To All the Cats I've Loved Before
(and a few dogs too)
I’m trying a few new things. I’ve decided to paywall posts and essays that are over a month old. I’m not doing this to keep my writing away from anyone who wants it, but to give more special content to subscribers and to encourage more folks to subscribe. As I say in every post, I’m broke, and every little bit of money that comes in (even one paid subscriber helps!) makes a difference in my life.
I’ve also lowered the subscription price to just $5 a month or $50 dollars annually. If you become a Founding Member for $180, you get a free Writing Boss session with me. There’s also the tip jar/buy me a coffee button which allows you to give me a dollar or two or five if you really like a particular post and don’t have much to spare. As always if you need a free subscription, just let me know, no questions asked.
The more paid subscribers I get, the more special things I can start to offer to my paid people, like access to the archive (already happening for paid people), special fun chats about hilarious and maybe nostalgic topics, and maybe a book club if we really get cooking. I’m open to subscriber ideas too.
If you read even a few sentences of this, don’t forget to hit the heart down there! Comments are the best! Truly!
If you need a tiny break from politics, skip down to the first cat photo, but I hope you’ll stay because I’m keeping it short and simple. But yes, sometimes we just need CATS.
It’s bad times out there people, I don’t need to tell you that. #freepalestine #freegaza #freelebanon #armsembargonow #hostageshome and I know a lot of you are doing everything you can to make things better. Thank you for that. Also, did you know writing is a form of activism? It’s true. It may not always work and not all writing of course, but so much of the writing I love is activist to the core. I’m thinking of
‘s Matriarchy Report, bell hooks, , , , and to name a few.The person who helped me understand writing as one possible form of activism is writer and activist for social change Deepa Iyer. She created the Social Change Ecosystem Map which outlines various roles one might take on (or feel or do already) in social justice movements. Storyteller, caregiver, and guide (my teaching) speak to me. I used to be more of a disrupter, but disability stuff makes that harder for me lately. Anyway, take a look, and please always follow Iyer’s guidelines for sharing this work. She also offers tool kits, workshops, and workbooks for organizations.
NOW ONTO CATS
ZACHARY
Zachary was my first kitty. He lived with my parents before I was born and welcomed me into his home with visits to my playpen and crib. Honestly, he may have been super pissed because what is a baby but a more demanding and life-changing pet, ahem, human, but I’ll always remember him as my first kitty friend. He was a black cat (not him above), perhaps belonging to my Dad more than my Mom. Born in San Diego like me, he lived a brief but wild California life (also me, not really, we moved to Western NY when I was six weeks old, but I could have been a surfer girl).
Zachary could do some amazing tricks. He liked to catch playing cards between his paws. Those cards are slippery! If you hung him over your stretched out arm, he liked to FLIP! over it and onto the floor. Zachary was my first familiar. He often came to me when I was crying and in pain to lick my tears. I was very sick and in a lot of pain until I was 11, and he was there for that.
I believed and still do that we communicated telepathically. I may or may not have decided this after watching Escape from Witch Mountain, which is about two orphans? who could communicate with each other and their black cat telepathically. I could Google this, but I’m in a rush to finish before students arrive to conference with me. Any other Gen Xers out there who were turned into witches by this movie? I’m still haunted by that drowning, plane or boat crash scene that marked the end of their parents and the beginning of their powers.
Mindy Lou
I’m sorry my dad was a dick to you. He treated us all that way, but it especially wasn’t fair to you, a sweet, wild, crazy little beagle shepherd mix from the local shelter. My brother and I loved you so much and I’m sorry you only got to be with us for a year, but I suspect you had a better life with your new owners. I truly hope so. You were extraordinarily impossible for us (a completely dysfunctional and dysregulated family of four) to train.
You did some legendary badass things. You never really peed outside (I think your attitude was like it sucks here so I’m going to pee on it, which was honest and right). One day you chewed a hole through our wooden staircase, like completely straight through so my brother and I could stand on opposite ends of the hole, him in the family room and me on the staircase, look at each other, and say, “Holy shit, Dad’s going to freak out.” You also bit us gently but firmly almost every day, and you almost failed obedience school. There’s a reason my brother and I wrote a whole song about you and sang it for the rest of our childhoods. You were and will also be a true Queen.
Lucy and Lester
So if you didn’t already know it, a lot of my family are hicks. My Uncle Merle and Aunt Sue (they definitely need their own essay), didn’t fix their cats and so had kittens almost every year. Many of these kittens came from an ongoing lineage of female cats, all named Herman. After Mindy Lou, our parents recognized perhaps that we were best suited for cat care, also we begged my mom relentlessly when we knew there was new batch of kittens living in my Uncle Merle’s junk garage. He had several garages, as you do in Western PA.
*As I proofread I realize we already Lucy and Lester when we got Mindy Lou. This was a rough time for all of our pets, and not a good idea. Also, this was before the internet and we knew nothing about how to help a wild dog and cat siblings live together.
Two tabbies, brother and sister. Lester (maybe my dad named him after Lester Bangs, the rock music critic) and Lucy (named after Lucille Ball who is also from Jamestown, New York, where I grew up). Lester was a long haired-tabby and Lucy was short-haired. We loved them so much, and I think they had pretty good lives with us until they end (and also when we had Mindy Lou, they definitely spent a lot of time on top of the cupboards and outside), when my mother put them to sleep while I was at college and didn’t tell me until I got back for x-mas break.
I never got to say good-bye to them. Parents, let your children say good-bye to their animals and have rituals. It’s super important.
Lester’s nickname was (and this says something about the 80s or my family I truly don’t know) Lester, the mole-ester because his favorite thing to do was to catch a mole, kill it, and eat it in front of the screen door while we all looked on in total horror. Lester once rode a scary dog out of our back yard, like he jumped on his back and used his claws to steer him away from us, never for the dog to return. Poor doggie. Lester looked like a beautiful tiny lion, and when the sun shone on his fur he became the god of his domain.
Lucy was the sweetest and more my kitty than anyone else’s. She spent time outside too, but wasn’t a big hunter. Mostly she liked to sleep on various beds and cuddle with my mom and me. She was an loving companion, and so gentle. She got me through many difficult teenage moments.
Adopting sibling cats is the way to go because they’re already bonded and they play together really well. There’s no adjustment period lasting over a year, like some cats, I currently know. Hey, two of my favorite queers, Amy and Sarah rescued and are fostering a bonded pair of boy tabby brothers if you are looking. They are Smudge and Squint and I met them the other day. Total fun boys and super cute!
Wow, this got long. I’m going to Part 1 and Part 2 this I think. But let me know if this is working for you and you want a Part 2 of all the pets I’ve loved before? Also, please leave a comment about your current pet or a pet from your childhood that changed your life.
If I were to do a Part 2, here’s a preview of what’s ahead: Hector, Kato and Pepsi, Velveeta, Rudy, Lou, Pippi, and Marina! Oh, and Foxxy, the most patient and hilarious mutt I’ve ever met. Foxxy and I had a special ritual in which I put butter on a tiny tomato and fed it to him. I’ve always been an enabler.
My friend Philip bought that for me! Treasure. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks pretty wild. No cat on the cover, I wonder if Disney added the kitty? I love their jackets. They’re both kinda wearing my dream androgynous outfit.
Enjoy the typos!
xoxoxo
Carley
Pumpkin, a grey tiger cat, hit twice by a car on state route 10 in front of our house. The second time took her. She was a picky eater, and my sweet mother cooked liver for her every day.
Zeke, a black lab mutt, who, like your dog, had a taste for wood and regularly ate the woodwork in my apartment. My first husband got Zeke in the divorce.
Sonny-dog, a golden retriever-border collie mix who was the smartest and best family dog we ever had. He developed cancer and when it hurt him too much, we fed him a T-bone steak and a kind vet came to our house and euthanized him in our backyard - where he is buried, wrapped in my son’s favorite Blood Brothers t-shirt - while we four held him. For the next 3 days, we sat vigil at his grave in the company of a butterfly who refused to leave until we did. Tonks, a stinky and naughty little black puggle who ate everything including used tampons and THC gummies, and is buried next to Sonny Dog wrapped in my son’s second favorite Blood Brothers t-shirt. And Missy-Cat, our beloved guardian cat who found my son when he was deep into his heroin addiction, and who - I believe - kept him alive until he got clean. Just shy of N’s first clean anniversary, Missy left during a thunder and lightning storm, and never returned. I imagine she found another boy to guard and keep alive. I still miss them all.
Oh how much the animals in my life have meant to me! Thank you for sharing the different personalities of the animals you've had relationships with. I was a little worried about reading this essay now, as yesterday we decided to put down our dog Lola, and I'm flooded with tears and memories. Lola is almost 16 and a half years old and my first dog. She's a special dog, "self-possessed" as my best friend called her when she first met Lola all those years ago, but sweet, and super snuggly. Your essay has such a nice tone, as is usual of your writing in general, that it didn't exacerbate my despair. Thanks, Carley.