Cats I have known

We moved into this house in 2001. It wasn't long after that Hobbes, our Big Orange Cat™, made a break for it, and we became frequent visitors of the Plano Animal Shelter. We're optimists. He never showed. But, one fateful day, these two ladies plunked down on the counter in a crate. Their owner started rambling on with some story about "the girlfriend blah blah blah" to the staff and I just said, "go put them in my car." The lady behind the desk stopped him talking, and sent him out to the parking lot with me.

I wasn't about to let two 11+ year old ladies step into the pound. They weren't, shall we say, prime adoption candidates. And there was a wicked run of respiratory infection passing through the pound. So they came home, snuggled away in the spare bedroom, and I braced for the impending murder of my person when Amanda came home and found them.

Did I mention that we were optimists? She had already been to the pound on the way home. They had already ratted me out.

"Your husband did the sweetest thing," they said.

"Not my husband," she confidently told them.

"You have to promise not to kill me," I told her.

"Why would I kill you, dear?" she asked. Ah... deceit! It's such sweet pleasure.

We tried integration. But the ladies had and have maintained a strict anti-dog posture. So we've had upstairs cats (the ladies), bedroom cats (Holly & Cayenne) and the dogs (Wickett & Fiona).

Maddie was the first to lose the battle to aging. She left with dignity. On a Wednesday she was her normal, aloof, eating, vociferous self. By Friday, she wasn't eating or drinking, and it was clear her body wasn't processing nutrients anymore. We took her for her last visit to our vet across the street on Saturday morning. Maddie was a strange little cat. She was at her calmest and most relaxed at the vet's office.

Eight hours from now, Maggie and I will go see Pat. It will not help that Pat is my friend. It will not help that I know Pat is a great lover and healer of animals. It will not help that I know that Maggie deserves this painless exit and doesn't need to suffer wondering why it hurts.

But I know that anytime I sit down with a guitar, I'll be expecting the onset of feline criticism just any moment now for the rest of my life. Every time I change guitar strings, I'll be expecting her to come sit down in the sound hole, just any moment now for the rest of my life. When I get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, I'll be waiting as I turn on the kitchen light for a very surprised "upstairs" cat to bolt past me back upstairs, just any moment now for the rest of my life.

And that's better.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

-Dylan Thomas

One final note... Sometimes the mind remembers things incorrectly. This poem is one that I always mis-remember. My brain always comes back with "Do not go quietly into that good night." Maggie has never gone quietly anywhere. Keep yowling, young cat!