![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An Elegy for Oscar
Jan. 22nd, 2007 11:20 pm"Did you know that January 22nd is supposed to be the saddest day of the year?" Wales asks as we leave the veternian clinic, which is next to the Cobble Hill Funeral Center on Court Street. She hugs herself and looks at me, then straight ahead, fighting tears, her face streaked with them, making it look red and blotchy. I can hear her sniffle from a lingering cold, a slight wheezing sound. "I read that online somewhere today. It has something to do with it being the time when the post Christmas bills come due, the weather is lousey, and well.."
"I can see that. There's no new holidays coming up, except Valentine's Day which sucks if you are alone, which most people are," I say, lugging the now empty animal carry case, a plastic monstrousity in beige and green, with a metal gate door in the front. It jiggles in my hand and feels oddly heavy. Not as heavy as it was, but still heavy. Weighted down, I think, by a towel wrapped around a ghost.
The sky is misting bits of white dust. Dark now, no longer the color of soiled socks, the ones you wash but can never quite get clean, so they always look discolored - a dull whitish grey or greyish white. Still cold though, getting colder, our tear stained cheeks bristle against it.
I lost a friend today. We both did, Wales and I. I'd been out of touch, my fault mostly. And he was just a cat. But I still considered him my friend. That's the way it is with friends you know, even when you stop interacting with them, they reside somewhere in your heart.
Oscar. His name was Oscar.
Wales and I talk about him in snatchs. Then not at all. Instead we talk about everything else. Politics. The internet. Television shows. Even over a dinner of pad thai and beer (for her) and wine (for me), we skirt around him. Yet, next to us sits his empty carrying case, with the towel inside that still smells like him, a faint, catty smell, hard to describe.
My mind tonight, even when watching Heroes and Studio 60, knitting propped high on my lap, is flooded with nothing but memories. When I first moved to Brooklyn in 1996, March or was it April - seems so long ago now yet the memories feel like yesterday. The years do bleed together don't they? I stayed at my friend Wale's apartment. While she worked, I used her phone and cold called publishers and organizations I'd sent my resume to along with a cover letter, and Oscar bless his heart would sneak up into my lap, almost as if he sensed my anxiety, and kept me company. I remember stroking his fur as I worried over the jobs or cried over the nasty responses to my calls. While people screamed at me over the phone - Oscar was there, purring under my resting hand.
Or the nights when he snuck up next to me, in my sleeping bag on her floor. His voice a soft, whispery meow. Sneaking food from me as I sat at her table, staring morosely at the phone eating whatever I'd scrunged up.
A cat. Just a cat. And not even mine.
I think about Wales tonight. She is going home to an apartment that now just contains herself and one other cat. An apartment that stinks of the one that we watched put to sleep. And we did watch it. A simple procedure that I've seen done before and is by no means easy to watch. It is quick and I'm told painless. She's had him since 1991. Adopted from the ASPCA. A little abandoned kitten, black and white patches, named for Oscar the Grouch. She'd adopted him initially to help with the mice in her apartment that spooked her. He was allowed outdoors.
And a constant companion. In 1997, she got another cat solely to keep him company and they got on surprisingly well. Played, cuddled. And I remember the number of times I told her he was alright when he hadn't come home for a few nights in a row, clearly tom-catting around. He always did come home eventually though.
It's only been within the last three years he has proved a problem. Since 2005. He was her friend. More faithful than most humans when we get right down to it and had seen her through more than one failed romantic relationship. And tonight she goes home without him.
And I know how she feels. I know what it is like to lose a friend. It is not an ache that goes away so much as fades. I still remember the cats I've lost over the years. As well as the human friends. Memories come to me unbidden. Like they do tonight of a black and white cat named Oscar who once upon a time kept me company when I needed it. I will miss him, even if we did not stay in touch.
"Do you think there is a heaven for cats?" Wales askes me in the waiting room several hours earlier, in a whisper, so that the others around us won't hear, Oscar still snug in his cage as she strokes him, which like all waiting rooms is non-descript and littered with old and worn magazines. A small pug sits nearby, big eyes giving new meaning to the term puppy dog look. He melts my heart, his eyes scared and his body trembling. While Oscar lies bravely in his cage, barely a shiver. [The dog goes in and out again, before we enter.]
I look at Oscar and at Wales. "As much as I believe there's one for people, I'd say there has to be one for cats. After all, why not?"
"I hope so," she says.
And later as we walk homewards, empty carry case swinging between us, I think to myself and half utter aloud...that we all go back to the same source. Oscar is part of nature after all. Part of the world. This thought comforts me.
Rest in peace, Oscar, my dear friend, and know you were loved. Afterall, I think, that's the best any of us, cat, dog, man, woman or beast can ask for in this crazy life. To know they were loved.
"I can see that. There's no new holidays coming up, except Valentine's Day which sucks if you are alone, which most people are," I say, lugging the now empty animal carry case, a plastic monstrousity in beige and green, with a metal gate door in the front. It jiggles in my hand and feels oddly heavy. Not as heavy as it was, but still heavy. Weighted down, I think, by a towel wrapped around a ghost.
The sky is misting bits of white dust. Dark now, no longer the color of soiled socks, the ones you wash but can never quite get clean, so they always look discolored - a dull whitish grey or greyish white. Still cold though, getting colder, our tear stained cheeks bristle against it.
I lost a friend today. We both did, Wales and I. I'd been out of touch, my fault mostly. And he was just a cat. But I still considered him my friend. That's the way it is with friends you know, even when you stop interacting with them, they reside somewhere in your heart.
Oscar. His name was Oscar.
Wales and I talk about him in snatchs. Then not at all. Instead we talk about everything else. Politics. The internet. Television shows. Even over a dinner of pad thai and beer (for her) and wine (for me), we skirt around him. Yet, next to us sits his empty carrying case, with the towel inside that still smells like him, a faint, catty smell, hard to describe.
My mind tonight, even when watching Heroes and Studio 60, knitting propped high on my lap, is flooded with nothing but memories. When I first moved to Brooklyn in 1996, March or was it April - seems so long ago now yet the memories feel like yesterday. The years do bleed together don't they? I stayed at my friend Wale's apartment. While she worked, I used her phone and cold called publishers and organizations I'd sent my resume to along with a cover letter, and Oscar bless his heart would sneak up into my lap, almost as if he sensed my anxiety, and kept me company. I remember stroking his fur as I worried over the jobs or cried over the nasty responses to my calls. While people screamed at me over the phone - Oscar was there, purring under my resting hand.
Or the nights when he snuck up next to me, in my sleeping bag on her floor. His voice a soft, whispery meow. Sneaking food from me as I sat at her table, staring morosely at the phone eating whatever I'd scrunged up.
A cat. Just a cat. And not even mine.
I think about Wales tonight. She is going home to an apartment that now just contains herself and one other cat. An apartment that stinks of the one that we watched put to sleep. And we did watch it. A simple procedure that I've seen done before and is by no means easy to watch. It is quick and I'm told painless. She's had him since 1991. Adopted from the ASPCA. A little abandoned kitten, black and white patches, named for Oscar the Grouch. She'd adopted him initially to help with the mice in her apartment that spooked her. He was allowed outdoors.
And a constant companion. In 1997, she got another cat solely to keep him company and they got on surprisingly well. Played, cuddled. And I remember the number of times I told her he was alright when he hadn't come home for a few nights in a row, clearly tom-catting around. He always did come home eventually though.
It's only been within the last three years he has proved a problem. Since 2005. He was her friend. More faithful than most humans when we get right down to it and had seen her through more than one failed romantic relationship. And tonight she goes home without him.
And I know how she feels. I know what it is like to lose a friend. It is not an ache that goes away so much as fades. I still remember the cats I've lost over the years. As well as the human friends. Memories come to me unbidden. Like they do tonight of a black and white cat named Oscar who once upon a time kept me company when I needed it. I will miss him, even if we did not stay in touch.
"Do you think there is a heaven for cats?" Wales askes me in the waiting room several hours earlier, in a whisper, so that the others around us won't hear, Oscar still snug in his cage as she strokes him, which like all waiting rooms is non-descript and littered with old and worn magazines. A small pug sits nearby, big eyes giving new meaning to the term puppy dog look. He melts my heart, his eyes scared and his body trembling. While Oscar lies bravely in his cage, barely a shiver. [The dog goes in and out again, before we enter.]
I look at Oscar and at Wales. "As much as I believe there's one for people, I'd say there has to be one for cats. After all, why not?"
"I hope so," she says.
And later as we walk homewards, empty carry case swinging between us, I think to myself and half utter aloud...that we all go back to the same source. Oscar is part of nature after all. Part of the world. This thought comforts me.
Rest in peace, Oscar, my dear friend, and know you were loved. Afterall, I think, that's the best any of us, cat, dog, man, woman or beast can ask for in this crazy life. To know they were loved.
