Killers

Last Tuesday the guy who sits next to me at my temp job backed over his cat. Totally ran over it, so that it made his car lurch. The cat, a beloved pet of nine years, then ran down a storm drain and refused to come out so he could take it to the vet, and he assumed it would die in there. He was a wreck. On Wednesday I saw him with his head in his hands a lot, but I just assumed his eyes were bothering him, because I didn't know the whole story yet. On Thursday he was absent. On Friday he told me all about what happened and said the day before, he'd been too much of a weepy mess to come work. He said at one point he was standing in his kitchen crying, glanced out the door, and his cat was on the front stoop looking in at him. The vet told him the cat was going to be fine with a little medical care.

When he started telling me this story, the flashing yellow light and the obnoxious alarm went off in the original Star Trek bridge located in the emotional center of my brain. Kirk yelled at Scotty for maximum power to shields. I feared this confession was going to make me have to go home a weepy mess. About a year ago, I lost Lyle, my pet of 16 years, and I could relate a little too well. If I'd lost Lyle by backing over him with my own car, I'd probably need electroshock therapy. My relief when I heard the happy ending was akin to a hit of nitrous oxide.

As it turns out, last week was also a cat-based high-drama week around here. There's a lot of demolition going on in the unit upstairs, which sat empty with trash in it for several months last year. Now that new owners are tearing out walls and plaster, some mice have found themselves displaced and been scoping our unit as potential new real estate. Niall, our newest cat, snagged one of them while we were out Thursday evening. In the past we've been home when this happened, and Niall allowed us take the mice from him, put them in a jar, and take them to the park down the street for release. But since we were gone, he pulled a Lenny from Of Mice and Men on this one. When we got home I was taking my jacket off when I heard Wyatt yell "Baby, don't come back here" from the office. He disposed of the mouse carcass but I walked in before he finished cleaning up and saw Niall lapping at a small pool of blood left on the floor. I say small, but I tell you it's amazing how much blood is in a tiny little mouse. Later we were loving Niall up on the couch and I recoiled when I saw he still had traces of red on his white paws.

I thought: What if the mouse had been my beloved pet, and Niall had been an unwelcome intruder living in the walls? One who emerged in our absence to dine on a creature we consider a family member? Chills. I also wondered if mice experience grief when family/friends disappear on their way to the cat food bowl. What a downer of a perspective.

Viva Lyle!

This is Lyle. He got a shave down yesterday at the vet, so he looks like he's lost ten pounds. He's also still quite sleepy from anesthesia.

Lately I've been thinking about the woman who gave me Lyle. I was in my early 20's and Airy was a couple of years older. We worked together in a medical supply factory. She told me about her new kitten; he had changed her life and she didn't understand how she ever did without him. It made me want to get one, despite the fact that cats make me sneeze and get bloodshot eyes. Several weeks later, Airy said she wanted to give me her cat. I went over one night after work and got him, though with grave reservations. I didn't know if I could handle this responsibility, this kind of long-term commitment, this kind of threat to my immune system.

Airy loved Lyle. But her home was her castle. She'd gotten married young and moved out of her mom's house into her husband's. That turned into a crazy situation and when Airy left, she left with the clothes on her back and not much else. So she worked really hard to save up enough money to make it on her own and have a nicely furnished apartment - the first space in her life that was truly hers. Lyle was shredding her furniture and she couldn't take it anymore.

I'm assuming that's what the problem was, because she didn't really say and I know that shredding is what Lyle started to do immediately at my place. He ruined the spines of my LP records and all the books on the lower shelves of my bookcase. He gutted the padded rails on my waterbed. He took the upholstery off a love seat. There was no sense getting mad about it either. He liked getting chased around the house and spanked, and would claw something loudly whenever he got bored and wanted some action. Many's the time I threatened to take him to the pound.

There were times when he got fleas and I couldn't afford flea-killer spray, so I got fleas too. Lyle hated to be brushed, and there were times when his long fur got so matted that shelf-like clumps on his ass became his litterbox. He has to be sedated before he can be properly groomed, and I spent money on vets and grooming when I could barely pay bills.

But I wish I could find Airy so I could tell her thank you, thank you, thank you so much for giving me this cat. He's got the greatest bossy personality and he keeps my feet warm in winter and his eyes are beautiful because he looks like he's wearing eyeliner and he's such a loving, affectionate entity who's seen me through the tumult of the last 15 years, virtually all of my post-college life. I looooooooove him.

Yesterday the vet gave Lyle a clean bill of health. He's 15 and he has feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, a disease similar to HIV in humans. Unfortunately I found out about the disease and had him tested for it while my other cat, Lyria, was dying from it two years ago - she was only 9. I still at times get tearful when I see black cats because they remind me of her.

So now every time I take Lyle to the vet for maintenance, I'm worried that they'll find something wrong with him. But this time the vet said his blood work shows that he's actually in really good shape for a catso his age.