"When They Grow Old"
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FoundObject
Posted on: 06/25/07
"When They Grow Old"
How Pets Affect UsA Tribute to Dakota
Twenty years, it's been since I found her in the parking lot of a flea market in Santa Cruz. She was a small ball of stripped fur; the tinniest in the litter of clawing, mewing, begging kittens. She was the only one with a pumpkin patch on her head; the only one who did not wiggle to break free when I held her close. She purred.
Many of my childhood memories are foggy, like the grey haze that comes in the Aptos mornings, so thick you can forget almost anything. But Precious, my cat, I remember.
The purr lasted all the way home in the loud, clanking roar of a red Ford truck. All the way home as, nineteen years and six months ago, Adam and I drove her home to San Francisco where she was aloud to live in the comfort and warmth of our apartment. That purr which lingers even now, as I hold her shivering in my arms. She trembles.
The purr stops for only a moment as she gasps for air. I hold my breath but I do not want to set her on the floor. For days now, I have heard her coughing in the other room, her purr elevated from a soothing hum to a scraping strain. For days I have awoken and checked, every morning, to see if this is the day she would not wake up.
The doctor said it was a tumor under her trachea. It would slowly suffocate her. Eventually she would pass out and die.
But we all die. We all die someday. So why does this, this small ball this runt of the litter feel so alive, even in her death? Why can I sit here thinking she is still a young cat and that at any time she will leap from my arms and chase the little ball of cat nip in the other room.
But I wait and she does not leap. She looks up at me and then back at the floor. Her breathing is labored. The little stripes that line her stomach move in and out like tiny prison bars, much wider and slower than they had, even a week ago.
Not yet, I think. Not now. And yet I have already called the humane society. I have already learned where I could take her if "things go bad." $40 for her to be put down. $140 for a personal cremation. $50 for mass cremation.
Not yet, I think. You are still here. Your eyes do not weep to go to sleep. You still use the litter box and walk to the food dish. You still try to follow me into the next room and watch me. And I know that if you could, you would shadow me as a four legged ghost, watching and waiting for me to reach down and rub your tiny shoulders. You only know life. You only know now.
I've even thought about cloning you. Your genetics are strong and your DNA would serve other generations well and I would feel like some part of you lived on. But it wouldn't be the same. Like me.
I feel somehow that we both survived. That we both made it farther than anyone would have imagined.
I rescued you but I know you have rescued me and that no other cat would ever be like you. You are not a cat to me, but a friend. And I do not feel ready to say farewell to this friend. Not yet.
It's past midnight, almost morning now. The sun will be coming over the black horizon soon; a time wen she usually plays with her toys while running around the house.
But she will not play this morning. I know she will breathe easier if she lays on the floor under the bed, but she is still sitting in my arms, purring. She never sits this long with me.
I think about what it will be like to drive her to the humane society.
But she still feels alive and no matter what I know otherwise, I can not set her down.
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