Saying goodbye to a friend
I put my pal to sleep today.
Ten years is pretty good for a cat; he would have been 10 on May 29, about ten weeks from now. But he’d been sick for a while, nothing terminal, but to the point that he wasn’t enjoying his life most of the time. He had good times, sleeping in the sun on a big comfortable chair, eating, playing out on the mountain when the sun was shining, but these were punctuations of happiness in a constant state of stress and anxiety. He was anxious and often miserable, he was doing things that made me anxious and miserable.
Nearly ten years ago, I named him “John Zorn” because that’s what was on the stereo when he was given to me. He was a runt; the first week I had him he got sick and hid under the bed, I rushed him to the vet and had to bottle-feed him mother’s milk supplement for three weeks afterwards.
I made the vet appointment for Saturday at 9:40 a.m.; made it Friday morning before work and spent the rest of the day at my desk, trying not to think about it, trying not to throw up. I’d asked the vet for a pill to help keep him calm the next day. He hated going to the vet: hated the car ride, hated the waiting room, hated the noise and the smell and the other animals around. So I went to the vet after work, picked up the pill, walked home in the rain crying like a sap. He was there when I got in, not knowing anything was different; I gave him a big dinner of his favourite soft food, cuddled the big guy, let him out to ‘check out the shit,’ my understanding of whatever the hell it is when cats go out and wander the neighborhood just to make sure everything’s cool. That’s what he did. He patrolled the yard, wandered a couple of yards over sometimes, mainly just made sure everything was where it should be.
Stayed up all night, letting him in and out from time to time. Sleeping was pointless – every time I laid down I started to think he might hop up on the bed and sleep on my chest, which was one of his favourite positions, and that would have just goddamn killed me. So I stayed up, giving him cat treats when he was awake and rambling around the house, patting him when he was going to sleep, letting him sleep after he’d dozed off. Mainly reading, listening to the radio. He was an unusual sort of cat that actually slept at night, not consistently, but for fits and starts here and there.
At 8:30, I gave him the pill; he hates pills, too, but he was dozing and dopey and I got it in him before he knew what was up.
At 9:25, I opened a can of tuna, both his favourite meal and my guaranteed lure, and he toddled upstairs, ate like a fiend, and meowed to be let outside.
But instead, I put him in the cat carrier, my friend Bill came by with the car, and we went off to the vet. The vet, thank god, was punctual; there wasn’t a long wait in the waiting room (with him, dopey but still pissed about the cage, making “anxiety meows” from inside the thing).
And the doctor let us into the room, and he got the technician, and he shaved about an inch of fur off his right front leg, and he gave him an injection, and John Zorn, my cat, black, seven pounds, who loved food and the mountain and me, went to sleep.
Just like that. He just sort of slumped and sighed and was gone.
The vet gave me a second with him, but I didn’t take him with me – I tried to dig a hole last night, but the ground’s still too frozen, and the thought of keeping a dead cat in the freezer waiting for a thaw is just ludicrous, even if you’re a big sentimental goof. The vet even checked his heart with a stethoscope, which seemed a little weird, and let me have a minute with him, my gone buddy, alone on a cold white table. The last thing he did, before the vet came in and shaved his leg, was reach up with his head; I leaned over, we touched noses, and he sort of rubbed up the side of his face on my nose.
That’s what cats do. It’s what cats do to things they own, it puts their scent on them. And I don’t know if he was my owner or I was his, and if he was my owner I don’t know how I’m going to run my life without the boss around.
But he’s gone.
I have good friends; Bill, who took me to the vet this morning, and his wife Leah cajoled me into going to Montreal with them. Ate Chinese buffet, bought trinkets at weird little stores, picked up a thermal fuse for my espresso machine and swung by Ikea. It was a good day, and in Sherbrooke, thank God, the weather was a miserable sleeting crapfest. Which was much better than a day he would have enjoyed, a day when he would have been out the door and up the mountain, sleeping under a tree, chasing (but not catching, he was a little old and a little too anxious to be an effective hunter) birds.
He wasn’t having a very good time in life. I wasn’t having a very good time watching him not have a very good time.
So I feel okay about it, but I write things, that’s what I do, and so I’m writing this out, just to get it out of my head and onto something, so I can read it back and check my spelling and grammar and make sure it all lines up on the page.
Bill mentioned in the car today that he’s never known me without John Zorn, the boss of the house, the monster. And it’s true; I have no friends where I live that have been my friend as long as he was. Other friends, in further places; lots of good friends away and plenty of great friends here, but no friend here as old as he was. No friend as constant.
And there it is. I’ve lived a blessed life. I’ve never had to say goodbye forever to a human friend, I’ve got two living, loving parents, a couple of great sisters, a batch of awesome friends, a good job, a great house.
But it’s a life a bit diminished. I already miss the big guy like hell, and I’m going to miss him every day.
I’ve got his collar up on the wall, next to a marker drawing an ex-girlfriend did of him years ago. She did a great job of it, but she never really captured his essence. Nobody could.
Nobody ever will.
