The Corners We’ve Turned

...in the Year of the Panicky Demick. A not-so metaphorical State of the Apocalypse.

I would have had a post out days ago but Blogger refused to accept my photographs. I like my blog illustrated, like a magazine. It helps break up my text, provides a sort of sidebar while illustrating my main thesis and...look, I like my pictures, all right?

I’d wondered if this was the end. I was even thinking of making a post to that effect: “Blogger won’t take my image uploads, so stay tuned until I figure out another platform, which is probably never, because frankly this thing wasn’t that much fun to begin with. Just in case, and most probably, Goodbye.”

At last it occurred to me to attempt uploading photos using the new Blogger interface that I’d tried a month ago and found detestable, a load of change for change’s sake that didn’t fix the problems with formatting and required a learning curve figuring out where all the buttons were, besides. Sure enough, New Blogger took my photos just fine. I could try and learn to endure New Blogger, but it doesn’t work with my smart quotes plug-in.

Therefore, I’ll be flipping back and forth. Trust me, I don’t hate the big tech companies, Microsoft and Google in particular, because it’s cool.

Not even halfway through and we’ve seen the sun set on so much this year.

One of the sharpest corners we’ve had to navigate is the fate of the Blue Porch Kitty Committee. It’s a sad tale that requires its own post, but the précis is we’ve been brushed harder by the darkness than I expected this year, even knowing we had to euthanize elderkitty Otis, even knowing we’d been getting by far too long without incident regarding the outdoor feral colony that called our front porch home.

What was once a steady complement of nine cats, then eleven cats, is down to six. Angel has been so depressed by the poisoning deaths of his fellow toms Ginger and Spooky he refuses to re-enter the very yard he grew up in. We have some kittens in the garage that may yet grow up to fill out what’s left, but we’ve contacted the local cat shelter and we hope they get around to taking them away soon, as well as fixing as many of the un-fixed cats we still have around.

We found the opening through our foundation under our porch where the cats were getting in to have their babies. After a couple of winters without incident we’ve had to fish one dead kitten from the crawlspace, as well as the body of Ginger Tom, who needed a dark and lonely place to die. Heartbreaking and unsanitary are a heck of a combo. 

We already knew we had to renegotiate how we handled the feral colony we inherited with this house in 2016. We used to leave part of the skirting under our porch open so the cats would have a safe place to go in the event one of the many dogs running loose in our town made an appearance. Again, we were renegotiating. If they needed shelter they could duck through the cat door we’d installed in the side of the garage.

Last week all that wood latticework, much of it rotten or soon to be, was torn out. My wife raked decades of debris from under the porch, including one entire newspaper dated 1981. My son then went underneath to make sure both vent/access squares in the main foundation were covered. 

This bit of home improvement alone was a milestone. But the party being over for the Blue Porch Kitty Committee weighs heavy on our hearts. It’s not a mere metaphor; for years we enjoyed a festive atmosphere among the animals lounging about our porch. With the deaths of Ginger Tom and Spooky, who were kittens only two years ago, chasing each other around the poplars in our front yard, it’s as if the music stopped, the lights came on, and it’s cleanup time. Naturally, we’ll feed and take care of who’s left. It will never feel the same, though. Because it isn’t.

This is the core group as of yesterday evening, 30 May 2020. Angel, not pictured, blessed us with his presence for the first time in a while, but he refused to come into the yard. He used to be one of the most aggressive eaters and never missed a meal. I couldn’t even tempt him with chicken.

Today, the last day of May 2020 will be the last night my son spends here at our house. He’d quit a deteriorating situation just as the lockdowns were getting going this spring. My wife and I never thought to ask if he was looking for something else, especially as there didn’t seem to be anything else with all the restrictions in place due to the pandemic panic.

Besides, we knew boredom would get to him long before the lack of cash-flow became an issue. And so it came to pass he was interviewing via webcam with a company out of Kansas. They took all of one hour after the interview to make their offer. It’s the kind of respectable, living wage with benefits his father never knew, and he’ll be doing it at age 23. 

He will, of course, have to move back to Colorado Springs. The seats are out of the back of the van and we’re moving him there tomorrow. Cynthia and I will be empty nesters again for the first time since January 2017, when he moved in with us for lack of opportunities in the Springs. Now the polarity has reversed. He learned his trade here, but the money is over there. 

It is at once a cause for joy and mourning. I’m going to miss having my son around, even if we only talked to each other maybe twice a week because we both prefer to do our things at our computer workstations, his thing being electronic music composition and video game level modding. (He was also out of town a lot on his last job. Hell, out of the entire San Luis Valley. That says something right there. He could not stay.) His moving out the first time in 2016 as we left Colorado Springs for Monte Vista was a prime cause of my writer’s block that year. I didn’t know it until he moved in with us in Monte in 2017, and I was making coherent sentences again.

We’ve had some lovely pre-sunset Golden Hours, with a few post-sunrise Golden Hours that made me glad I was awake for them.

For what it’s worth, I do not expect to suffer from that kind of block again. I’m not the same man I was in 2018, let alone 2016, and thank God for that, too. Despite the melancholia stinking up this post it must be understood that, with the obvious exception of Blogger, all of these changes had to happen. Otis T. Cat was old and I would have had him put down sooner if I’d known then what I understand better now. We’d enjoyed a smooth ride with the feral cats outside for years. We knew we had to clean out and close up under the porch. The murders of Ginger Tom and Spooky, as well as the stillborn kittens, forced us to do something we should have done last year, if not the year before that.

Meanwhile, the great social experiment in how much suffering governing bodies can inflict upon vast populations in the name of a so-called emergency continues. It’s obvious this Chinese Coronavirus isn’t stacking bodies, nor will it ever outside of the nursing homes several governors and health officials have forced actual sick people into for safety. But the governors and the local health officials are enjoying themselves too much. So what if one business after another goes under? So what if families go bankrupt? 

So what are we going to do about it? 

I, for one, have had all worry and care about this stupid panic bludgeoned out of me. I’ve come to appreciate that there was much good among the bad this month, and that’s where I’ll put my focus. I got my old laptop up and running again. I finished reading some books I’d put off. Best of all, I solved the problem of integrating Agnes’ and Elyssa’s backstories and made massive progress with my novel. That’s a post all by itself which I hope to get around to tomorrow.

With respect to those who have taken personal hits from the Great Pandemic Panic of 2020, I can’t help smiling to think that, for all everyone’s hollering about in the media, including and especially the Internet, it’s been nothing more than a minor inconvenience for me. Passages and transitions, changes as painful as they were inevitable, are how I’ll remember this year. It just so happens that all the notable, life-altering corners turned since Otis T. Cat’s passing in March were turned this month.

I’m grateful to be here for it. That said, I’ve lost all enthusiasm with arguing about wearing a mask in public. I miss my cats; I’ll miss my son. I still have a novel to finish. I can only do so much. 

Don’t miss the kittycats for the trees. Back by poplar demand!

All photographs Copyright © 2020 by Lawrence Roy Aiken. All rights reserved.

Thin Strands, Heavier Hearts

How much of this hair is yours?
I wonder as I pull a longer strand away
from my sweater, a filament of orange 
and white that could
only be yours.

How much is left?
I wonder as I roll the thing with
the sticky paper on it over my clothes
as I push the vacuum cleaner 
one more time
over the carpet

We marveled at how much you shed 
over 18 years, over how many kittens
worth of fluff we might comb 
from your coat in one sitting

no matter how many times
clothes and bedclothes go through
the laundry, no matter how much
is swept up, mopped up,
put away

a piece of you will always
remain along a crack in the floorboards
woven snugly into the fabric of a shirt
someone wore while holding you close
while you purred 
into our chests
touched your nose
to ours

so I like to think
even as we chase every last
strand of yours and the surviving
cats down with our sticky rolls
and vacuum cleaners
because we pride ourselves
on our place
not smelling 
like pets

Someday it won’t even 
smell like us but all the dead 
cells we’ve shed everyday as dust
will have already settled
to mingle with yours
in the seams of the floorboards
under the molding 
along the walls

breathing in and out
of the ductwork

and no matter how hard 
the people after us 
try to clean….

Otis T. Cat, 2001-2020
Forever in our hearts.

Forward, Beneath the Sun of Another Sky

Notes on a particularly pivotal week.

It was a genuine miracle and the biggest blessing, that as my wife and I cried uglier for the death of Otis T. Cat than any human we ever knew, that as our grief turned our home into a strange, empty place we could barely stand for the first couple of days, that as the world outside, even the very air seemed alien to us...no one came at us with, “Durr, I don’t get it. He was just a cat. You had him for a long time, sure, but, like, come on, you know?” That Cynthia and I have enjoyed nothing but compassion and empathy online and in meatspace during these darkest of hours proves unequivocally and most unironically what an awesome God I serve. We all know how the world is. If it isn’t the ubiquitous clueless fools and would-be comedians, it’s the predators.

I’m aware of how the above paragraph might serve as a can’t-resist invitation to trolls whose self-esteem depends upon the complaints elicited from the strangers they go out of their way to outrage or hurt. I still beheld the miracle. Throughout the time of our greatest vulnerability, we were shielded. Although this loss will always be with us, we’ve were led quickly out of the worst of our grief, enabling us to adjust to this new chapter under a sky that looks changed with the absence of a lovely creature who was with us for almost one-third of our lives (much more for our grown children, of course).

That is the most powerful thing about grief to me, incidentally. It changes your very perception of the universe. The sky is still blue, but it doesn’t look the same. The last time this happened for me was in 1986, when my mother took ill and died. I’ve lost many people since then—and, frankly, I grieved harder for that big, ornery cat than I did my mother, and why not? For all his cussed cattitude, Otis was certainly more empathetic and loving when the situation called for it.

The new thing I picked up about grief on this go-round was how physically and psychically exhausting the extreme forms are. Naturally, in keeping with the accompanying depression, sleep was hard to maintain. 

We’re adjusting though, and with surprising swiftness, given that I write this on Saturday, and the veterinarian and her assistant made their visit on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday afternoon already feels like a month ago. This is a very, very good thing. Let’s make it a year.

This bald-head/Van Dyke beard period lasted only so long in 2008. Otis was with us for nearly 18 years, and was there for everything I had to do as a writer in the 21st century.

The Lion in Winter: Our Last Days With Otis T. Cat

Our first pet ages out on us. You’d think it would be easy, with us being all old and mature and stuff. Of course, some people drop their elderly pets at the shelter to die alone and confused in a cage, or leave them alone with a veterinarian and a needle. Don’t get me started. This is one cat’s story, and we’re doing the best we can.

I can’t remember the last time I heard him meow. Otis was a very vocal cat throughout his life. He’s still with us after nearly 18 years, but the cat that once double-meow barked at me when he wanted attention hasn’t made a sound in long, long while.

I never thought I’d say this because it used to get on my nerves, but I miss his voice.

It was towards the end of the first week of September that Otis started leaving minor ponds of pee beside the litter boxes in the mud room. We hoped it was something he would get over, but the changes were already in motion over the last year or so. I’d already been carrying him up and down the stairs, given how painful it seemed to be for him.

He’s come up the stairs only once since then, and that was when he was hungry and looking for someone to feed him. He goes on memory, hearing, and smell, in shifting order. As near as we can tell Otis’ eyesight is all but gone. He can see movement, but individual shapes escape him.

Otis had already been with us nine months by the time of his first Christmas with us. Note the ancient CRT monitor he’s napping on.

Given his incontinence, his days of sleeping with us were over. I imagine this has to be the worst for him. Since the day Otis came home with us from the Anchorage Animal Shelter in April 2002 he’s spent the night with someone. 

As of September 2019, that was over. Otis was a downstairs-only kitty. He began with a special spot we made for him in a chair in the laundry room. Sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving my wife bought a foam rubber bed to rest his bones in he stays close to the mud room where the litter boxes are. He’s becoming more and more incontinent by the day. Sometimes he hits the puppy-training pads we lay out for him. 

At least his incontinence is confined to an area designed to take a wet mess. For the most part. We expect this to change.

Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 5 October 2003, on our way to our next duty station in Washington state. For perspective, the little girl in the van with Otis turns 27 this year. All the children in this photo are long-since grown adults. And Otis....

When Otis didn’t even sleep with Emily on the air mattress this Christmas I knew it was his last Christmas with us. Now, I’m not sure he’ll see the spring. My wife and I have agreed that the day we find Otis sleeping in his own filth in his bed will be when we’ll medically assist him over that Rainbow Bridge.

Eighteen years is a long time for a cat to live. It’s a long time in ours, too. After Otis, we have four more cats to go. My wife and I can only hope we survive, and with enough vim and vigor to take care of them in the sunset of their lives. Mickey is 11 years old. Jack and Puff will turn nine this year. When Otis is gone we’ll have a few years of business as usual, and then one of them will take ill. Then another. Our youngest, Luna, is four. My wife and I will be in our 70s when she’s Otis’ age. Let’s hope we make it.

Otis in his foam bed where he spends nearly the entirety of his days. With his bones so fragile, his hygiene not so optimal, we have to brace ourselves to pick him up. He purrs when paid attention thus, but cats also purr when they’re in pain. We do what we can to let him know we still love him, though. Again, I imagine the loneliness of these final days has to be the worst for this once most-social of cats.

When you bring a pet into your family, you’re not just giving them a place to live. You’re giving them a place to die. Here’s to those out there doing what they can for those who should very much count as members of the family. Otis came into our family when our children were small. He’s been with us from Alaska, to Washington state, to Virginia, from Colorado’s Front Range to what will be his final resting place in the San Luis Valley.

Attention will be paid.

From that same journey in 2003. Otis actually enjoyed the long road trips.

Jack’s Weekend Out

Once again I find myself confronted with change and looming mortality, albeit on a smaller scale. Also, is this the best life we’re living? One cat seeks to answer this most important question.

I’d done it before, but they all came back in. These were the same cats, too, Jack and Luna, who slipped out the primitive screen door on the side of the mud room facing the backyard, because I’d neglected to put the big concrete chunks in front to keep it secured.

The first time this happened, they came back inside quickly on their own volition. This time, Luna had to be dragged out from beneath my son’s car. 

Jack ran away.

Jack, from our last years in Colorado Springs. Although we’ve had Jack since my daughter brought him home as a kitten in August 2011, it’s only in recent years that he increased in mass (not fat, mind you) to become our largest cat. Also, several of his whiskers are bright white now.

I hadn’t realized he was out until I came back from my evening constitutional and saw his large, black-furred frame standing to one side of the porch in the front yard. I called his name. In cat-like fashion, he looked blankly back at me. I went inside, and was promptly asked, “Have you seen Jack?” 

Well....

Jack, doing his flat-cat thing on my old futon in my Colorado Springs basement office. For many years Jack could lie down on something and his uncanny ability to conform to the surface made me wonder what he did with his internal organs. 

I went back outside and walked the perimeter of our yard. The regular outdoor ferals were out and about as always, but no sign of Jack. 

“Well, it’s not the first time he’s spent the night outdoors,” I said, coming back in. “He’ll show up when he’s hungry.”

“A reasonable assumption, human. However....”

I found myself looking through every window I passed as I drew the curtains and closed up the house for the evening. I was in the master bedroom upstairs peering through the windows that overlooked the front yard when I saw a familiar shape sprawled comfortably across the front walk. I unlocked the window, but by the time I had pulled it back to call his name, Jack was gone.

After a few minutes I went back downstairs. Jack was back on the front walk. The porch cats were in the yard hunting grasshoppers and moths, and, so far, coexisting quite well with the large black gelded tom reclining across the concrete like he owned it. I opened the front door and stepped out to the porch.

“You think you know me, human, after all these years. Bah!”

Jack saw me. He knows my voice. He knows the inside of the house, which he could certainly see through the open door behind me.

When I called him to come in, Jack ran away into the darkness.

“I suppose he’s where he wants to be,” I told my wife.

“He has no claws.”

I said I figured he’d do the best he can. “Remember that cat in Anchorage with no front claws that managed to kill every last rabbit in the bog near our house?”

I looked out the windows every now and then, but I finally had to give up and go to bed.

I expected Jack to appear as I fed the porch cats in the morning. I saw no sign of him. Jack is something of a “chow hound,” if you’ll pardon the expression, and it wasn’t like him to miss a meal.

I walked out into the yard and looked around. I looked toward the big empty lot across the street from our house, then up and down the street.

I turned around and went back inside. I could only hope he was close by, and unharmed.

My wife, as always, articulated what was already pointing a bony, accusatory finger at me from the back of my mind. “I kinda feel guilty for not feeling worse about this. I really don’t miss him that much.”

Indeed, Jack’s defection to the great outdoors presented an opportunity we thought we’d only have upon the death of our eldest cat, namely, to bring the big, shaggy white rag doll mix we call Gal into the house.

Gal is a tale unto herself, being one of the first cats I noticed that “came with the house” we moved into two years ago. I used to call her the Yeti, because she was so huge and shaggy and white. She would scowl down on me from the top rail of the old chicken coop in the backyard, when the stray cats used to all congregate there. (That they don’t anymore is a mystery. They all stay near the front porch when they’re not inside the abandoned house across the street.)

For the longest time, we never saw her. I couldn’t tell you when she showed up again, only that it was sometime over last winter. Over the past year we noticed how she got closer and closer to us as we went outside to feed the outdoor cats. She would run between our legs to get at the bowls we were filling.

One day this summer, she let my wife pet her. The next day, my wife held Gal in her arms. I was still recovering from surgery at the time, but it wasn’t long before Gal was in my lap, nuzzling my chin. There is no doubt in our minds that Gal was abandoned, perhaps by the same people who left this house empty for two years before we came along to buy it.

Note Gal at the door. She comes inside to visit us from time to time, but isn’t comfortable with the indoor cats. Everything is a work in progress.

It didn’t sit right with me, though. I watched Saturday afternoon as Jack tried playing with Angel, the big white tom, only to narrowly miss getting his face taken off. Again, Jack has no claws. He can’t even run up at tree when the occasional stray dog comes around, and it wasn’t looking good for his acceptance by the born-and-bred ferals under our porch.

Saturday evening I tried cornering Jack so I could bring him indoors. Everywhere he saw me, he ran.

Maybe this was it, after all. This was the life he wanted to live and he’d find a way. And if he didn’t, he’d die giving it his best shot. It’s what any sensible, self-respecting creature wants, so why I am trying to cage him in this house?

Spooks (full name Spooky McSpookerton) is of the third generation of kittens to be born since we moved here, and for as well as he gets on in the great outdoors, would not enjoy being domesticated at all. 

Regardless of these thoughts, I went out on Sunday morning, this time leaving the front door wide open. He regarded the open door before him. I took a step towards him and he shot up the steps to the porch, across the porch and into the house.

The family was complete again, our weekend-long crisis over in three minutes. Jack had to make the decision, I keep telling myself. He wanted to do this.

The other cats in the house had a grand time sniffing him over for all those exotic outdoor scents, and Jack didn’t mind the attention. That was all there was to it. Jack hasn’t tried escaping since. He’s even a little more affectionate with me, even demanding of it from his perch on the chair by the picture window looking out over the front yard.

He’d made his decision. Was it the best one? I don’t know, but I’m glad it turned out this way. The incident gave me much to think about in terms of freedom versus comfort.

If nothing else, they do furnish a room.But is that all we’re here for? To furnish a wet rock spinning through space? Yeah, we’ll stop here. I’m obviously tired.