Rascal
1994-2011
Physical Characteristics: Black cat with tuxedo markings and green eyes. Thin as a rail- particularly in her later years. Was suspected by multiple family members to have either been hit by a car or have feline AIDS. The Pet Psychic revealed that her low body weight was because she actually suffered from multiple eating disorders brought on by body dismorphic disorder that activated itself after she watched a Friskies for Kittens commercial.
How she lived: Like a boss.
How she died: Like a boss.
Rascal's story is more interesting one than one would expect for a cat. I am not saying that she solved mysteries with the help of any of our dogs or anything- the only mystery most of them ever solved was the question of "Who likes to lick his own privates the most?", and they arrived at the answer to this query only after months of diligent practical study- or even that she helped a scientist to finally work out the solution to that pesky cold fusion problem. What I am saying is that for an animal with nine lives, the four of them that were not comprised with sleeping in the windowsill and firebombing our dogs from above were generally pretty interesting.
We first got Rascal when I was 12. My sister and her then-husband had gotten her after moving to Idaho, and I met her upon their inevitable return to our state of trees and independent thought. The only things I remember about that day are 1) this was the first time I ever saw "ER", which my brother-in-law had taped the night before and had us watch for some reason (my impression of the show was that it was boring and would not last) and 2) I thought their cat was too mean to be a kitten and had to be the reincarnated personage of a particularly crotchety old man who did not like those damn neighbor kids. I kept checking her personal effects for a tiny garden hose or a weathered rocking chair, but she must have hidden them away under the stairs along with her dead bird.
For reasons that are not entirely clear to me due to the fleeting nature of the memory of insignificant events, and because that was the year that Kurt Cobain killed himself (which, at 12, I believed to be the most important thing to ever happen ever) my sister and brother-in-law ended up relinquishing the custody of their cat to my parents. It was probably because they moved into an apartment that would not accommodate pets, but I have long suspected it had to do with my brother-in-law knowing that Rascal was, in fact, smarter than him, and that his inability to find HIS way out of a paper bag would eventually be figured out if the opportunity for comparison was left unchecked. Regardless- she moved in with us, and all of the sudden my parents, my brother, and I had a cat.
For the first few years, it was strictly professional. Rascal was there to work- we had a farmhouse with a ridiculous amount of vermin, bugs, and other unwanted pests, and her job was to eliminate the enemy in the expeditious unfeeling way of Austrian cyborgs tasked with making the world safe for John Connor. Of course, she was able to accomplish her task without being such a big pussy about it- so what's your excuse, Ah-nold?
Then something happened- again, memory is fleeting, but I remember there came a point where she decided that, if she had to pick from the sorry lot of us, I was an acceptable offering to be "her" person, and so we bonded. She started sleeping in my bed, coming when I called (Just kidding! I came when she called.), and letting me actually pet her for more than five minutes at a time without attacking me like I was attempting to sell her into a kitty trafficking ring like some strange feline version of the movie "Taken". We were both strong-willed, opinionated (I assumed her chewing up my worn out corduroy skater shorts was commentary on my fashion tastes), ignored people that pissed us off, and could get very mean very fast. Honestly, I think she saw me as an honorary cat which is sweet but like an honorary doctorate, completely worthless to anyone but Denis Leary.
As I grew up, I moved out, then back in, then out again, like some sort of human ping-pong ball of indecision. No matter how long I was gone- 3 days or 3 years- Rascal always came back to me when I was home- sleeping curled up in the small of my back, leaving dead mice on the stairs for me to find, and mewling at me with a judgmental look in her green eyes that said, "Oh, so your fingers AREN'T broken. I was worried when you didn't call."
When I finally let my parents be empty-nesters by leaving home for good at the ripe and embarrassing age of 23, Rascal was 11, and although they were not super-fond of her, my parents kept her on the basis of her being an excellent mouser, an outdoor cat, and such a low-maintenance pet that they sometimes forgot that they owned her.
Needing to have a human ally available to her on a daily basis (mostly for the skills brought to the table by opposable thumbs), Rascal turned to my father and what resulted was a sort of pet-marriage-of-companionship that would characterize the remainder of her life. She would jump on his lap and angrily demand affection to which he would tell her, "Well fine, I hate you too." but then assent and pet her while she whined and occasionally bit his hand.
My mother openly claimed to hate the cat, but her affection showed through on a few sweetly moving occasions- like the time that I moved into a house that would allow me to have a pet, but my mother would not let me take her because "She's not made for the city- it's too dangerous." Seeing as we were talking about the animal equivalent of Tony Montana ("Say hello to my little friend! . . . He's my catnip mouse and I LOVE him!"), I realized later that it was unlikely that Rascal would have trouble adjusting to life in the big city . . . particularly since that city was Tualatin and the biggest danger was that every left turn resulted in a strip mall. I decided it was far more likely that my mother had simply grown to love and accept Rascal as a part of her own daily life and would not be able to bear to see her go.
Around the time Rascal hit 14, my family started to go, "Hey- has anyone noticed that the cat is old?" We all just sort of watched out of the corner of our eyes to see when she would eventually drop out of the race. Cats are pretty good about knowing when it is time to go, so we figured that we would be able to tell when she was on her way out when she started skydiving with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and making impassioned speeches to her offspring about not needing to be dead to be appreciated.
Sadly though, that time never came. On one fateful day, my parents returned home from a business trip to find the cat very badly beaten and cut up in what was obviously a fight with a large dog. She had pulled herself home and was laying on the doorstep waiting for someone to find her. They took her to the vet, but there was nothing to be done, and after tears from both of my parents and all of the assisting veterinary staff, it was determined that the merciful thing was to put her down. So they did.
I found out in a phone call from my dad. I was surprised that it just made me feel so tired and numb, which was a feeling that would continue for several days. I felt silly mourning so deeply the loss of a non-human friend, but that did not stop the tears when they came- and they did for a while. Even now, I still have moments where I accidentally think I will see her when I go home to visit my family and then I reach for something to pull around me because I get kind of cold and tired again. I can't explain why.
Apparently, I was not the only one to experience the death of this cantankerous old cat on a deep and profound level. My father and mother were inconsolable for weeks and still have trouble talking about it without tearing up (I imagine the trauma of finding her in her pre-death state contributed to this). My sister- the one that brought the cat from Idaho in the first place- cried, which I will admit, floored me, since she had not been close to the animal since America first learned that George Clooney was capable of more than sporting the world's most traffic-stopping mullett. My nieces and nephews seemed to take it worst of all though, with my youngest niece reacting to the news by becoming Scarlett O'Hara and throwing herself in a loudly tearful and heartbroken heap upon the closest piece of furniture resembling a fainting couch (a Target ottoman). Ah- the drama of being eight.
Fast-forward to this week: Rascal died about four months ago and my family has been pretty cat-less since then. This week- after hitting a sort of personal breaking point on what has been a year made of all the moldy lemons that life already gave to some other asshole and then re-collected to give to me- I decided to do something really big that was just for me. After going through a laundry-list of possibilities- putting together my trip to New York, move, take a class on advanced print-making, take over the entire tri-state area- I finally thought, "You know what? I'm getting a pet." As an aside- I don't know what I was thinking with some of those choices. I don't even like printmaking.
This is how I bought a TV: I went into Best Buy, I found one that was in my budget, I bought it the next day. This is the same for all of my electronics. If you put a consumer report in front of me, it is likely that I would use it to make a paper hat. This is how I got my cat: I went on Craigslist, found a cute cat for free, took her home that night. I'm sure the couple I got her from thought that I was getting her to make a stew or something- I wasn't super-snuggly about it, and to be honest she didn't seem to like me much as we walked out the door together. My thought though was, "A cat's a cat. If it doesn't work out, I can always give her to the Humane Society or to someone that really does want to make a stew." My mother told me that this is probably why I am not married . . . which caused me to get stressed out enough to go out and get another cat (Just kidding on that last part- that just made me sit in a dark closet listening to Morrissey while eating black licorice.)
It's been about five days since I got my cat and in that time I have learned a couple of important things:
1) Big clumps in kitty litter are urine, not diarrhea. Concurrently, if you bring a clump of urine to give to the vet as a stool sample, he will wait until he is out of the room to laugh at you, but give no respect to the fact that there are giants slits under the doors and his Santa-like, booming laugh against the linoleum is the sound of pet-owner shame.
2) If you do not have a pet carrier, do not attempt to drive 100 miles with your cat stuffed underneath an overturned laundry basket with only your right arm to anchor it in place. This only ends badly.
3) When cats overexert themselves, they pant like dogs, and it makes you think the apocalypse is coming like Billy Murray foretold.
The most important thing that I have learned to appreciate though, is that animals, like many (but surprisingly not all) people are each their own little entity full of idiosyncratic personification that makes them specifically themselves and no one else. My little cat- Hoshtola' Kowi (pronounced "Hosh-toe-lah Koo-wee")- is a strange little beast that is constantly kneading soft surfaces, wakes up at 4:30 AM, clumsily falls off of most things she attempts to scale, and sleeps off veterinary drugs in postures that bring to mind frat guys passed out on their front lawn after the Civil War game. She's not Rascal, but really, who is? She's her own little soul, and if she plays her cards right, she may live a long life, the end of which will be mourned by her acquaintances with all of the drama of a sweeping, Southern, Civil War epic. We should all be so lucky.
