So you think you owe some karma
and you know just where it’s at
well tomorrow I must have a
root canal and kill the cat
It’s time.
The root canal is true, too: a root canal, a post, and a crown, to be exact. I go to the dentist, have all that done, and then while I’m still chewing my lips from the anesthetic, we take Hobbes the Wonder Cat on his last ride. You have to wonder what kind of a life I’ve been leading to have all this on the same day, but I’m not the subject of this tale, he is… poor old Hobbes.
He’s at the end of the line. Left to his own devices, I figure he might be around a little longer, but not much. He has to be starving. He runs to his dish to eat, downs what he can, and throws up 10 minutes later. He’s lost half his body weight and stinks like hell. He has bloody sores at the corners of his mouth. He won’t use his box or go outside, but shits in the bathtub now — because he’s crazy or hates the snow? The lymph glands in his throat have grown huge, probably from cancer, obstructing his esophagus. Right about now someone is asking, “Jesus, why didn’t you put him down sooner?” The answer is, I just don’t know. Until today, I probably couldn’t face it. I had the notion that he wasn’t suffering, just falling apart, as if that happens without pain in any feeling creature.
Hobbes in San Cristobal, 8/14/2000
Today I saw things in a different light.
Besides pretending he’s able to eat, he’ll jump up and go after the other cat, and that’s about it for any movement. He did that this morning, yet this evening, I don’t think he’d be able to. He’s fading by the hour, almost, the little bag o’ bones. I think he’s ready to go. It all hit me hard this afternoon, but after we decided, he seems much more relaxed. It’s quite astounding, really, as if he knows. I get the impression he’s been holding on so we would get the point.
He’s been a constant in our lives for almost 15 years, half as long as I’ve been with my wife, and I’ve never known a more hilarious, loving animal. Sure, “just a cat,” but there’s been this intricate, ongoing relationship for an awfully long time. Real personalities are involved: it’s like someone in the family has to die, and we get to pull the plug. This all needs proper wrapping up, a ceremony of some kind. As sensitivity is high right now (“we’re not just bringing his dead body back home with us!”), the issues dovetail, and we’ll actually have him cremated.
No one who knows me from the past would ever believe it — understatement of the year — but it’s either that or the landfill, or else the pitiful charade of my chopping at the frozen ground under two feet of snow to bury his good-for-nothing bones. This way, we’ll have some cat cinders to scatter in the acequia in the spring. My wife first found him as a tiny abandoned kitten in a ditch, so small that I couldn’t see what she was holding in her cupped hands, so this means ditch to ditch, a closing circle. (The regional colloquialism for the traditional irrigation channels is “ditch.”) The time of year will even be the same.
But here’s where it gets even crazier:
A mobile pet cremation truck from Albuquerque shows up at the vet’s at 8:00 a.m. every Thurday. Hobbes checks out around 4:00 p.m., so he’ll miss the cull. No problem, though. They keep a freezer full of dead pets until the truck comes by again next week. Naturally I can’t see them incinerating just one animal at a time, right? If it were me driving that truck, I’d stuff the furnace full of frozen carcasses, crank it up, and walk across the road to score a latte. When it comes time to package the cremains, I can see someone saying, “15-year-old cat, eh? All right, one-and-a-half cups…” and there you go. I’m under no illusions here, but I won’t mention that again: whatever they give us next week is symbol enough, and I shall call it his own bones.
Onward, you poor sweet hurting fucked-up little bastard, loose the bonds of earth!
(Just touch him, and he still purrs like a monster…)
Related posts:
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Like a Buddhist prayer flag sending its prayers along the wind …I hear Hobbe’s purrs from afar.
RIP-it-up Hobbes!
May peace be with you ALL!
I’m oozing big heaping gobs of sympathy reading your post today. Been in this place a half a dozen times, and it’s always hard. Really hard.
Consider this. You gave Hobbes a good life, and it was reciprocal. In return he gave you whatever love and affection he had to give. He had a good life. Now it’s your turn to show your love for him one last time; by not letting him suffer, and being with him as he moves on.
Peace to you all.
Yeah, it’s a bitch, all right. We’ve been lucky, having only a few pets over a long period of time, or else cats that quickly disappeared before we could really get to know each other.
I keep asking whether he would perk back up if I weren’t so repelled by his condition and gave him more affection, or whether he’s dying because we brought another cat into the house. Nothing THIS severe, though, surely, though there’s great guilt because of that. But we had no choice on that move, either.
(Just now he ate, then jumped up on the padded armchair where I’m sitting and barfed right next to me. Six hours to go…)
But posting that picture of Hobbes in San Cristobal was a revelation: the cat you see there is a completely different animal, sleek and solid, well-muscled and serene. The poor guy here now has legs like a pencil stuck inside a sock, all bone and skin…
It’s very hard knowing what’s going to happen and MAKING it happen by appointment. Contradicts every instinct!
And yet, and yet…
We’re about to make another big change, because we need to move to another house. A rental, of course. My wife wants us never to have to move again, but that ain’t gonna be the case unless the world ends sooner than I think it might. We can’t buy anything now, not without a windfall like an inheritance, and why in God’s name WOULD we buy a house now even if we had the money? But you never know, right? The right combination of mortality, deflation, or my own efforts could change all that in an instant. At any rate, we need to look after ourselves, not prolong the poor animal’s less-than-happy existence to assuage our guilt, so Hobbes has got to take the leap. He isn’t meant to go with us to the next phase of our lives, a stage that’s more significant than any previous arrangements. This is Big Time for my wife and myself, and I think things will actually be better.
Hobbes is from another era, and a good one it was. Now we see what’s over the mountain, and it looks like we’ll be travelling light.
I think it’s time to break out a bottle of good reposado and toast the old boy. Salud!
Oh, we’re doin’ that. But first I had to post that picture of him on the birdbath and blubber some more.
Salud, indeed!
Vale Hobbes. Say hello to Dipity for me … and Baci, and Aleysha, and Nugget (and Dipity’s other kittens who died before they had a chance to live), and Muffin, and Christabel, and Katchen, and Chork-Chai. Gee, that many! Still it has been 37 years, and we’ve always had at least 2 at a time.