Freddie Freeloader
My apologies for the long silence following such an incendiary, self-pitying piece of garbage as my last entry. I'm about to be depressing again, but I think the situation warrants it. I promise next time I'll put up something that's a bit easier to stomach.
Crossposted to my RO story journal.
After having to work on Thanksgiving and the day after, I took the rest of the week off and made the 8 hour drive south to my hometown to visit my parents. And after greeting me in the driveway, my mom's first words were "I put the cat to sleep today."
The cat she was speaking of was my childhood cat, Fred, who showed up in the backyard when I was 10 years old and refused to leave, even though we didn't so much as feed him for the first month. He was an adult of 2 or 3 at the time, which would have made him close to 20 years old when she put him to sleep. It had been over a year since I had seen him, and I had been looking forward to seeing him again.
Fred was a long-haired gray tuxedo cat. In his prime, he was 23 pounds of solid muscle, and everyone who saw him said that he was the biggest cat they'd ever seen, wondering out loud if there were bobcat blood somewhere in his ancestry. But he was never what I would have called a "gentle giant." To his credit, he'd once been attacked by two Siberian Huskies, and not only came out of it alive, but had torn the ear off of one dog, and lost two of his claws in the muzzle of the other. There were three ball bearings embedded in his neck and shoulders from where one of our neighbors had shot at him. He wasn't a cat so much as a retired military general; the sort of animal you would devote a share of respect to even if all he was doing was lounging on the couch. Yet he was discerning, wise and protective. He would tolerate a certain amount of ear cuffing and tail pulling from young children before giving a warning hiss and stomping off, but if an adult tried the same behavior, they'd get a face full of claws and no warning whatsoever. When I went outside at night, he would walk ahead of me, tail raised and swishing, eyes alert, a growl in his throat to scare off anything that might be lurking in the dark. He was a cat that nobody wanted to fuck with, ever. But he protected and loved those who showed him respect and kindness.
I would like to say I got angry with my mom for putting him to sleep without me there, but I just got a little misty eyed and asked her to explain the circumstances of it. I knew that Fred had been on the decline for quite sometime; he was on daily arthritis and thyroid medications, and had lost nearly 2/3 of his body weight. The last time I'd seen him, he had spent most of his time curled up in a padded lawn chair, only getting up to eat and use the bathroom. But I could tell by the way he purred and relaxed in my lap that he still had a reasonable quality of life.
She told me that he had collapsed into his food bowl last Friday, and hadn't been able to lift his head to get out of it. She'd found him several hours later, his eyes glazed and food matted into the fur on his chest. She told me he could barely walk anymore, and that she carried him almost everywhere. She had taken him to the vet less than 8 hours before I arrived, and the vet had said his heartbeat was so faint that he may have died that day on his own.
Its hard for me to doubt that my mom had this cat's best interest at heart. Last March, she tripped over a crack in our porch while carrying him, and chose to fall hard onto her back instead of dropping him. It doesn't sound too bad until you take into account the fact that she's 64 years old, has osteoporosis, and broke her foot in that fall. All because she didn't want to hurt the cat.
I asked her why she didn't wait for me, why I couldn't have been there, and she told me "because I'm selfish." When I asked her to explain that, she told me that she didn't want my first visit back home in nearly 2 years to be colored by watching a wonderful old friend die. She didn't want me to worry, or to have my last memory of Fred be watching him die. As it stands now, my last memory of Fred is of giving him a scratch on the chin and telling him to take good care of my mom, which he certainly did. His face was grizzled and his bones were tired, but his eyes were bright and his spirit was happy.
I so easily could have gotten angry at my mom, and then I remembered the death of my last pet; the cockatiel who had been with me for 14 years. He had died in my hands, and his had not been an easy death. Rather than slipping peacefully into unconsciousness, he had died during the throes of a seizure, and my last memory of him alive is of his eyes, wild and afraid, looking to me for a comfort I could not provide. Was that something I wanted to repeat? Especially when most of my memories of Fred were of a proud, strong creature who wore his dignity as proudly as he wore his immaculate fur coat?
My parents know that I'm too sensitive for my own good, and a terrible worrier, even when given news of circumstances I have no control over. When my dad had a quadruple bypass operation, he didn't tell me about it until a week later, because it happened during finals week of my senior year in college and he wanted me to concentrate on school.
Sometimes I wonder; how did I earn such a family? So willing to make great personal sacrifices to spare my feelings and to ease my mind. But that's not something to discuss here. All I can say is thanks to my mother for keeping him alive and happy for so long, and for sparing me the pain of watching him die. And I can also say thanks to Fred for his years of loyal service to my family, from the day he first became the family's self-appointed guardian, and the self-appointed companion of a very lonely 10 year old girl. I regret that I don't have more photos of him in digital form... I'll share the two that I have with you now. I have at least 20-30 more in the form of old Polaroids that I keep safely squirreled away in a hardcover album on my bookshelf, but without a scanner, they don't do anyone but me much good.
My mom took this one, when she noticed that the red shadow cast by a heart shaped suncatcher in the kitchen window was perfectly framed on Fred's face.
My dad was the one who gave Fred his name, which is actually Freddie the Freeloader. That was the name of a TV character from the 50s, played by Red Skelton, and later the name of a Miles Davis song Apparently Freddie the Freeloader was a loveable hobo, always looking on the bright side of life. I didn’t like the name at the time, but in retrospect, I can’t think of Fred as anything else. And now you know why I give my RO characters such obscure names… I learned it from my dad!
And this one was taken about 3 years ago, when Fred was just settling into comfortable old age. Its a little hard to see his size in these pictures, but each of his paws was at least an inch and a half across, he measured over 3 feet long when he stretched out, and his head was bigger than a softball. His fur was thick and abundant, and he had a tiny white blaze in the center of his forehead that got a little longer each year.
Boy, I sure write about dead animals a lot in this journal, don't I? I'm sorry if this bothers anyone. But hey, I feel better. I started off writing this entry in tears, but I'm actually smiling now. How could I stay sad knowing I had a cat who lived nearly 20 years, and a family who cares about me so much? Many thanks once again for your continued attentions and kind remarks, whoever happens to be reading this.
Crossposted to my RO story journal.
After having to work on Thanksgiving and the day after, I took the rest of the week off and made the 8 hour drive south to my hometown to visit my parents. And after greeting me in the driveway, my mom's first words were "I put the cat to sleep today."
The cat she was speaking of was my childhood cat, Fred, who showed up in the backyard when I was 10 years old and refused to leave, even though we didn't so much as feed him for the first month. He was an adult of 2 or 3 at the time, which would have made him close to 20 years old when she put him to sleep. It had been over a year since I had seen him, and I had been looking forward to seeing him again.
Fred was a long-haired gray tuxedo cat. In his prime, he was 23 pounds of solid muscle, and everyone who saw him said that he was the biggest cat they'd ever seen, wondering out loud if there were bobcat blood somewhere in his ancestry. But he was never what I would have called a "gentle giant." To his credit, he'd once been attacked by two Siberian Huskies, and not only came out of it alive, but had torn the ear off of one dog, and lost two of his claws in the muzzle of the other. There were three ball bearings embedded in his neck and shoulders from where one of our neighbors had shot at him. He wasn't a cat so much as a retired military general; the sort of animal you would devote a share of respect to even if all he was doing was lounging on the couch. Yet he was discerning, wise and protective. He would tolerate a certain amount of ear cuffing and tail pulling from young children before giving a warning hiss and stomping off, but if an adult tried the same behavior, they'd get a face full of claws and no warning whatsoever. When I went outside at night, he would walk ahead of me, tail raised and swishing, eyes alert, a growl in his throat to scare off anything that might be lurking in the dark. He was a cat that nobody wanted to fuck with, ever. But he protected and loved those who showed him respect and kindness.
I would like to say I got angry with my mom for putting him to sleep without me there, but I just got a little misty eyed and asked her to explain the circumstances of it. I knew that Fred had been on the decline for quite sometime; he was on daily arthritis and thyroid medications, and had lost nearly 2/3 of his body weight. The last time I'd seen him, he had spent most of his time curled up in a padded lawn chair, only getting up to eat and use the bathroom. But I could tell by the way he purred and relaxed in my lap that he still had a reasonable quality of life.
She told me that he had collapsed into his food bowl last Friday, and hadn't been able to lift his head to get out of it. She'd found him several hours later, his eyes glazed and food matted into the fur on his chest. She told me he could barely walk anymore, and that she carried him almost everywhere. She had taken him to the vet less than 8 hours before I arrived, and the vet had said his heartbeat was so faint that he may have died that day on his own.
Its hard for me to doubt that my mom had this cat's best interest at heart. Last March, she tripped over a crack in our porch while carrying him, and chose to fall hard onto her back instead of dropping him. It doesn't sound too bad until you take into account the fact that she's 64 years old, has osteoporosis, and broke her foot in that fall. All because she didn't want to hurt the cat.
I asked her why she didn't wait for me, why I couldn't have been there, and she told me "because I'm selfish." When I asked her to explain that, she told me that she didn't want my first visit back home in nearly 2 years to be colored by watching a wonderful old friend die. She didn't want me to worry, or to have my last memory of Fred be watching him die. As it stands now, my last memory of Fred is of giving him a scratch on the chin and telling him to take good care of my mom, which he certainly did. His face was grizzled and his bones were tired, but his eyes were bright and his spirit was happy.
I so easily could have gotten angry at my mom, and then I remembered the death of my last pet; the cockatiel who had been with me for 14 years. He had died in my hands, and his had not been an easy death. Rather than slipping peacefully into unconsciousness, he had died during the throes of a seizure, and my last memory of him alive is of his eyes, wild and afraid, looking to me for a comfort I could not provide. Was that something I wanted to repeat? Especially when most of my memories of Fred were of a proud, strong creature who wore his dignity as proudly as he wore his immaculate fur coat?
My parents know that I'm too sensitive for my own good, and a terrible worrier, even when given news of circumstances I have no control over. When my dad had a quadruple bypass operation, he didn't tell me about it until a week later, because it happened during finals week of my senior year in college and he wanted me to concentrate on school.
Sometimes I wonder; how did I earn such a family? So willing to make great personal sacrifices to spare my feelings and to ease my mind. But that's not something to discuss here. All I can say is thanks to my mother for keeping him alive and happy for so long, and for sparing me the pain of watching him die. And I can also say thanks to Fred for his years of loyal service to my family, from the day he first became the family's self-appointed guardian, and the self-appointed companion of a very lonely 10 year old girl. I regret that I don't have more photos of him in digital form... I'll share the two that I have with you now. I have at least 20-30 more in the form of old Polaroids that I keep safely squirreled away in a hardcover album on my bookshelf, but without a scanner, they don't do anyone but me much good.
My mom took this one, when she noticed that the red shadow cast by a heart shaped suncatcher in the kitchen window was perfectly framed on Fred's face.
My dad was the one who gave Fred his name, which is actually Freddie the Freeloader. That was the name of a TV character from the 50s, played by Red Skelton, and later the name of a Miles Davis song Apparently Freddie the Freeloader was a loveable hobo, always looking on the bright side of life. I didn’t like the name at the time, but in retrospect, I can’t think of Fred as anything else. And now you know why I give my RO characters such obscure names… I learned it from my dad!
And this one was taken about 3 years ago, when Fred was just settling into comfortable old age. Its a little hard to see his size in these pictures, but each of his paws was at least an inch and a half across, he measured over 3 feet long when he stretched out, and his head was bigger than a softball. His fur was thick and abundant, and he had a tiny white blaze in the center of his forehead that got a little longer each year.
Boy, I sure write about dead animals a lot in this journal, don't I? I'm sorry if this bothers anyone. But hey, I feel better. I started off writing this entry in tears, but I'm actually smiling now. How could I stay sad knowing I had a cat who lived nearly 20 years, and a family who cares about me so much? Many thanks once again for your continued attentions and kind remarks, whoever happens to be reading this.