Pet Sounds

** Fair warning to my devoted fans: this is a book, and it has some sad parts. Do not read if you've been watching Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, or listening to Tori Amos.**

That whiny mewling you're hearing right now? No, it's not a lost kitten or a stray puppy dog. It's me, lamenting the sad truth that it's 4:38 in the morning and I can't sleep. For some odd reason, I feel like it's Christmas and I've snuck downstairs early to watch the fairy lights on the tree. The child in me is so excited to start school today. The adult in me is sobbing because it's too early to be up, and I'm going to be crying a lot harder when I'm falling asleep in my evening class. Oh well.

My rule about insomnia is that if I lie awake for more than thirty minutes, I have to get up and do something. Even if it's just heating up a glass of warm milk, that's still better than tossing and turning. Or raising my arms up over my head and tickling the insides of my elbows, which relaxes me (I feel compelled to confess that I also do this while I'm sound asleep. Scholar finds this very amusing). So I got up after thirty-one minutes of tickling and felt my way blind into the spare bedroom. We've been missing the following items: insurance cards, the next round of blank checks, the lighting bill and the charger for my mom's cell phone. I found them all in about fifteen minutes. Insomnia can be productive.

**

I called this post "Pet Sounds" because of a weird little obsessive thought tormenting me as I tried to sleep. To understand the thought, you must know something about our family: we are pet-crazy. In my lifetime, I have been mom or big sister to a menagerie: cats, dogs, horses, baby geese, baby ducks, rabbits, snakes (not mine!), goats, fish and a couple of parrots (who both met tragic ends, but more on that another time). I'm not going to lie and say that all these animals touched my heart; to be more accurate, some of them just lived here. Some of them we didn't even like too much, but our family would chew light bulbs rather than turn animals out or leave them at a shelter. Once they're ours, they stay ours. Scholar found this out when our dog had some behavior issues. "Maybe we should take her back to the shelter," he suggested, and I looked at him like he was proposing infanticide. He got the message.

Anyway, as I was saying, only a few animals were pets in the bonding sense of the word. There was Beau, a German Shepherd with a heart of gold. And Dolly, our Shetland pony (the words "patient" and "long-suffering" spring to mind). We had a mutt named Christy Love who was sainted upon her death -- not since Benji has there been a sweeter, more devoted dog.

And then there was my Moonshine.

Moonshine was a Turkish Angora cat, pure white with long, silky hair and deep, knowing eyes. I got him when I was ten and he was my heart-companion for a decade. I had never been adopted by a fur person before. Oh, there were cats who liked me, which for humans is a high compliment. But Moonshine was My Cat. We loved each other, and it was as simple as that. He used to jump on my back and settle himself onto my shoulder; I'd walk around with him perched for hours. He sucked earlobes. He slept with me. When I left for college at seventeen, I left him in the care of my parents. While I was away, he stayed outside for days at a time, coming in just to eat and visit with humans. But my mother always said that he knew when I was coming home -- even for a weekend visit -- and he would perch himself on our front porch to wait for my arrival. He was always there to greet me when I pulled into the driveway. Always.

Except the spring that he wasn't. I had come home at the end of the semester, and there was no Moonshine on the front porch. Mom said she hadn't seen him for a while, but that was par for the course for this cat. I didn't start the feverish worrying until mid-morning the next day, and then I was like a woman possessed. I walked into the woods next-door, calling and calling for him. No cat.

On the third day, a friend of dad's came over to the house for a beer. He'd been working over at the barn. "Do you have a white cat?" He asked me, and my heart stopped beating. We live near a busy rural road -- a direct connection to one of the major corporations here -- and we've lost countless pets to it. But the friend went on, "There's a white cat out in the pasture. The horses won't go near it."

I would not be exaggerating to say that I raced from the house to the pasture. My beautiful cat was stretched out by the gate. He was so, so thin, and at first I thought I had lost him. And then he picked up his head and mewed. He didn't have the energy for more.

Knowing what I know now, I would guess that he started crawling home when he heard me calling. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for him. I didn't know what had happened to him. He wasn't hurt, but he was pitifully frail. I picked him up and hugged him tight to me. And I didn't remember until I wrote this blog, but I've realized just now that he was purring. It was like everything in his world was right again. I was home.

My poor, poor little man.

We rushed him to an emergency vet hospital. I was young -- only twenty -- and I still believed that doctors and vets could fix anything broken. But he had contracted feline AIDS, the cat version of our devastating immuno-deficiency virus, and the doctor said his chances were slim. I knew in my heart that he had spent every last bit of his strength getting to me. There was no more fight left in him. The vet recommended that I not hold him when she euthanized him (for hygiene reasons). She told me to take all the time saying good-bye that I needed. And I held him, and loved him, and told him he was the best of all cats. And then I let him go.

That was the first death -- the very first -- that ever cut me. And as I sit here crying, almost fifteen years later, I can still feel it. I swore that day that if I ever got another cat, I would take every precaution: regular vet checks, vaccinations, a healthy diet. Because the sad truth about Moonshine's death was that a $15 shot would have prevented it. Fifteen dollars. Would I pay fifteen dollars to have him back? Oh. Yes.

Maya Angelou says that we do the best we can with the information we have, and when we know better, we do better. I loved Moonshine with all my heart, but I was young and hadn't learned enough yet about the responsibility of being a pet owner. In fact, he was the one who taught me. Soon after he died, I had a dream. I was sitting on the old stone trough by the corner of the barn, and he jumped into my arms. I rocked him like a baby while he did starfish paws on my shoulder. And he looked at me with those old moon eyes, then wriggled free and scampered off. I had no doubt upon waking that he forgave me, that he loved me, that we would miss each other like crazy. That he was happy.

But I couldn't love another cat.

Four years later, I moved into an apartment at college that allowed pets. I toyed with the idea of getting a kitten, and answered an ad in the Pennysaver for a Siamese mix. When my friends and I drove out to the farm, I picked up the only black cat in a litter of chocolate-points -- and that was it. I got adopted again. On the drive home, the little guy stretched himself over my collar bone like a necklace, and I was a goner. My Theo.

He has all his shots. He goes to the vet for regular check-ups. He stays indoors. And two years ago, we came close to losing him when his urinary tract became blocked with struvite crystals. He has to have a special cat food, which costs about two dollars a bag more. I consider it a bargain.

He sleeps in my bed. He watches me write. He introduced me to Scholar (another story for another time). He is the best damn cat in the United States, maybe in the world (sorry, Starlet). And he's not Moonshine. He's his own Theo.

Where was all this leading to? This was backstory, remember? My wandering mind had fixed on Moonshine; for some reason tonight, I was missing him something awful. Even with Theo warming my feet at the end of the bed, which must be kind of like your girlfriend crying out an ex's name during sex (no, never mind that analogy. Forget I wrote it).

I missed my Shine. And then, all of the sudden, I realized that I've been remembering him wrong. When I think of Moonshine, I think of those horrible final days: the fear, the guilt, the sorrow. And that is not a fitting tribute to my wonderful friend, because he had about 36,499 other days with me. Better days. It occured to me that we humans tend to think about the death more than we think about the life. Maybe we've been conditioned. We're horrified by death; we fear it; we keep it at arm's length for as long as we can. But when we're faced with it, in all its various and sometimes grisly forms, we're fascinated by it. Witness the sensational television coverage of the tsunami. Witness the coverage of Iraq. Witness 9-11. We ruminate on the deaths and ignore the most important thing about any creature's time on earth: that creature was here. Moonshine was here. Living, breathing, meowing, growling, singing -- whatever. Here. I've been remembering his last moments and forgetting the most important and wonderful thing about him. He was here. I knew him. He loved me.

My sister has been wrestling with the death of a comrade overseas. He died horribly in combat. I've been feeling so helpless; I can't say or do anything to make it better for her. But I know that the most important part of this soldier's story is not how he died, but that he lived. He was here. He was her friend. She loved him.

As for me, I got to hold my Shine for a lot longer than those few, sad moments. I want to remember those times too. I can't forget how he died, but that's not all there was to him. When my time comes, I hope that I can find some way to tell the people I love that the fact that I existed was far more important than the events of my expiration.

And I close this lengthy, late-night (early morning) post with a gift from a dear friend who lost her husband to cancer two years ago. She sent this out when she notified us of his passing, and I've kept it ever since. It's by Henry Van Dyke.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.