Our Life With McGoohan
McGoohan we got when she was a kitten. One of Hannah's friend's cats had given birth, we had talked about wanting to get a cat and when we found out, we put in a request to pick one out. We had to wait seven weeks, the kittens need to stay with their mom and learn about the litter box, then we went over to the house on Cemetery Road in Hadley, a road with the oldest graveyard in Hadley on it, and big open fields of something, corn, something that gives the impression that one isn't in a valley at all, but maybe somewhere in the midwest, in the summer, the sunsets look beautiful, before the hairpin turn and broken concrete bring you back to the ugliness of route 9.
McGoohan came right over to us as we stood in the living room, surrounded by kittens and dogs bounding everywhere, like something off the TV, a scene so strange and hilariously ridiculous it has to be a set up. She came right over to us and we knew that she was meant to come with us.
We named her McGoohan because on that first initial car ride, in the cat carrier, she kept trying to squeeze her head through the grate on the front, there was no way it would fit, but she tried with all her might to escape, so right there we decided to call her McGoohan, after Patrick, of "The Prisoner" fame, someone else who refused to follow the rules, submit, accept or ultimately, stay.
When we first had her, Hannah was still living in Amherst, on Gray St., with her college friends, soon to depart to every which way a small amount of time forward, but those first days with McGoohan there was no shortage of people wanting to coo over her, wanting to play with her and hold her, who doesn't want to play with a kitten?
We had to set up little barriers in Hannah's living room, to keep her from getting to the rest of the house, there was no door on the living room, so we had to lay a mattress across the entry, though, true to her name, she merely scaled it, looking for kicks or whatever, so the mattress had to be pressed up to the space vertically, sealing the room like a tomb.
Also in those days, we didn't want to leave her alone, as always, both of our schedules were insane, Hannah with school, me with working, so I ended up taking her with me to the DVDen a number of times.
In the carrier, she cried, always, she hated being in the car, she hated being in the carrier, she liked staring out the window, licking Nico's head, cuddling up on Hannah, and climbing. Not car rides or carriers. Those initial weeks with her, we were exhausted, like parents with a newborn, we barely got any sleep, every time I had to take her she just cried and cried, my eyes were nearly slits with over tiredness, one hand on the wheel, one hand stretched out behind me into the back seat, playing "The Smiths" softly over the radio, for some reason thinking that would help, saying over and over, "It's ok Magoo, it's ok baby, it's ok Magoo." The same things I said to her as they put her to sleep. I held her paw and stroked her head and between sobs, kept repeating that mantra from our earliest memories with her, "It's ok Magoo, it's ok baby, it's ok Magoo."
Even though she didn't spend that much time at The DVDen all things considered, she left a lasting impression on everybody who met her there, for about a year after those initial visits people would come in smiling asking, "Is the kitten here?" and people ask about her still. A number of customers bring their dogs in, so I had to put a sign in the front window informing people, "Kitten Inside, Please Leave Dogs Outside".
We had to kitten proof behind the counter, do extensive trash pick up, block off all the small spaces a kitten could crawl into, not that it really mattered, Magoo would find the ones we missed, or dismantle our crude obstacles. She'd walk around on the counter, do kitten calisthenics under the chair, diving up and down and around the metal legs like a gymnast.
We moved to Blandford, which is just as exciting as it sounds, and of course Magoo cried the whole time in the car, that was the worst, but once there it was a great place for her to grow. It was a big house (well big compared to what we have now, a 2 room apartment with a small kitchen area and a bathroom without windows or vents) and she loved running around it and staring out the window at the lush New England forestry outside, it was so green, in the summer, windows open, she lay on a pillow in the window, watching for us to come home from work.
It was while we lived in Blandford, that Nico came into our lives. She was a stray, rescued from the mean streets of Amherst by a friend of a friend, who knew that we had one cat and that we were looking to get her a friend, she brought in Nico, tiny, much too young to be away from her Mom, maybe 4 weeks old at most, and she immediately cuddled right up to me, and we brought her home.
We had to keep them separate for the first couple of weeks we had her, we didn't know if she had anything, a task quite difficult given that both cats spent nearly every waking hour, scratching at the door that separated them, finally, when they got together, they spent roughly six hours chasing each other around the huge living room, wrestling and chasing, and at the end, they were the best of friends, sleeping on each other, licking each others heads.
We moved to Northampton and got them spayed, they were both in heat nearly constantly and not only was it gross and unnerving, both of them, (Magoo especially) spent a good amount of time calling out the window to neighborhood boy cats, who would eagerly gather around the window only to take off when we'd get home, like teenage boys at the sight of a single dad with a cheerleader daughter.
After they were spayed Magoo's behavior changed a little bit, she started to hiss like she had never really done before, especially at the friendly, usual advances from Nico. She began to get "spiky" is how I would put it, but she was still loving and affectionate.
I always said Magoo had a problem fundamentally accepting the very nature of reality. Often times she would wake up from a nap and she would have this look in her eye, like she had forgotten she was a cat and she didn't know what was going on, it would take her a minute to remember, "Oh yeah, I'm a cat."
We constructed elaborate past live stories for Nico and Magoo. We decided that Nico was a lesbian art terrorist of the 1930s, an anarchist, one of the reasons me and Nico bonded like we did, I would say, was because we were both tortured geniuses. Magoo we decided was probably a housewife in the 1950s, dying on the inside to express herself, a closet lesbian, who became an alcoholic to deal with her loveless sham of a marriage, and now Nico and Magoo had found each other, reincarnated as cats, Nico and Magoo, getting to live the life of pleasure and leisure they were not allowed to live during their human years.
For some reason visitors would look at me oddly when I explained this to them as the girls would wind about their legs, rubbing their faces on their shins, getting comfy on their laps.
Both cats seemed to claim each of us as theirs, Nico was mine and Magoo was Hannah's. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things, when we got Nico we made a vow that no matter what happened between us, we would never split the girls up, if it had come down to it I would've let Hannah have them both, we knew that whatever bullshit we were going through should have no effect on their lives together.
McGoohan gave us more health problems than Nico. She was a terrible patient, that was one of the final signs that something was seriously wrong with her, the lack of a fight she put up as we got her in the carrier. Hannah had developed this technique for getting her in, since she was too smart to follow for the Hansel and Gretel method of leaving a trail of treats into the carrier, even when we disguised the carrier, with the aid of blankets and pillows, so from the front, it didn't even look that portable plastic container she hated so much, but she would get right to the mouth, lean her head in and stretch to get as many treats as she could reach before tearing ass across the apartment in the other direction, but Hannah devised the "Cat Burrito" method, of basically throwing a towel over her and then immediately scooping her up, wrapping the towel around, to prevent her insanely sharp and long claws from tearing up all of the skin in striking distance, Hannah could never cut her nails, the entire time we had her, Magoo just wouldn't allow it, the vet would have to call in help, hold her town, she made the most awful sounds, she hated the vet, she hated being out of the house, being manhandled, she was so independent in that way, she knew what she wanted and wouldn't put up with anything she didn't.
Because of a combination of factors, stress (or as I put it, "an inability to fundamentally accept the very nature of reality") and her sharp claws she began to get what the vet referred to as "hot spots" on her neck, spots she just itched raw.
Hannah would nurse these spots, putting cream on them, with infinite patience, understanding and care for Magoo. Magoo would even calm down, and let Hannah dress her wounds so to speak.
Then in the last week or so, Magoo began to hide in the apartment. She would only eat if we brought the food directly to her. First we thought it was a combination her being angry with us for having people over last weekend and the re-emergence of several "hot spots" on her neck. Then she stopped eating all together. Then she stopped drinking water.
Hannah managed to pull her out of a hiding spot and Magoo didn't flip out at all. She sat on Hannah's chest, not purring, but breathing heavily. I had bought an ear thermometer to find out her temperature and I thought it had to be wrong because it said her temp was 97 degrees f., which is 3 degrees lower than what a cat's should be.
I told Hannah we couldn't wait until morning and found a 24 animal hospital in South Deerfield. I made a call and then we loaded up Magoo in the carrier, without a fight, without a hiss, without a noise.
Earlier that day, Magoo, who had up until then remained in hiding constantly, had come out, and taken her old position in the window across from our bed, as if she knew that this would probably be her last chance to enjoy the small pleasures of looking out the window, at the driveway, the house next door, the neighborhood cats, and the birds whose chirping would cause her to instantly go into hunter mode, head down, eyes darting about, playing out scenarios in her head where in she is free to pounce and rip the wings off the little flying buggers who gather so temptingly in the bush right outside.
At the Animal Hospital the scene alternated between adorable, courtesy of the little girl with her dad, waiting for their dog, asking if she would have to take a bath when she got home, (No tomorrow, her dad responded, "Oh. Do we have to do hair?", "Yes, we have to do hair.") and shockingly tragic, the old woman coming in, calling for help, the nurse rushing outside with the hysterical elder, returning carrying the limp body of the woman's Schnauzer, the woman shrieking, "He just seemed a little sick, he's not supposed to just die!".
The vet finally tells us that it's not good for Magoo. She's anemic, she's lost blood, but they don't know to where, her breathing is heavy and labored, they do a number of tests on her, she gets a faint positive for Feline Leukemia, not enough of a result to guarantee that's what she has, she paints a very grim, sad picture for Magoo, telling us to go forward would require about a week of tests, best case scenario a couple thousand dollars right off the bat, and even then it could still be unable to be fixed, she may have cancer, there's a spot on her stomach xray that could be a tumor.
She leaves us to our sobbing and we manage to decide that we don't want Magoo to suffer, she returns and we tell her, and then Magoo is brought in, wrapped in towels, their futile attempt to raise her body temperature, she was hypothermic, they lay her down on the table and we talk to her and we kiss her head, and Hannah sits down and I remain standing and I hold her paw and stroke her head and the vet delivers the shot and it's over so quickly, but we don't want to leave, we choose not to take the body, that's not Magoo, that's just the body she was wearing, there's no point in keeping the ashes or anything, that's not what we loved and we go home and then time begins to slow to an interminable crawl, and Nico, doesn't know what's going on, she just knows that Magoo isn't there, she waits for her in all the places you would stake out if you wanted to run into a cat, the food dish, her old hang out spots, in the bathroom, on top of the microwave, on the futon, by the window, every little noise sets Nico off and running, looking expectantly around corners, we used to get mad when Magoo would eat Nico's dinner, but now it's become clear that Nico was sharing her food with the alpha cat, the cat that acted as "mom" as much as one could, Nico being taken away from hers too early, Nico now runs over to the food, as is her way, always hungry, but when she gets there alone, she pauses, looks around, then, tentatively eats half the food and walks away, leaving it for Magoo, only to return 15 minutes later, finishing it upon finding it uneaten, when the midnight snack is poured she dashes over and then stops and then takes a few paces away from it, letting Magoo get first dibs, there's no way to explain to her where Magoo is, and it's killing Hannah and I, we're going overboard on spoiling her now, showering her in treats and catnip, hugging her constantly, and she purrs but then she realizes that something is different, something is wrong and you can see it in her eyes that she's confused and lonely, even though they fought a lot, they played a lot and they clearly loved each other a lot, it's Nico and Hannah I feel worst for, I loved McGoohan, but they both had very strong, very real connections with her.
We would wake up with McGoohan draped across one or both of our faces, she wouldn't care what you were doing, she'd stomp across a keyboard or a craft project to shove her head into your chest, Hannah would say, "Rough day Magoo?" as she pressed the top of her head into the small space between Hannah's arm and body. Her purring would drown out the TV, she was so happy to love and be loved.
I keep repeating to myself and to Hannah, "We did all that we could do. All you can do is give them the best possible life for as long as you have them. You can't control when they go, but you can give them the best life they could possibly have." And we did that.
We'd say all the time, "We have the best two cats in the world." And I believe that still. I've never experienced personal loss like this before, I've never felt this huge a pain, an ache in my chest, I've never futilely wished for something to not be real as strongly or as passionately as this, still, I can't believe it, every moment we're at home, we just keep expecting to see her leap up onto the bed, it's too awful to be real, even when it was my first pet, growing up, she was the same age as me, a dog named Molly, that didn't even hurt like this, partly because I was still fairly emotionally undeveloped at that age, but also, I had the first 12 years of my life with her, Magoo we only got for 3, I would never read another comic book if Magoo could be back, but I keep myself from dwelling on thoughts and wishes that are impossible and too painful, there's no way to change what's happened, there's no way we could've caught this in time, this was something that just happened and we just have to keep going and do everything we can to remember her and treasure her memory and somehow move on and go forward.
This is life, in all it's unfair, stupid, rotten glory. We had dreams of using our tax returns as a down payment on a new apartment, a bigger apartment, for all of us, humans and cats included, instead the entirety of our return went to killing our first cat.
And we went shopping on Saturday, the American therapeutic method, shop yourself happy, a small road trip, new old comics, a nice day and we're able to put it out of our heads until we get home and the wounds all re open and we're right back where we were an hour after.
These kind of things happen when you're working two jobs, seven days a week, when all you want to do is spend time with your remaining cat and girlfriend, you end up serving coffee to asshole at Stop & Shop and renting movies to assholes and it's because you didn't get your degree and didn't get your high paying career job like all your friends who get weekends and make money, and have the ability to balance the personal and the professional, instead of just cramming emotional wreckage into whatever waking moment will take them.
We're eventually going to get another cat, we can't stand Nico being alone, she's such a loving cat, she doesn't deserve this. There's just no easy way through the suffering period. You just have to ride the grief and then someday it doesn't hurt as much as it did. In the meantime, you can find me find me struggling to keep a stoic face, joking in those moments where the mind is occupied, elsewhere, watching MST3K or How I Met Your Mother, or anything to distract and amuse, to bide the time till the pain isn't so raw, I don't know how to end this.
I've become a sentimental fool in the last two days, now believing that McGoohan is visiting Nico in her dreams and that her spirit will be forever curled up on Hannah's lap, she'll be with us forever, nothing ever ends, all of time is always happening, somewhere and everywhere, the past is still playing itself out, somewhere Magoo is curled up in bed with us, purring in our ears, forever and ever.
-louie-
(this is the last pic i took of magoo, staring out the window, hours before we had to take her to the hospital)
McGoohan came right over to us as we stood in the living room, surrounded by kittens and dogs bounding everywhere, like something off the TV, a scene so strange and hilariously ridiculous it has to be a set up. She came right over to us and we knew that she was meant to come with us.
We named her McGoohan because on that first initial car ride, in the cat carrier, she kept trying to squeeze her head through the grate on the front, there was no way it would fit, but she tried with all her might to escape, so right there we decided to call her McGoohan, after Patrick, of "The Prisoner" fame, someone else who refused to follow the rules, submit, accept or ultimately, stay.
When we first had her, Hannah was still living in Amherst, on Gray St., with her college friends, soon to depart to every which way a small amount of time forward, but those first days with McGoohan there was no shortage of people wanting to coo over her, wanting to play with her and hold her, who doesn't want to play with a kitten?
We had to set up little barriers in Hannah's living room, to keep her from getting to the rest of the house, there was no door on the living room, so we had to lay a mattress across the entry, though, true to her name, she merely scaled it, looking for kicks or whatever, so the mattress had to be pressed up to the space vertically, sealing the room like a tomb.
Also in those days, we didn't want to leave her alone, as always, both of our schedules were insane, Hannah with school, me with working, so I ended up taking her with me to the DVDen a number of times.
In the carrier, she cried, always, she hated being in the car, she hated being in the carrier, she liked staring out the window, licking Nico's head, cuddling up on Hannah, and climbing. Not car rides or carriers. Those initial weeks with her, we were exhausted, like parents with a newborn, we barely got any sleep, every time I had to take her she just cried and cried, my eyes were nearly slits with over tiredness, one hand on the wheel, one hand stretched out behind me into the back seat, playing "The Smiths" softly over the radio, for some reason thinking that would help, saying over and over, "It's ok Magoo, it's ok baby, it's ok Magoo." The same things I said to her as they put her to sleep. I held her paw and stroked her head and between sobs, kept repeating that mantra from our earliest memories with her, "It's ok Magoo, it's ok baby, it's ok Magoo."
Even though she didn't spend that much time at The DVDen all things considered, she left a lasting impression on everybody who met her there, for about a year after those initial visits people would come in smiling asking, "Is the kitten here?" and people ask about her still. A number of customers bring their dogs in, so I had to put a sign in the front window informing people, "Kitten Inside, Please Leave Dogs Outside".
We had to kitten proof behind the counter, do extensive trash pick up, block off all the small spaces a kitten could crawl into, not that it really mattered, Magoo would find the ones we missed, or dismantle our crude obstacles. She'd walk around on the counter, do kitten calisthenics under the chair, diving up and down and around the metal legs like a gymnast.
We moved to Blandford, which is just as exciting as it sounds, and of course Magoo cried the whole time in the car, that was the worst, but once there it was a great place for her to grow. It was a big house (well big compared to what we have now, a 2 room apartment with a small kitchen area and a bathroom without windows or vents) and she loved running around it and staring out the window at the lush New England forestry outside, it was so green, in the summer, windows open, she lay on a pillow in the window, watching for us to come home from work.
It was while we lived in Blandford, that Nico came into our lives. She was a stray, rescued from the mean streets of Amherst by a friend of a friend, who knew that we had one cat and that we were looking to get her a friend, she brought in Nico, tiny, much too young to be away from her Mom, maybe 4 weeks old at most, and she immediately cuddled right up to me, and we brought her home.
We had to keep them separate for the first couple of weeks we had her, we didn't know if she had anything, a task quite difficult given that both cats spent nearly every waking hour, scratching at the door that separated them, finally, when they got together, they spent roughly six hours chasing each other around the huge living room, wrestling and chasing, and at the end, they were the best of friends, sleeping on each other, licking each others heads.
We moved to Northampton and got them spayed, they were both in heat nearly constantly and not only was it gross and unnerving, both of them, (Magoo especially) spent a good amount of time calling out the window to neighborhood boy cats, who would eagerly gather around the window only to take off when we'd get home, like teenage boys at the sight of a single dad with a cheerleader daughter.
After they were spayed Magoo's behavior changed a little bit, she started to hiss like she had never really done before, especially at the friendly, usual advances from Nico. She began to get "spiky" is how I would put it, but she was still loving and affectionate.
I always said Magoo had a problem fundamentally accepting the very nature of reality. Often times she would wake up from a nap and she would have this look in her eye, like she had forgotten she was a cat and she didn't know what was going on, it would take her a minute to remember, "Oh yeah, I'm a cat."
We constructed elaborate past live stories for Nico and Magoo. We decided that Nico was a lesbian art terrorist of the 1930s, an anarchist, one of the reasons me and Nico bonded like we did, I would say, was because we were both tortured geniuses. Magoo we decided was probably a housewife in the 1950s, dying on the inside to express herself, a closet lesbian, who became an alcoholic to deal with her loveless sham of a marriage, and now Nico and Magoo had found each other, reincarnated as cats, Nico and Magoo, getting to live the life of pleasure and leisure they were not allowed to live during their human years.
For some reason visitors would look at me oddly when I explained this to them as the girls would wind about their legs, rubbing their faces on their shins, getting comfy on their laps.
Both cats seemed to claim each of us as theirs, Nico was mine and Magoo was Hannah's. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things, when we got Nico we made a vow that no matter what happened between us, we would never split the girls up, if it had come down to it I would've let Hannah have them both, we knew that whatever bullshit we were going through should have no effect on their lives together.
McGoohan gave us more health problems than Nico. She was a terrible patient, that was one of the final signs that something was seriously wrong with her, the lack of a fight she put up as we got her in the carrier. Hannah had developed this technique for getting her in, since she was too smart to follow for the Hansel and Gretel method of leaving a trail of treats into the carrier, even when we disguised the carrier, with the aid of blankets and pillows, so from the front, it didn't even look that portable plastic container she hated so much, but she would get right to the mouth, lean her head in and stretch to get as many treats as she could reach before tearing ass across the apartment in the other direction, but Hannah devised the "Cat Burrito" method, of basically throwing a towel over her and then immediately scooping her up, wrapping the towel around, to prevent her insanely sharp and long claws from tearing up all of the skin in striking distance, Hannah could never cut her nails, the entire time we had her, Magoo just wouldn't allow it, the vet would have to call in help, hold her town, she made the most awful sounds, she hated the vet, she hated being out of the house, being manhandled, she was so independent in that way, she knew what she wanted and wouldn't put up with anything she didn't.
Because of a combination of factors, stress (or as I put it, "an inability to fundamentally accept the very nature of reality") and her sharp claws she began to get what the vet referred to as "hot spots" on her neck, spots she just itched raw.
Hannah would nurse these spots, putting cream on them, with infinite patience, understanding and care for Magoo. Magoo would even calm down, and let Hannah dress her wounds so to speak.
Then in the last week or so, Magoo began to hide in the apartment. She would only eat if we brought the food directly to her. First we thought it was a combination her being angry with us for having people over last weekend and the re-emergence of several "hot spots" on her neck. Then she stopped eating all together. Then she stopped drinking water.
Hannah managed to pull her out of a hiding spot and Magoo didn't flip out at all. She sat on Hannah's chest, not purring, but breathing heavily. I had bought an ear thermometer to find out her temperature and I thought it had to be wrong because it said her temp was 97 degrees f., which is 3 degrees lower than what a cat's should be.
I told Hannah we couldn't wait until morning and found a 24 animal hospital in South Deerfield. I made a call and then we loaded up Magoo in the carrier, without a fight, without a hiss, without a noise.
Earlier that day, Magoo, who had up until then remained in hiding constantly, had come out, and taken her old position in the window across from our bed, as if she knew that this would probably be her last chance to enjoy the small pleasures of looking out the window, at the driveway, the house next door, the neighborhood cats, and the birds whose chirping would cause her to instantly go into hunter mode, head down, eyes darting about, playing out scenarios in her head where in she is free to pounce and rip the wings off the little flying buggers who gather so temptingly in the bush right outside.
At the Animal Hospital the scene alternated between adorable, courtesy of the little girl with her dad, waiting for their dog, asking if she would have to take a bath when she got home, (No tomorrow, her dad responded, "Oh. Do we have to do hair?", "Yes, we have to do hair.") and shockingly tragic, the old woman coming in, calling for help, the nurse rushing outside with the hysterical elder, returning carrying the limp body of the woman's Schnauzer, the woman shrieking, "He just seemed a little sick, he's not supposed to just die!".
The vet finally tells us that it's not good for Magoo. She's anemic, she's lost blood, but they don't know to where, her breathing is heavy and labored, they do a number of tests on her, she gets a faint positive for Feline Leukemia, not enough of a result to guarantee that's what she has, she paints a very grim, sad picture for Magoo, telling us to go forward would require about a week of tests, best case scenario a couple thousand dollars right off the bat, and even then it could still be unable to be fixed, she may have cancer, there's a spot on her stomach xray that could be a tumor.
She leaves us to our sobbing and we manage to decide that we don't want Magoo to suffer, she returns and we tell her, and then Magoo is brought in, wrapped in towels, their futile attempt to raise her body temperature, she was hypothermic, they lay her down on the table and we talk to her and we kiss her head, and Hannah sits down and I remain standing and I hold her paw and stroke her head and the vet delivers the shot and it's over so quickly, but we don't want to leave, we choose not to take the body, that's not Magoo, that's just the body she was wearing, there's no point in keeping the ashes or anything, that's not what we loved and we go home and then time begins to slow to an interminable crawl, and Nico, doesn't know what's going on, she just knows that Magoo isn't there, she waits for her in all the places you would stake out if you wanted to run into a cat, the food dish, her old hang out spots, in the bathroom, on top of the microwave, on the futon, by the window, every little noise sets Nico off and running, looking expectantly around corners, we used to get mad when Magoo would eat Nico's dinner, but now it's become clear that Nico was sharing her food with the alpha cat, the cat that acted as "mom" as much as one could, Nico being taken away from hers too early, Nico now runs over to the food, as is her way, always hungry, but when she gets there alone, she pauses, looks around, then, tentatively eats half the food and walks away, leaving it for Magoo, only to return 15 minutes later, finishing it upon finding it uneaten, when the midnight snack is poured she dashes over and then stops and then takes a few paces away from it, letting Magoo get first dibs, there's no way to explain to her where Magoo is, and it's killing Hannah and I, we're going overboard on spoiling her now, showering her in treats and catnip, hugging her constantly, and she purrs but then she realizes that something is different, something is wrong and you can see it in her eyes that she's confused and lonely, even though they fought a lot, they played a lot and they clearly loved each other a lot, it's Nico and Hannah I feel worst for, I loved McGoohan, but they both had very strong, very real connections with her.
We would wake up with McGoohan draped across one or both of our faces, she wouldn't care what you were doing, she'd stomp across a keyboard or a craft project to shove her head into your chest, Hannah would say, "Rough day Magoo?" as she pressed the top of her head into the small space between Hannah's arm and body. Her purring would drown out the TV, she was so happy to love and be loved.
I keep repeating to myself and to Hannah, "We did all that we could do. All you can do is give them the best possible life for as long as you have them. You can't control when they go, but you can give them the best life they could possibly have." And we did that.
We'd say all the time, "We have the best two cats in the world." And I believe that still. I've never experienced personal loss like this before, I've never felt this huge a pain, an ache in my chest, I've never futilely wished for something to not be real as strongly or as passionately as this, still, I can't believe it, every moment we're at home, we just keep expecting to see her leap up onto the bed, it's too awful to be real, even when it was my first pet, growing up, she was the same age as me, a dog named Molly, that didn't even hurt like this, partly because I was still fairly emotionally undeveloped at that age, but also, I had the first 12 years of my life with her, Magoo we only got for 3, I would never read another comic book if Magoo could be back, but I keep myself from dwelling on thoughts and wishes that are impossible and too painful, there's no way to change what's happened, there's no way we could've caught this in time, this was something that just happened and we just have to keep going and do everything we can to remember her and treasure her memory and somehow move on and go forward.
This is life, in all it's unfair, stupid, rotten glory. We had dreams of using our tax returns as a down payment on a new apartment, a bigger apartment, for all of us, humans and cats included, instead the entirety of our return went to killing our first cat.
And we went shopping on Saturday, the American therapeutic method, shop yourself happy, a small road trip, new old comics, a nice day and we're able to put it out of our heads until we get home and the wounds all re open and we're right back where we were an hour after.
These kind of things happen when you're working two jobs, seven days a week, when all you want to do is spend time with your remaining cat and girlfriend, you end up serving coffee to asshole at Stop & Shop and renting movies to assholes and it's because you didn't get your degree and didn't get your high paying career job like all your friends who get weekends and make money, and have the ability to balance the personal and the professional, instead of just cramming emotional wreckage into whatever waking moment will take them.
We're eventually going to get another cat, we can't stand Nico being alone, she's such a loving cat, she doesn't deserve this. There's just no easy way through the suffering period. You just have to ride the grief and then someday it doesn't hurt as much as it did. In the meantime, you can find me find me struggling to keep a stoic face, joking in those moments where the mind is occupied, elsewhere, watching MST3K or How I Met Your Mother, or anything to distract and amuse, to bide the time till the pain isn't so raw, I don't know how to end this.
I've become a sentimental fool in the last two days, now believing that McGoohan is visiting Nico in her dreams and that her spirit will be forever curled up on Hannah's lap, she'll be with us forever, nothing ever ends, all of time is always happening, somewhere and everywhere, the past is still playing itself out, somewhere Magoo is curled up in bed with us, purring in our ears, forever and ever.
-louie-
(this is the last pic i took of magoo, staring out the window, hours before we had to take her to the hospital)