Animals, especially cats, were a big part of Brenda’s life and consequently of my life. We always had at least two cats, usually more. At one time on Blanton Street there were 14 cats, living variously in the house and outside in cardboard boxes lined up on the front porch. (Unless constrained cat populations will expand more than geometrically. Over the years we expended considerable energy and money constraining cats.)
At the time of her death Brenda had six cats –outside cat Winnie, inside cats Leroy and Pye, and the garage cats John, Marsha and Scubby. The groups did not mix. At night the inside cats were hidden in rooms so that the garage cats could come in and have some time with people. When Brenda felt well enough she would let the garage cats join her on her bed. But they were so aggressively affectionate (they wanted to sit on her) she often had to shut her door.
Two food plates prepared beforehand were used to entice the garage cats back into their room after they had been in for an hour or so. Although we had no cat named Rhonda, I sometimes called the garage cats the “roaring Rhondas” and the process of herding them to and from the garage the “running of the Rhondas”.
(Does madness seek solace in alliteration?)
Now a year after Brenda’s death, three cats are left. Pye lives with me. Scubby lives with Yancie and lumbers up on the sofa at night to watch TV and read books. Winnie went to live in the country with Randy’s folks but ran off. John and Marsha stopped eating, became sad, hollow-eyed wraiths and died a week apart. I buried them in the back yard with some other cats.
Leroy lives in Yancie’s basement with the odd irascible Nimmy.
This is something I posted about Leroy not long after Brenda died.
Howling Blind Cat
(I thought I would do this post last, that it might be the most painful, but it is not. There is at least one more that will be even harder to do.)
I call him Leroy; Brenda called him Long Legs. That's how he is known at the vet and at Belmont Rite Aid where I periodically pick up eye medicine for Long Legs Weathers. It's always good for a laugh with the nice ladies who work behind the pharmacy counter. He lost all of his sight maybe a year ago. But he still stayed outside with Catherine (whom I called Loonie - see video above). However when the Black Cat ran Loonie off Leroy suddenly seemed more vulnerable and we brought him in the house. He stayed in the big bathroom at night and wandered the house during the day. I consented because it seemed the only thing to do but I still resented it. I resented much about the cats. It was an ongoing issue between us. There are six cats now; at one time back in Shelby we had 14. Brenda fed them in the kitchen at night from large platters. She arranged the food neatly around the edges to minimize inter-food fights. (Two piles of food per cat. I still follow that rule, even exceed it for those that always eat a lot.
In Leroy's case, I could tolerate the litter box under the cabinet and not having access to the big bathroom at night. The worst thing was the howling. Occasionally he did (and still does) ear-splitting bellows. We never could get inside his head well enough to exactly figure it out. The vet thinks it has something to do with arthritis. We thought it was loneliness and frustration. And sometimes I know that he picked up on discord in the house, adding his voice to the fray.
Even the howling didn't bother me that much until Brenda's condition got so bad that she moaned every morning after getting up starved for oxygen, waiting for her "puffers" to take effect. Her moaning often coincided with Leroy's howling as he lumbered down the hall from the bathroom. Both of them going tended to drive me crazy - not metaphorically but literally crazy, leading me to say vile things, even one morning threatening to get in the car and leave Brenda there to die with her cats. (That was the hard thing I dreaded to write.) Yancie then other people after hearing of the situation offered to take Leroy, but Brenda would not agree to it. She cried that she was sorry sorry sorry but that she could not bear it and that it would only be for a little while anyway.
As Steve said (after he told me that this was making me insane) Leroy was a placeholder. I know that Leroy was a placeholder for my own frustrations and resentments. As I write this I realize what I always knew - that Brenda also saw Leroy as a placeholder - symbolizing her own illness and vulnerability - that to take him away would be to take her away.
But my madness went away in the weeks after Hospice came. There was no magical moment of revelation. But I think we forgave each other for being crazy.
Now Leroy and the other cats are no longer placeholders for anything. They are still "people" - but cat people.
(Or is Leroy now a placeholder for me - is his howling my howling?)
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