A Cat Named Darwin (14 page)

I could not reply for the molecules, but to Darwin and me, the answer made all the difference in the world. To snuff the life of this small companion cut against every fiber of my being, a response I would not have believed a half year before, and this feeling was intensified by the nature of the love between human and animal. To take the life of my friend, no matter how sound the reason or merciful the intent, would violate the innocence of our bond and desecrate the intimacy with which we had shared our existence. Even to contemplate the act knotted my stomach.

However, despite my aversion, if Darwin's suffering became undeniable, his misery overwhelming, no decent human being could allow it to continue, and I would do what had to be done. That, too, was a visceral response. But when the time came, I wanted mercy to meet every possible standard of dignity and compassion.

On I went, splashing through puddles, shattering reflections, and by and by I began to sort out the triage of mercy. The essence of a friendship, and particularly of a loving friendship, was free choice. To end Darwin's life without his consent would be to play god. And yet ... and yet ... what choice did one have but to make autocratic decisions in one's relationship with a cat? Was it even
possible
to avoid the role of god? Whatever we do or do
not
do, the animal has no choice in the matter, making us gods if we do and gods if we don't. Malicious god? Benign devil? That, apparently, was the choice.

I walked along, spiraling inward with dismal meditations on dying. If we all proceed inexorably and ineluctably toward death, is not living a lifelong process of dying?

This was not the time, however, to submerge myself in metaphysics. A small cloud of spray swept past, breaking the spell, and I decided on some simple, practical criteria to help in making the decision, the heart of which was to recognize the right time, to see the proper moment to free the spirit from its misery. For our purposes, it seemed that dying would be the sudden decline, accompanied by chronic misery and pain that outweighed the desire to go on. Was I extending life, or prolonging death? That was the question I would have to ask, and Darwin answer.

***

I turned left on Redondo Avenue and headed once more toward the sea. As a god of mercy, how would I apply my art? How would I know when the time had come? At the corner of Redondo and First the epiphany came through. If I had to play god, I would be a selfless god!
It was Darwin who was dying, Darwin who suffered. My own feelings meant nothing. My purpose was to nurture and protect him, not to indulge self-pity.
I would examine my thoughts for signs of self-indulgence and, when discovered, deny them without appeal. I would focus every scintilla of sensitivity on Darwin's actions, his postures, his cries, on the subtlest nuance of his life. Then, having transcended my self, I would see the world through his eyes and I would know his feelings. My decision would be his decision, more or less. I would help him so long as he wished to fight for life, but in the end it was Darwin who would have to say "Enough."

With the cold spray stinging my face and warm tears tightening my throat, I came to the cliffs at Bluff Park and stopped at the guard rail to simply exist in the raw, black air. I stared out over Long Beach Harbor, over the artificial oil islands with their wind-burned palms and grotesquely lighted condo façades disguising the drilling towers and pumps, over the
Queen Mary
and the immense geodesic dome of the
Spruce Goose,
over the leviathan tankers and cargo ship waiting to disgorge their contents at the docks to feed the titanic gantry cranes and the refinery terminals, over the breakwater, over the absurd into the sublime—and drifted off, into the eternal blackness on the sea at night.

 

Arriving home, I climbed the stairs and opened the door, a god of the intellect with my conclusions rolled up like a scroll into a neat, tidy covenant. Without a clue as to where my philosophies were about to take me, I sat down and began to grieve. Grief, it appeared, began not with death but with the recognition of its imminence and made itself manifest in a deep, throbbing blend of pleasure and pain. From this point on, Darwin and I would become intimate companions with this sweet sorrow.

What I found in the months to come was that in focusing all my powers on Darwin's state, I became sensitized to his every cry, every gesture, every marking, every hair misplaced, every whisker shed, every smudge on his perianal fur, every crust of dried tears, every drop from a runny nose, every utterance, even the softest suspiration.

During the day I doted on him, glancing in his direction countless times, changing his water with each drink, removing his droppings and peepee potatoes with each visit to the litter box, coming to his side at each meow, racking my brains to anticipate what else he might possibly need. Wherever he chose to sleep, I would make a bed of towels on the spot. With each listless movement I would check his gums for the pale evidence of feline infectious anemia. I even slept more lightly, somehow alert, and if Darwin cried out in the night, his voice sliced like a razor across an eye. Scalp crawling, half awake, I would jump from bed, run to his side, hoping—praying—that I could help him, and when done, feeling that serving his needs was not a chore but a privilege, and a glowing sense of gratitude came over me. I refused invitations, restricted my travels, rearranged my sleep to administer medication, spent hours preparing his food in special ways.

In serving Darwin I denied my own immediate desires and in this denial found an unexpected sense of self-worth. There was a power, it seemed, in curbing the animal urge, from controlling the primal appetite, by means of rational determination. Monks and priests, leading lives of religious self-denial, have always known this. In a similar way I discovered the spiritual intimacy of terminal care, which allows no modesty, no shame, no conceits: messes would be made; messes would simply be cleaned up without further concern. I trudged on, bearing the weight of impending death. To know that this small, doomed creature would have his every need met, his every pain caressed, transcended hopelessness, and often I would find myself swallowing tears of sorrow and joy, for this was truly the nectar of love. That is what happens to gods who encounter cats.

***

Inevitably the cycle of daily life turned on feeding. When Darwin ate, the sun came forth. When his appetite waned, the day turned black, the virus was surely encroaching, the end was drawing near, and the grief throbbed with its heavy, pressing ache.

And so I badgered him with culinary temptations. I cooked salmon and chicken and steak (although much of the time I succumbed to my own appetite and simply made larger amounts, with enough to share). Sometimes Darwin would gulp his food with smacking lips and sucking gusto. With increasing frequency, however, he would eat more slowly, with less joy, then turn away and leave food behind. He had never done that when his health was good, and the memory of better times always made me sad.

A pattern emerged in which his appetite rose and fell in a seven- to ten-day cycle, almost certainly reflecting the viral encroachments. One day, as one of these cycles approached its nadir, with appetite nearly gone, I realized that he had not moved for hours from his spot beneath my desk, and on reaching down to stroke him, I found that he lay in a pool of urine with several large stools. When I scooped him up, he lay limply in my arms.

By now I was learning to temper my panic at moments like these, and instead of driving straightaway to the hospital, I called Dr. Mader, who recommended that we wait a day or two to see how Darwin fared on his own. He was taking antibiotics, which would prevent the feline infectious anemia from flaring up, and no treatment would suppress the virus, so there was not much to be done.

After a sponge bath, Darwin squeezed beneath the couch, implying that food was out of the question, and curled up to endure. For two days he lived in a state of deep depression, listless and inert; then, on the third day, he got up, walked to the door and announced with a loud, paint-peeling meow that he wanted out. After all, if he did not patrol his borders, no one else would. He walked down the stairs, tail up, as if nothing had happened, and for six or seven days he appeared to enjoy normal health.

A few days later, Dr. Mader called and asked if I'd be interested in exposing Darwin to an experimental treatment. The medication was called immunoglobulin, a natural substance that was supposed to stimulate the immune system. There were no guarantees, but preliminary tests had shown promise in fighting the feline leukemia virus. The program would involve intravenous injections every three or four days and would require six treatments or more.

I looked at Darwin lying in his corner, his bold markings and rich orange-and-white coat still stunningly beautiful, and saw him looking back at me. His head was resting on his paws, but his eyes were turned up, looking out from under his brow. I tried to focus my spirit, tried to enter his skull, get into his mind, feel what he was feeling. I felt so ... spiritual—surely our minds would connect. But his eyes stared back at me without any sign of emotion or thought, just those large, black, slitted portals leading back to that place where evolution began. All was blank, all was isolation, nothing was said. The realization slowly sank in that any dialogue we had would have to be manufactured by me.

Very well. He still has a lot of living left. He might be terrified of the hospital because he cannot understand the reason behind the torture. He cannot think these things through, but I, with my power of durable human attorney, can. What if the treatments work? We'll do it.

The next day we began. Transport cage, car, hospital. The usual terror. Another needle in the leg. Several hours to infuse the liquid. Transport cage, car, home.

I could see no improvement in Darwin's bearing, mood, or overall appearance over the next few days, and God knows, I wanted to. The blue mind, however, would not fall for sentiment. Four days later, after the second treatment, right on the seven- to ten-day cycle, Darwin retreated beneath the couch and curled up with his tail wrapped around his forepaws and nose and entered another depression. His temperature remained normal, but his heartbeat was slightly elevated. Perhaps the time had come, said Dr. Mader, to monitor his heart with an electrocardiograph. This would cost another $140, but I had proceeded too far into the land of medical illusion to stop now. Little patches of his fur were shaved away in each armpit and each knee, electrodes were attached to the bare skin, he was laid on his right side on a padded table and underwent the procedure. He was too weak to protest.

The electrocardiogram, however, revealed nothing significant. It provided $140 worth of knowledge that left us precisely where we started before coming to the hospital.

And so the immunoglobulin treatment continued. Every three or four days I took Darwin to the hospital in
rigor terroris.
On the seventh visit, Dr. Mader announced that the cephalic vein of Darwin's left leg had become so scarred from repeated punctures that we would have to use the right leg. This would be the last injection. It was plain for all to see that Darwin was not improving, and there was no point in continuing the tyranny of medical expectation with its diabolical inflictions of hope.

As if to underscore the viral encroachment, Darwin contracted ear mites. If this seems incongruous, the fact is, as the individual grows weaker, it succumbs more readily to metazoan parasites like mites and fleas. Perhaps there are factors in the blood of a healthy animal that repel these invaders; perhaps a healthy animal can defend itself by grooming; perhaps there are things in heaven and hell undreamed of in our medical-physiological philosophies. Whatever the reason, the mites were the first of what was to be a continuing succession of afflictions mediated by the feline leukemia virus.

The treatment required me to clean the sticky brown mite secretion from the ridges and recesses of Darwin's ears, then apply medication with a cotton swab. This had a happy consequence, however, because it imposed an unexpected intimacy. In order to do a thorough job, I had to hold Darwin's head and gently tilt it this way and that to reach the hidden crannies of the outer ear, and it seemed as if my fingers, my skin, my muscles, and even my joints were sensing some sort of spirit in the fur, the skin, the muscles, and joints of my fur-bearing friend. The connection was deeper than intellect, the limbic workings of my primal brain fusing directly with the animal mind of our kin.

J
UNE HAD NOW ARRIVED
, the days were reaching their greatest length, and the weather, reflecting the infusions of ever more energy from the sun, grew warmer and warmer. One day I sat in my second-story office, gazing at the meticulously coifed yard of my neighbor, when a large, dark tabby appeared from under the far fence and walked cautiously toward my flat. The neighbor had just watered the lawn, and large puddles covered much of it. Clearly the cat did not want to get his feet wet, so he groped his way, placing one foot gingerly ahead of the other, testing, fastidiously shaking his paws whenever touching the water.

His feet were smaller than one would expect for a cat his size, and this enhanced the impression of refined, almost decadent sensitivities. Whatever the reason, he struck a subliminal resonance in me, and I liked his cautious approach. I understood his reluctance to tread through swamps. But although it was clearly a case of attraction at first glance, I didn't think past the moment, presuming it to be a fleeting fancy. Darwin was more than enough responsibility.

Over the next few weeks I saw the cat on odd occasions and assumed he was a stray. A large apartment building stood on the other side of my neighbor's backyard, and every year when the spring term ended at the local college and university campuses, students would leave for the summer and abandon their cats, presuming that some neighbor would take them in. Students, however, had no exclusive claim to this behavior, since ordinary tenants also abandoned their cats for the same convenient reasoning, and new strays showed up continually, some surviving on the good graces of neighbors who fed them, others simply fading into some land of the never-never that no one knew and no one cared to know.