Years.
That’s how long one very tyrannical cat has been at my side—through term papers, car accidents, roommates, bad apartments in the dangerous areas of Hollywood, through road trips cross country without A/C in a muscle car with loud exhaust, through so many boyfriends and breakups that he learned simply to sit in quiet judgment and never, ever get attached.
19 years of he and I learning each other’s language, sleeping next to each other, jamming to classic rock, starting and stopping jobs, rescuing new dogs, and mostly him nursing me through magnitude 10 herculean headaches.
I always knew that this cat—this little Dictator of the house—meant the world to me. I knew it from the moment he surfaced from under a filthy trailer on the Alabama border, declawed and riddled with worms, eyes focused on mine, speaking loud and clear that we two souls were connected. I knew that when I put him in the car with my dog, Circe, a Rottweiler (and a big, big girl), he would just sit on my lap and look at her, calm and already devoted. And he did. I always knew with Mr. Manne—I knew that he would sit on my arm and inside my overalls and never run. He came with me to Olvera Street for the blessing of the animals, and he calmly sat with me on a harness and watched everything, never scared.
But I found out this month when he got sick, and I almost lost him how devastated I will be when I do, actually, lose him. Mr. Manne pulled through, and he’s returned to his usual despot behavior, stealing our food and romping through the house as if nightly we don’t hook him up to an IV bag and assist his body with hydration by pumping him full of subcutaneous fluids. He acts as if his one-functioning kidney is more than enough as if he’s invincible.
But I know, as I always have, how much love hurts in the end. Mr. Manne represents to me a sort of time capsule that I have buried within him—the old me, the person that I lived with him by my side. The person that only he knew will disappear with him when he chooses to go. That’s what animals are, really. They are reflections of our best love, our deepest secrets, the parts of us that we choose to share with only the purest, non-judgemental creatures to which we have access. Humans aren’t worthy, surely, as Mr. Manne saw time and time again and tried to tell me, as he eschewed those that I brought home. But in him, in one tiny cat, I had the image of my best, most vulnerable self. We all, in our pets, have secured the most private transactions: their love for our actual, transparent selves.
Each time we bury the pets in our life, we lose part of this, the past self that we gave to them, and each time I lose one I say, “I can’t get another.” I wonder, skeptically, if it’s because there is no purity remaining within me. A lot has been said in the past few years about pet loss and grief, so it’s not just me that seems to think it takes a lot of a person (Huffington Post Article)
Until Mr. Manne passes, that is. Until then, my heart is still filled with the love of the bitter little soul that somehow steals my pillow and my dessert and manages to still seem wiser and more enlightened than me. After he goes, after the time capsule is sealed and Mr. Manne’s crown is retired, the skepticism surfaces. Let’s please all hope that his reign is longer than 19 years.
Skeptically Yours,
Roadmistress
Amy Liming 