If you aren’t reading Horse Fly every month, then you have more in common with the rest of the world than you may realize. Nonetheless, it’s a one-of-a-kind, and the publisher has the impeccably good sense to not only give me space for a monthly column, but to pay me for it as well.
Here’s the latest from the December issue. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know our 14.5-year-old tabby is hanging on by a couple of old man’s claws, and that’s what I wrote about. It’s kind of a eulogy for the little bastard, although he’s still with us as of this writing. Acting weird enough to wear out his welcome fast, except that he’s a kitty geezer on the way out, so we cut him tons of slack.
Column follows, after the fly…
POOR OLD HOBBES
by John H. Farr
Death and weirdness are in the air, New Mexico triumphant.
That isn’t all that’s wafting, either, as the cat grows strange and stinky near the end. If Hobbes were an old man, it’d be time to find out where he hid the will. As it is, I could locate him in the dark from just the snoring, never mind the aroma of fermenting gym socks. He deserves better, as does everyone heading over the hill. When I no longer have a dream except to see what happens next, will somebody please make sure to anoint my shuddering carcass with a little aftershave or Pine-Sol?
Hobbes entered our lives 14 years ago in the cradle of my lover’s hands. She went out walking one day from our country house in Maryland and came back holding something too small to recognize from across the room. Why, a cat! The last one had gone off to see the vet and come back lifeless in a carrier. (I put her in a box and buried her by the peonies.) Were we now to have another? Apparently so: someone had dumped the tiny kitten in a ditch, and now he owned us.
When he was still so small that I worried he might barf or poop without warning, I got into the habit of carrying him on my shoulder, so he’d get used to it. After that, the quickest way to calm him down was always to grab him by his hind legs and tail and drape him over my back like a sack of cat potatoes. He almost never dug his claws in, even when I had him ride on top of my head, and seemed to thrive on this comical abuse. Now when I pick him up, there’s almost nothing there, and each paw needs manual disengaging. But he still purrs like a monster, and if anything, his shaky, failing body vibrates all the more.
Moving to New Mexico was at least okay for Hobbes and maybe good: he didn’t seem to mind exchanging cool green grass for dust and prickly bits at all, and there was lots of entertainment. In San Cristobal, he wandered among the neighbor’s cows—incredulous, I imagined—and stayed far away from the coyotes that rested in the yard like scruffy German shepherds. If he ever met an elk, he didn’t tell me. The golden eagle I saw catch a prairie dog never bothered Hobbes, who’d grown smarter over the years and generally avoided trouble. The rat in the ceiling piqued his interest, for example, but no killer instinct. (Peanut butter on a trap took care of that.) Here in Llano, he wandered in the sagebrush and never picked up thorns. How do they do that? — I watch every step and still get cactus in my Crocs.
In the last six months, though, everything has changed.
If we are what we eat, then Hobbes is almost vapor. I used to call him “El Gordo,” too, but now he weighs a full third less than he did a year ago. At first we thought we might have accidentally starved him slowly since the summer. Believing his teeth had simply gotten too bad for him to chew the hard, dry kibble, we bought him nice wet cat food. He ate enough to gain back half a pound and then lost interest again. The look in his eyes, when he has one, says, “My God, what’s HAPPENING to me?!”
I know, of course, but I can’t tell him. The vet says that his lymph glands are badly swollen and he might have cancer, since there isn’t any fever. He has trouble swallowing—the real reason he can’t eat much—and I’ll bet a tumor pressing on his larynx is why his old meow is weak and scratchy. He only lives for laps now, seeking reassurance, and his breath would fell a ponderosa pine. Before I realized how sick he was, I hated him for his obstinacy and threatened to smear his back with bacon grease and stake him out on the mesa. Can’t do that now, though, and wouldn’t have anyway. (The devil dogs of San Cristobal deserved nothing less, and they got off scot-free.) Being ripped apart by a bear or coyote might be more organic, but when the time comes, Hobbes will have the barbiturate in a vein and come home like his predecessor. I’ll have another cry and get the shovel out. We’ll pick a spot, drink a toast, and put him in the ground.
New Mexico, the portal!
Like every other traveler far from an imagined home, he’ll end up where he started, in the shadow of the mountains …
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
aha! recall reading
http://drpollen.blogspot.com/
where the good doc wrote that kitties should be fed wet or at least 50/50 wet/dry food cuz dry is too hard[sic] on their kidneys
I can believe it. On the other hand, he is just about at the end of his tether, lifespan-wise.
ok,prof John,you love Nature,right?
-so why would you bury a barbiturate- laden critter?
–>ground water contamination doesn’t rate,eh?
It’s curious how All of us are sometimes blind to our duplicities…
-hey,why dispatch ol’ faithful yourself for free using a rock& say a farewell prayer, when you can pay an uncaring, drug dispensing vet a hundred bucks so you won’t have to dirty yer hands…
I think Nature can handle a poisoned cat, and I will spare myself the splatter of kitty brains on my jeans.