EvilJulie.com

Joe passed out of this world on Tuesday night at about 8:30, right as Keith Olbermann was reading the day’s World’s Worst Persons. He had been going downhill for a while, and by Sunday he wasn’t really able to use his back legs. We were bringing food and water to him and taking him to the litterbox when he acted like he needed to go, but on Tuesday morning he wasn’t showing interest in food or water anymore. His breathing had also changed early that morning-it was shallower and more labored. We knew that he was going to go soon, and decided that if he could, we wanted him to pass at home with us instead of with the vet. Joe hated the vet, and I wanted him to have good memories at the end, not be stressed out. I made some calls to let people know what was happening, and we settled in for the wait.

Tuesday was the longest day of my life, and also the hardest. We don’t think he was in pain-he never cried out, just rolled back and forth as his hips would get uncomfortable and occasionally sigh. He stayed with us in the living room the majority of the day, although when the sun finally came out that afternoon we put him in a sunny spot on the bed-he loved to lie in the sun. We sat with him, putting water on his tongue when we could to keep it from drying out, telling him what a good boy he was, petting him, and letting him know how much we loved him. At about 5, I was sure we were going to have to take him to the vet, but I realize now that the waiting was much harder on us than it was on him. He had a couple of mini-tremors in the early evening, and we decided to settle in with him on the couch. Joe lay on Rick’s lap, I sat beside them, and we waited, continuing to talk to Joe and tell him what he meant to us and petting him. His breathing got slower and slower, and then he was gone.

I’m glad he got to go that way, with the two people he loved most holding him and being told how much he was loved in his own home. When it’s my time to come, I hope I can go like that. But even though it was a relief that he had gone relatively easily, that night was so hard on me. I’ve had Joe since I was 14, and every night that we were in the same house, he slept with me. Even when we weren’t in the same place, I knew that Joe was somewhere in the world. That night was the first night in almost 18 years without him. I cried for a long time, because although I’d had him for so long and we’d had such a good life together, when you get down to it, 18 years isn’t long enough. It doesn’t seem fair that this little guy whom I had loved so much, who was basically my little brother, was gone and I had to go on without him. If you’ve ever had a pet, you’ll understand what I mean. Pets love us so intensely-Joe was one of only two creatures in my life that looked at me with adoration every time he saw me (the other was the golden retriever I had as a kid, Brandy). I always felt like the center of his world, and suddenly that was gone.

Joe was a really phenomenal cat. I got him when our neighbors up the street threw him out of the house for having “relations” with his mother (dude, he’s a cat, you didn’t fix him or his mother, shit’s going to happen). We found him later that same day, when he was wandering the streets and came to play with me on my front porch. We had a number of outside cats that we fed and played with at that time, but that afternoon when he saw me and came hurtling across two lanes of traffic and right in front of a semi to get to me, I told mom I thought he was too stupid to stay outside. He might get squashed. She agreed. Boy were we wrong-he was just exhibiting typical gifted behavior: get really focused on something you want and display an alarming lack of common sense in the pursuit of it. We realized he wasn’t stupid when he figured out how to eject tapes from the VCR and then push them back in because he liked the clicking noise (I watched him do that for 10 minutes one night and am still sorry we didn’t have a camcorder to record it). When he figured out that pressing the buttons on the answering machine sometimes let him listen to Uncle Norm talking for minutes on end, we had to keep the answering machine under a box so he wouldn’t break it, too. To this day, these stories are legend among my friends.

Joe could also communicate in ways I’ve never seen with another animal. Until his last few days, I always knew exactly what he was thinking. He was a Siamese mix and had that distinctive yowl as a result, and never hesitated to tell you what he really thought about what was going on. As the years went by, he learned to yowl in ways that sounded like English. You knew damn well when Joe was telling you “No.” We also had a language of head nods. I would nod my head at him, he would do the same back to me. It was our way of saying “Hey, how’s it going? Okay here.” Bongani saw Joe do that one night and incredulously asked “Did that cat just give you props?” Yes. Yes he did. My friend Kim said on more than one occasion that Joe was my familiar, and she was right. If we had been in Salem in 1692, Joe and I would have been toast. Joe spoke my language, or maybe I spoke his. It’s a very quiet apartment without him, and yesterday after Rick went to Pittsfield to check on his ma for the first time in a couple of weeks, Freddie and I looked at each other like “Shit, now what?” For as much as Freddie harassed Joe, what I’ve learned in the past two days is that he really loved him as well. Freddie has been downright subdued since Joe left us, sleeping a lot, glued to my side when he’s awake. He knows that something happened and that Joe isn’t here anymore, and he’s trying to make sense of it just like the rest of us.

So if I’m a little quiet for the next few days, know that’s what I’m doing: remembering my best friend, trying to figure out what to do now, and spending time with the little guy who’s been left behind with me. Think good thoughts for us and for Joe, okay?

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