R.I.P. Lucien, October 2007 – February 10, 2018, My Light of Love

Let me tip a line of silence to my buddy . . .

 .  .  .

As a writer, and as a person, I study life, which means I also study death.  Even in the deepest fits of grief, I strive to understand the emotions that tear us apart, leaving us gut-punched and bruised, heads throbbing, eyes slick with fiery tears and sand, battered by unseen fists.  Our memories race and the beating intensifies.  It’s our own personal hell.  It’s inside us.  It’s grief.  Sadness.  Love.  Our emotions. 

Emotions are intangible, but they leave a path.

I discovered this when David died in 2007.  I discovered it again in the years that followed.  I full-body slammed into it in January 2016 when Robin passed.  And while I’m still grieving for her, and the first anniversary of her death, I am reminded yet again, now.

First, I want to get this out of the way.  I am a deeply empathetic person and I am a cat person.  I love animals.  Stick me in Snow White or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty’s shoes, and I’ll sing and dance with mice and birds.  In MY shoes, I talk to cats and play with bugs.  Anyway, I’ve heard, “It’s just a cat,” far, far too many times.  It’s insensitive.  And I don’t mean that in a pc way.  It’s mean.  If someone is hurting, and that person is supposedly your friend, shouldn’t you care?  So . . . Animal people will get this.  Empathizers will get this.  Not everyone will.  To some people, the animals who live with us are only that.  Little things that scurry under foot or live outside.  But for the sake of this post, imagine someone close to you, someone you love, someone you see and talk to everyday.  Someone you say, “I love you,” to everyday.  Someone who is so much a part of your life that you wouldn’t recognize life without that person.  Now lose that person.  Or imagine your best friend has just lost that person.

I have felt that great loss both from person and animal.  The first time was with David.  It was soul shattering.  He was my first true grief study.  I was writing CONFESSIONS at the time and was working in a chapter that needed a true depth of sadness that I could only imagine.  Well, thought I could imagine.  I rewrote that whole chapter in grief.  I learned how to make grief tangible the hard way.  But it’s damn good chapter.  And that’s when I learned that I rely on my emotions to write (which is another post, for another time).

Okay, so this post should obviously be about Lucien.  I’m still not in a great place when it comes to him.  He just came home the other day.  We have our cats cremated, so he’s hanging out in a box.  You know, he’s a cat.  If it fits . . .

Yeah, I’m not there, either.  Okay, (nervous ear scratch), how about this – let me tie David and Lucien together because this whole thing is a puzzle that has ripped open old wounds and really showcases the maze that is grief and the weird patterns that form life.  When I met my husband, I had two cats, Twitch and Shadow.  Technically, Shadow was Twitch’s cat, but whatever, he didn’t have the thumbs to sign the papers.  (Laughs)  Yeah, I’m totally the crazy cat lady.  Okay, anyway, I was at one of the lowest points in my life and was homeless.  Twitch moved in with my then boyfriend soon-to-be husband and Shadow moved in with my parents.  Long story short, which I’m sure is too late since you know I write books and super long blog posts, Shadow disappeared, after accidentally slipping out, along with the neighbor’s dog.  Queue six plus months of searching and posters and calling the Humane Society to no avail.  Shadow was gone. 

The search brought Tim and I to David, however.  David literally reached out and grabbed me.  And he looked like Shadow.  I was at a better place in life by then, but not ready to give up on Shadow.  He’d been such a sweet cat.  He loved car rides and would curl up in my lap and just stare up at me while I sang (horribly) with the radio.  Eventually, the day did come, though.  Tim and I went in to apply for David.  He was gone.  We were bummed.

A month went by.  Tim and I had our apartment and Twitch was our only cat.  I can’t believe I had only one cat.  Or rather that my cat didn’t have another cat.  (awkward pause to think that through)  And then one day, Tim came home with a surprise.  David.

I still get happy with tears when I think about it.  David had been sickly and, apparently, when we’d gone to apply for him, he’d been put into isolation with a respiratory infection, and was there for almost a month.  He had a bed sore on his leg and a goopy eye, but was otherwise okay.  He was prone to sickness, as we found out, but we did our best to keep him healthy.  David was not Twitch’s cat, for the record.  At the time, Twitch had a pet gerbil named Ralph.  (laughs again) I swear, I’m never going to finish this – seriously – Twitch and Ralph were something else.  We had a hamster ball so Ralph could run around the apartment, but we’d let him run around the bedroom without it.  Twitch would chase him, but if he ran under the bed . . . under the bed was “base” so Twitch would wait and do that cat shoulder-shimmy-shake thing while he waited.  Ralph would dart out from under the bed right at him and they’d zoom around the room.  It was all play.  Twitch never tried to hurt Ralph.  It was totally adorable.

And then we got David.

I was cleaning Ralph’s cage, with Ralph in it, turned for 5 seconds, turned back . . . bloody cage, bloody Ralph.  (sigh)  David tried to grab him behind my back and only hit with one canine into Ralph’s ear.  We treated the wound for weeks or months, I don’t recall, but Ralph kept scratching it and reopening it and making it worse, and we finally had to euthanize him.  That was Twitch’s last pet.  His pets didn’t have the best luck.

You can imagine David’s entrance into our lives was a bit rocky.  It’s hard to believe that now, knowing how much we both loved him and how much he still affects us.  For example, he died in 2007 right after Christmas, and we had a red string tied to a doorknob that he loved to play with.  We’ve moved four times since we got him, while he was alive, and since he died, and that string is still tied to a doorknob.  None of my current cats touch it.  It’s David’s string.

David was special.  Truly.  He was smart.  He knew that doorknobs opened doors and he would try to open them.  If we’d had lever-style handles, every door would’ve been open.  He also knew how to open the cabinets and how to do a host of other things.  He used his paws like hands and would spread out his “fingers” to grab things.  I’ve never had a cat like him.  We had to Davey-proof our house, to include socket covers.  I swear – anything you’d do for a toddler, we had to do it for him.  He also seemingly understood cameras.  It was hard to catch him in a candid shot because by the time the camera was ready, he’d be posed.  I have so many perfect pictures of David.  He was a handsome guy.  He was a lap ninja, too.  You’d sit down and never even know when he’d gotten there, but there he was.  And it was David, so you couldn’t move, even though he was a lap ninja and would come back.  He loved warmth, so he slept with me in the winter and with Tim in the Summer.  He rarely purred.  When he did, it was really low and really quiet, and the most special thing in the entire universe.

One night, in our first apartment, I was nauseous, so Tim and I were lying on the couch watching tv together.  Tim kept fidgeting with David, who was digging under the couch, and the movement made me feel worse, so I moved down to the floor.  A few minutes later, Tim and David appeared with a velvet box from under the couch.  Tim said something like, “This isn’t how I wanted to do this . . .” but David apparently wanted to help.  He opened the box and asked me to marry him (and David).  Oh my God, how did I get such a guy?  It was the anniversary of our first date.  Of course, I said yes.  And luckily, I didn’t throw up on anyone.

David was there for so much happiness in my life, so many good times.  He would walk us to the door to say goodbye and greet us when we got home.  He’d sit on the kitchen stool when we cooked, get dusted with flour when I baked, and sit on the basin when I bathed.  He was always with me.  On me when he could be.  I wrote the first draft of THE ARRIVAL  in three months and he was there for every single page.  He was there for most of the first draft of Confessions.  Writing has never been the same since I lost him.

David, as it turns out, was a good pretender.  I discovered, one night, that he was putting his face into his dish and moving food around, picking it up, and spitting it out, but not eating.  I wish I had noticed sooner.  In hindsight, there were warning signs that I missed.  I learned a lot from David’s life and death.  The next morning, Tim took him to the vet to have him checked out – we had an arrangement to drop him off in the morning before work so they could fit him in.  I wasn’t aware of how long he’d been doing this, but I did know that cats can’t go 24-hours without food or water without serious consequences, so I thought we were being proactive at the time.  Neither of us expected to hear that he was going downhill fast and that it would be “cruel” to prolong his condition.  That sounds mean, but it was compassionate.  Tim and I are both pragmatic people and would rather hear it straight and true.

David was so cold when we got there.  And he was in so much pain, he growled at me when he was put on my lap for the last time.  He was shivering so badly.  And he was purring.  Purring because it hurt so much.  I beat myself up for years for missing the signs that let him get that bad.  Maybe that guilt is coming back now.  We had no idea what actually happened aside from the fact that he had stopped eating and had lost weight.  I don’t know how we missed the weight loss, given how much he’d lost, but he'd always been trim (had to look good for the camera).  When the time came, they tried to find a vein for the needle and he fought them.  It was awful.  Thankfully, they sedated him, and then were able to euthanize him in peace.  No matter how painful it is for me, I insist on being there with them and for them.  They are dying.  It cannot be more painful for me to watch than it is for them.  The least I can do is be there for them. 

The house felt so different without him.  His absence was huge.  He was quiet guy, not a talker like so many others, but it seemed quieter.  My lap was colder.  My friend was gone.  My best friend was dead.  And, as it turns out, I lost my other cats, for awhile, too.  We had five by the time David died.  Twitch was the at the top and David was the prince, which suited them both.  Twitch liked David and hated the others, and David loved everyone.  Everyone loved David.  David was my kitty glue.  Where he went, the others followed.  So when I wrote and had David on my lap, I had 3 other cats surrounding me.  Well, suddenly, I had none.  Without the glue, they wandered listlessly.  Twitch was still the alpha, but they'd lost their common element.  David was special to human and cat alike.

I cried so hard for so long.  I cried for him, for failing him, for the loss, for emptiness.  Sometimes I still cry for David.  David represents so much for me.  He was with me during the happiest times in my life and he died just before I entered some of the hardest parts.  And now I'm crying equally hard again, for a loss that is so eerily similar, yet different on so many levels.  But,  we’ll call this part one and close for now.  Part two coming soon.