There was some back and forth and an appointment was made for Saturday and the man told me he was sorry and then we hung up and I put my face in my keyboard behind my cubicle wall and cried good and hard as quiet as I could. Then I blew up a couple databases and left for the day crying all the way home until my eyes swelled shut. Aside from mentioning the appointment in passing, I didn’t speak of it after that.

On Saturday morning I got out of bed and dressed with some coffee and a toothbrush. Chuck was in Middle Child’s room and the kitty carrier was on the back porch. I think I started crying when I picked it up. Anyway, into Middle Child’s room I went and stuffed Chuck face and feet first into the last place in the world she ever wanted to go while Middle Child sat in her bed like the world stopped spinning and I’m doing this and eventually we all got into the car and drove the requisite 4.5 miles to the vet in the center of town where we three plus the cat sat on a bench in a quiet room and waited.

Our vet is a good guy. Really. He says things like ‘that dog’s on the right side of the force’ and I know exactly what he means. He talks sense about the whys and hows of animals and the choices we make and that’s about as unexpected as hens teeth around here. He looks at us and says “I understand you’re considering euthanasia.” Just like that. Like we had an out or something but there wasn’t any judgment going on all the same. So we talked a little about what was going on and what we’d done to try to fix or live with it and he agreed it sounded a bit like some neurological magic coming undone only he didn’t say magic, I did. I’m thinking Bast is way behind pulling this kitty home and maybe it’s my fault for wanting to hold on just another day longer.

Anyway, it was time and he explained everything. Cat’s don’t like to have their arms held the way dogs are kind of ok so the cat has a shot that puts her out but her eyes are still open and she’s all floppy like she already died or something but she’s warm and she’s got a heartbeat and he leaves the room again and there we are taking turns holding her when Husband finally finds a box of tissues and half the Atlantic ocean ends up in paper. When the vet comes back he shaves her arm a bit, ties a tourniquet taking care to tell us that it doesn’t hurt and we’ve laid hands on this cat not to heal but to send away and the needle slides in just so and the fluid is dispensed tiny bit by tiny bit (he is so careful, this vet) and her chest stops moving and her heart goes still and Chuck has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge leaving the rest of us behind to remember last days with Chuck.

The abundance of being alive

I didn't expect much of this garden after the first set of tomatoes more or less bit the dust and most of the carrots and onions didn't bother to do much of anything and the cucumbers turned out round and orange and the squash rotted on the vine and Audrey the pumpkin got out of hand and I did my best just to breathe because that's what brought me here in the first place.

The need to breathe.

I am alone today and tomorrow and two more sleeps after that (not in the car, CG, but I do think of it that way because it is hard to imagine any world that does not have he and me in it together) and I am the epitome of uncomfortable. I have not been alone other than for just one night since I came out of the hospital on Valentine's Day blinking into the sunlight and wondering how it got to be so hard to walk outside in the world. A few of you will know what I mean when I say that the world inverted in on itself and I walked around like some crunched up easter egg rolling off the edge of the universe. I miss MC most times like these because she knew too and it's hard to explain if you haven't had the top of your head come off because words don't come anywhere near doing it justice. It's just a state of being too far off the map for speech. Which might be part of the problem, this need to explain something that probably cannot be said in words. Just breath, maybe. And I'll tell you, neither therapist I've been intimate with for six months could even begin to navigate this paragraph. I just go and write the checks and come home because I am still a good girl in my little compartmentalized ways.

And if it is a good day it's all good and I do what I do and I am satisfied that I have a place in the world. And if it is a bad day I come home and crawl into Beloved's arms and find some amount of peace there. And if it is a very, very bad day and I scream and rail at the world he finds a way, most times, to bring me home again.

He's not here.

I am OK but OK and uncomfortable are coexisting which is a step or two in the right direction. I was never afraid like this. OK, once, when I was pregnant with my boy and I thought about how I would feel if my husband died and I thought, well I have this boy inside me (I knew) and as long as I can get him born all right I will have a piece of something to get me by. I have always struggled with being alone in the world and hold on with all my might when I find a place to put my heart.

And now, really for the first time, I hold on with all my might when I decide to be safe outside my own four walls. I cried last night and fretted up one side and down the other for weeks and finally worked out that none of this was about being alone for four days. It is about being alone forever.

Eighteen months ago we all went to this conference. Eighteen months ago I held Jeffrey's hand and we found an old friend and he confessed to a ten year crush and she blushed and he did and it balanced something and we moved on. We went to dinner, Nomans and Jeffrey and me and another friend who matters like air and is hardly seen at all these days and ate Tapas and drank Sangria except Jeffrey who was still trying to say alive. And we were together and we were happy.

And Jeffrey is dead and NoMans is in San Francisco and I couldn't bear to go without Jeffrey this year even if we hadn't suspended all travel and I didn't want to leave the girls alone for that long with just the nanny. And I know that not all rats bite but I am so very, very afraid that he will not come back the same way that Jeffrey just did not come back and I have no idea how I would even begin to bear that.

Sometimes there are land mines and sometimes there are craters and I'm sitting in one now but I think I can see the end of the other side and I can get there on my own. And that's a good thing.

Tea for the Tillerman

I suppose I've known for weeks. I think I knew when the spinach failed at two weeks, the chard never even saw the light of day and the peas stunted at two inches producing a few desperate pods before withering and falling back into the ground leaving me with this horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach like some awful poison had soaked into my patch of ground.

I tried bargaining. I went to the local nursery and purchased Miracle Gro and Sevin for the bugs and watered and sprayed and prayed and shed more tears than I really want to look at (after all, it's just a garden, not my salvation, right?). A week later I went back with Little Girl for some marigolds and geraniums and talked to the woman who gave me four bags for soil samples to send off to UConn.

If you look at the photograph big, go ahead and open it up, you can see Audrey, the pumpkin that is going to eat New York and probably not make fruit. You can see the bean bushes and the pole beans and a bit of corn that broke free and tries to stand up tall.

And then in the middle you see what I think of as tragedy. I can't even really discuss it. That mid section ought to be four feet tall with no sign of soil in sight and full of large green fruit and maybe some small red cherries just beginning to produce.

Over to the right are the potatoes that may or may not be doing something, the empty garlic bed where I have thrown more corn to see what might happen and then the empty radish bed where nothing else but a few carrots have managed to grow.

I got the analysis back from UConn today. It started out like this,

Hi Heather, there isn't much you can do this year but at the end of the growing season...

At the end of the growing season we will pay a man with a small bobcat to come in and turn this back yard down to the bedrock (which, I might add, is not very deep), mixing the over composted soil in with the clay and diluting this thing called organic topsoil back into something that will support life.

I might throw down some clover or winter wheat after the turning and then till it again in the spring and I'll sit with it for the rest of the summer and eat every last little bit it's got to offer and say nice things to and about it and tell it how very, very sorry I am about all this. I might even let Audrey get away with a few more transgressions as well.

And if that sounded a little over the top, maybe you should try listening to your food. It's talking to you.

Somebody's Mother

Some things are beyond comprehension. Yesterday we got an email alert from the school system which was followed up by a brief article in the online paper (not sure what will show up in print).

Yesterday somebody's mother lit herself on fire and burned to death in one of our baseball fields. Her body burned for approximately 30 minutes before she was discovered.

Unless it turns out very differently, evidence supports the belief that she poured five gallons of gasoline over her body and then lit a match. Somebody stopped at the park to have lunch, thought a mannequin was on fire and called the police to put it out. The police arrived with a fire extinguisher and discovered the mannequin was a person and that was that. The fire department arrived but there was nothing to do.

This is the parking lot in which we taught my daughter to drive a stick shift. This is the town where my children go to school. This is the park closest to my neighborhood with a few nice fields and a great swimming hole. This is my home and that was my neighbor. In a town our size anyone living here is your neighbor. This is a thing which in itself is so horrible most of us will not touch more than the very edges of comprehension. This is a thing which perhaps ought to have been noticed and interrupted before it ever got to the purchase of gasoline. This is a thing of unbearable violence. This is a statement of internal brutality. This is a thing I can't even imagine.

Yesterday somebody's mother lit herself on fire and burned to death in one of our baseball fields.

I am so sad.

Leaping the Chasm

This is a life blog. I report the good with the not so good and even the very, very terrible. I've been struggling lately because the last two events were not mine directly but one of them has affected me so profoundly I've been nearly unable to confront it. I am maybe thankful that I still have klonopin to take the edge off although I believe medication of any kind is cheating because you've got to experience your experience (I hope that makes sense) in order to move on in the world. And I'm still a fragile easter egg but maybe there's more grit in here then I remember. Or thought I had left.

NoMans left his job six months ago for another because he really thought his position was on thin ice when it turned out they were downright horrified when he left. However, the deal was done and neither he nor I believe in backing out of an agreement when even a handshake has been given. If I say I'm coming to work for you, then I am. No matter what gets said when i give my notice. In any event, his CFO told him he was making a terrible mistake when he said where he was going and he chalked it up to sour grapes or a last ditch attempt at negotiation or something.

She was right. She was right and he knew it almost immediately. It was terrible. You know sometimes when you walk into something and the hair stands up on the back of your neck and you know you're in a heap of trouble? He knew right away and there was no going back. The guy made the best of it for two months and then threw his resume back in the field. If you've made a mistake like that it's best to cut your losses and get moving as fast as possible.

Well, he doesn't have a new job yet and that's not surprising. In his position it can take a week or it can take a year to find what you're looking for. I have mixed feelings on staying employed while looking for work because work, if it's really awful, can be a terrible distraction. So on Monday at 3:30 PM they fired him.

Just like that. He called me on the way home. I shut down my systems and drove home in tandem. We made dinner, we had a few adult beverages and then he told me the other thing. This thing I can't look at more than sideways right now. The job loss? I'm OK with that. Relieved even. He sleeps at night now. That's a good thing.

NoMan has one remaining brother. This brother has a son about the same age as my son and has had similar issues in terms of college and focus and just getting his life moving in one direction or another. He gives NoMan's brother no end of heartache much of the time. He is so covered in tattoos and dresses like such a hood that the Marines don't want him, the Navy Seals told him to take a hike and the regular army might have taken him except he got his girlfriend pregnant and she's already enlisted. They don't want two enlisted parents if they can avoid it. Can you blame them? So they all got ready to have a baby, like it or not. NoMan's brother continued to be bothered by his son's apparent disconnect from the event but sometimes I think that's just the way of young men these days. I don't think it wasn't real for him. I think it might have been too real.

For example, his Dad is career Air force (retired and recontracted). In one of those branches we don't want to talk much about. Awhile back he spent six months in Iraq in a remote village that was later blown to smithereens. We all had a party the day before he shipped out. His son added another tattoo. It's his way.

In any event, the big day is approaching and NoMan's brother and his wife and son drive to the home of the girlfriends parents to meet them for the first time and to celebrate her birthday. The baby was due in two days. On the day of her birthday, of this party, of the meeting and coming together of families, she went to the doctor for a normal weekly checkup.

The baby was dead.

It was absolutely horrible. Instead of a party they all went to the hospital where labor was induced and she delivered this stillborn girl. They all held the baby. Pictures were taken. A name was given. NoMans has some of those pictures. He tells me that she is beautiful and that she looks like a perfect sleeping newborn. I cannot look. Not just yet.

The funeral is on Friday. Sometimes these pieces are just deep black holes and the best you can do is to acknowledge them.

Pesach

Today we are all free men. Pesach. Passover. Rites of spring, fertility and the chance, one more time, to celebrate life. All the more fitting that the garden is complete in terms of soil and fencing and today I saw that the radishes and garlic apparently mean business.

I know you probably can't see the fencing, but it's there. This year's version of deer proof is a lot lighter then last year's and so when we were about half way around and ran out of last year's I just kind of wished we'd started with the new stuff. Either way, it has to be tent pegged to the ground to discourage the larger animals from crawling under. Nothing to be done about the bunnies for the time being although I don't notice many in these parts. Probably got et up by the now local to us coyotes.

Here's something that made me stop and question my belief system. Yesterday I went to one of the larger locally owned and privately operated hardware stores in Stamford (because we were there) to get the yellow and orange tent pegs you see holding the fence down. The hardware store wanted $8.99 for six and so I bought four sets despite what I thought was a steep price and congratulated myself on going to the hardware store instead of the local EMS which surely would have charged double. I had to go into the EMS anyway, as it turned out, and there were the exact same tent pegs for $3 per set. I bought another four sets, scratched my head and then wondered if EMS wasn't working on becoming the Walmart of camping supplies. Still not sure what to make of all that.

Tonight we make a Seder. Last night we ate hotdogs (I'm sorry). Given that Nomans is the only Jew in the house we do our best to make a Seder when we can have more than two or three of us at any one time. My brother is coming and he'll have no idea what to make of this but he'll manage. I have not done everything I should have, there is still plenty non-kosher and yeast ridden product in my cupboards and I did not clean the kitchen or the refrigerator and I know it's expected but I'm letting go of this misguided belief that as the woman in this house it's my responsibility to make sure the rituals are followed, mine or otherwise. It is true that I pick and choose what suits me and if he wanted the house cleaned of hametz he could have done it. See me struggle with the shoulds and the coulds? I am silly.

Instead I made Sunday sauce (which does happen to have a small bit of pork) for later in the week and chicken soup for the matzoh balls I've got to assemble shortly and nice brisket (why is a brisket always referred to as a nice brisket even when it is clearly not a nice brisket like when it's been cooked badly and you couldn't cut it up to save your life?) and then later some kuggelettes (kind of like potato popovers) and Nomans has made a frightfully good charoset which is basically chopped/ground fruits and nuts and a bit of alcohol thrown in to bind it. I also made a pecan and ginger torte and discovered that you can indeed get juice from ginger root. And then there's the business of the lamb shank and the hard boiled egg and the bitter herb and the horse radish and my salivary glands working over time all except for the matzoh, which nobody should eat without benefit of prunes.

But we will make a Seder. And tonight we are all Jews by proxy by virtue of our humanity and our desire to make it right.

And the first question is:

Why is this night different from all other nights?

I like to just be with that for a bit.