(no subject)

My kitty is dying right now.

He got sick, all of a sudden, stopped eating and cleaning himself, so we had to forcefeed him and clean his fur with a washcloth -- and then we thought he was getting better, but he's old, and I suppose he just couldn't keep fighting.

He's thirteen and a half years old, almost. We got him when he was a tiny, scrawny kitten -- I picked him up out of his cage and he snuggled against my chest and shut his eyes in kitteny bliss, so we had to take him home. He gamboled about our feet in the car as we drove away from the shelter, trying to find him a name. I don't remember why we picked 'Roscoe'; maybe Dad and I had already begun our long list of cat jokes for talk show hosts and politicians (Rush Limpaw, Ross Purrroe, G. Gordon Kitty). He grew into a very large cat -- not fat (not at first), but huge. People said, when they saw him, "Oh, my, what a large cat you've got!" He's tall, and his paws are of a very respectable size. He towered over Bartholomew the kitten when we first brought him home.

Despite his menacing size, he was a very gentle and loving cat. He rarely scratches unless severely provoked (or playing rough). He trained Timmy and Heidi when they were babies -- let them crawl on him, tug on him, do what they wished, until they were old enough to learn not to. Then he'd bat at them if it got to be too much. They learned.

He got rather fat in later years, and very lazy, and we made fun of him lovingly. He's survived near-death before: once when I was eight and put a rubber band around his neck to hold a cape on, forgot the rubber band, and left it there, while the poor beast strangled. Mum found it a day or two later and rescued him. He has apparently forgiven me. Four or five years ago, he got into some kind of spat with a large creature -- Dad reckons it was a coyote, as those occasionally showed up in our urban North Shore neighbourhood to root through garbage cans. Ross had two great holes in his chest, and we were very worried, but we hadn't money for a veterinarian, so we watched and waited to see if he could manage to recover on his own. He did. He pulled the fur away from around the wounds and cleaned them painstakingly and laid low for a while until they healed. More recently -- a year ago? -- he met another wild animal in our woodsy backyard in Treasure Lake which gave him a nasty gash. He recovered perfectly from that, too.

At Christmastime, we got Bartholomew. Part of the reason -- though I don't think anyone voiced this, I certainly thought this and Mum has too -- was because we were worried Roscoe might go. He wasn't showing any signs of it (except laziness), but he was getting old. Thirteen is in the seventies in cat-reckoning. We wanted a kitten to liven Roscoe up, and comfort us so we wouldn't be suddenly left catless in the event of the worst.

Liven up Ross he did! Roscoe had two or three rip-roaring months of excitement, which I am sure he enjoyed though he in his dignity often pretended not to. He hated Bart at first and flinched whenever Bart came over to introduce himself -- scratched at him a few times. "What is this strange small creature intruding upon my territory?" But we soon found them snuggling under my bed. For a week or two, Roscoe would only fraternise with Bartholomew if he though no-one could see them (silly Alpha male), but he finally accepted him, and they used to chase each other wildly all through the house, stopping only to become one large ball of black cat and black-and-white cat tumbling through the kitchen. Roscoe showed signs of kittenhood even when Bartholomew wasn't around -- chasing his tail, playing with string, wildly chasing tinfoil balls. Timmy made a huge one of these, larger than my fist, and Ross took to carrying the thing around in his mouth, gripping with his teeth. It was hilarious to behold.

Quite suddenly, while Leandra was in hospital, Roscoe lost weight, his fur started getting manky, and then he stopped eating altogether. We thought it was kidney poisoning, on account of the catfood recall, but with a baby in the hospital we just didn't have time for a cat, too. Once she was out, we took him for an examination -- and discovered it wasn't the catfood at all. He's got some sort of old-cat disease, where his liver stops working properly and he goes anorexic. We started force-feeding him, and until even yesterday, we thought he was getting better -- he'd started eating a little on his own, and perked up some.

This morning, all of a sudden he can't even stand. He's dying. We don't know how long he has. We've made up a soft box for him, full of the stuffing from a chair he scratched the upholstry off of (he fell off the chair), and he's resting as comfortably as he can, whilst we gather round and say our goodbyes and love him and love him and love him.

He's been part of our lives for so many years -- silly, I've never watched someone so close to me die before. My great-grandmother died, and a woman from our old small-group in Massachusetts succumbed to cancer, and there was Baby Jabez, but that wasn't -- quite -- like this.

Sweet Roscoe, Rossikins. ♥

The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious beast:
His disobliging ways are a matter of habit.
If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast;
When there isn't any fish then he won't eat rabbit.
If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers,
For he only likes what he finds for himself;
So you'll catch him in it right up to the ears,
If you put it away on the larder shelf.
The Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing,
The Rum Tum Tugger doesn't care for a cuddle; [not quite -- he loved cuddling, but liked muddling more!]
But he'll leap on your lap in the middle of your sewing,
For there's nothing he enjoys like a horrible muddle.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat -
And there isn't any call for me to spout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!

there appears to be more darkness than light (but shadows will pass, smoke it will clear)

Well, it's over. Roscoe died around noon today. We were all with him when he went, touching him and loving him and we knew he was loving us. He's always been an astonishingly loving cat -- even when he could barely stand these last weeks he made a point of coming to sit by the table while we ate dinner every evening. We discovered that last night he crept into each of our bedrooms to sleep for a while -- I know he cuddled with me on the bed for half an hour before he moved to the foot of the bed, then to the floor. He must have known he didn't have another chance and wanted to say goodbye to his family. (He didn't want to be an invalid, either -- after I cuddled with him on my bed for a while this morning, I brought him down to be with everyone else and put him on his favourite chair, the one he and Bart -- mostly he! -- have rent to bits with their claws. He lay there for a while, but after about half an hour, when our backs were turned, he tried to stand up and tumbled limply off the chair. After that, we filled his cardboard box -- he's always loved cardboard boxes, and laundry baskets, and other things he's not even supposed to fit in -- with soft cotton from the chair, as it's all tumbling out the back, and settled him down in there.)

I must have sat with him for three hours -- Mum woke me up at eight this morning to tell me that she thought he didn't have very much longer, and we all gathered around and stroked him, but after everyone else drifted off for a while to attend to general morning needs, I didn't leave -- I couldn't, I suppose. He was always my cat, by and large. He picked me, as we often say. Later Mum and Dad and Timmy and Heidi drifted back (Leandra too, after a while -- she was sleeping upstairs but later she wanted her breakfast so Mum went to get her and brought her down), as he worsened -- started gasping for breath, and twitching every now and then. We stroked him and stroked him; every so often we might stop and he would lift his head to look at us. That would drain all of his strength and he'd flop down into his box again. He loved having us near, I know. I'm so glad -- we're all so glad -- that he died in the morning with his family all around him instead of in the middle of the night, or outside someplace where we mightn't be able to find him for a while (he loved hiding under the house, for one thing). Dad was home, too -- he wasn't supposed to be, but his morning school client called in sick, so he didn't have to go in. We held our darling kitty and loved him and reminisced and wept, and took one last photograph of the family -- Dad, Mum, I, Timmy, Heidi, Leandra, Roscoe, and Bartholomew.

Finally, he started gasping for breath urgently -- that went on for a while. He'd gasp and then subside for a while and then give another great gasp. His legs kept twitching restlessly and spasmatically. He hadn't seemed to be in much pain before then -- he'd just been very solemn and sad, as he'd been for the past several weeks. Grotesquely, tufts of fur fell off in a few places -- his skin was seperating, or something; there was blood and it was horrible. There wasn't very much of this, thank God. We kept feeling for his heartbeat and it kept beating more and more faintly until finally there wasn't anything to feel. Mum had shut his mouth, which kept lolling open as he tried to breathe; Dad shut his eyes; Timmy and Heidi and I each held him one last time, and then we straightened his box and later put a cloth over his body. 

I feel very queer; I'm not quite sure what to make of all of the things going on my head and body just now. As I said, I've never watched anybody close to me -- anybody at all -- die before, and even if he was 'only' an animal, he was a very dear friend of our family, very kind and loving and giving even to the end. He was alert almost to the point of death. He just wanted his family with him. I've never seen death before, and I don't know what to make of it. I feel a bit numb, I suppose -- very, very odd, full of things I don't even know how to put names to. Sort of shaky, and quiet, and pulled into myself a bit, I suppose.

It's a rainy day, the sort I like best. Funny, this would be a beautiful, near-perfect day, I think, if Roscoe hadn't died. Dad took Timmy and Heidi and I to the library a while after lunch (I was hungry and yet I couldn't stomach much, so I had toast and orange juice and felt a little better), and that was nice, even if I can't get anything out that Dad does not charitably check out on his own card for me. I am reading one of my books now, another book by Madeleine L'Engle about life and love and living and God and ourselves. (I wish I could meet her. I feel like I know her, a little, and I think we would like each other. We think the same ways about astonishing little things -- about words, about writing, about love, about art, about God -- so many little things, the little things that turn out to be the big things. There are some writers, you know, whom you love to read, and maybe you live in their books sometimes, and maybe they mean something -- but then there are other writers whose writings are bits of you -- they're writers of your heart and they get into your soul and take roost there gently and irrevocably, and something about them is like being home, except it's a home you didn't know was home and it turns out it's more widely and fully home than the house you're living in, or the last house, or even a succession of houses. I've been feeling a lot of that, lately -- finding vivid familiarity, a sense of having been there before, in unfamiliar places. I'm trying to understand what that means, why it is.) All of the books I got were unfamiliar books by familiar authors, which is nice when one needs comfort -- there's always a risk with a wholly new book. You mightn't like it at all. It might offend you in some way; it might present ideas that are much too alien to the way you see the world. It might even, heaven forbid, turn out to be dull. Unconsciously I think I must approach most books this way. Some authors are like friends, though, and with a new book by an old author, you have both the sense of familiarity and the sense of discovery, which may amount to the best of all worlds.

We also went Mother's Day gift-shopping (what, really, Mum, don't look surprised; you know that's why we were gone so long and why we hid those bags straightaway! :D) and Timmy bought all of us chocolates out of his own pocket, which was incredibly sweet of him, and outside smells like rain and green things and there is still a bit of hope glimmering in the corners of the world. I know this, because when we were driving home in our great hulking monster of a van, the sun broke through a cloud or two and streamed down on the road like a benediction.

I am reading A Circle of Quiet (as I said) and it is exactly the sort of book I need right now -- quiet and reflective and serious and tender and wistful and loving. Bartholomew is very nice to have about, too; I can't imagine if we hadn't got him -- imagine a house with no cats at all! He's curled up in one of my dresser drawers now, being obstinately difficult to see in his blackness until he opens his startlingly golden eyes and regards you with the particular sort of haughty hubris that can only be found in the visage of a cat.

The world is very quiet. It's astonishing and odd and terrifying and fascinating and horrible that there was someone who was alive and breathing and moving this morning and now there is nothing left but a shell of flesh and bone and fur. Another mystery of life and time and death. The world brims with mysteries that cannot be solved or really understood, though they've got to be so commonplace that we don't often remember that they are questions without answers.

I'm glad my bedroom is clean, for once, with the bed made (it had ceased to be a suitable atmosphere for reading; I had to clean it, and I have spent the past three days doing a lot of daydreaming, thinking, listening, and being -- it's been oddly solemn). Outside is grey and also bright; I have the windows flung open and the breeze comes in and wends its way around every now and then. I have pale light coming in the window onto my pillow (I moved my pillow from one end of the bed to the other, so now I wake with the sun on my face, and when I am lying on my back I can see the other window with all the brilliant green of tree curtaining it) and onto my book. The world's shifted position. (A thunderstorm has started; the world out the window is a frightening, manic shade of green. Thunderstorms always seem to me like the world cracking and crumbling and remaking itself over again.) I'm not quite sure what to do about that, but I am feeling as if someday everything's going to be all right.