Monday, July 23, 2007
The Revenge of the Shit
As the weeks went by, it became obvious that Wars and I were stuck with eachother. I had even managed, in the last weekend of July last year, to find an eccentric old lady in Dun Laoighaire who was delighted to take her. 4 days later, I was called to recollect these damaged goods. SW had made a mockery of her goodwill, her care and her beautiful apartment. This woman was of a certain age, for sure, but she was also very French, a wealthy-looking art collector (ie. a kept woman) and completely fucking noisettes. I remember she 'had a lover in the Lebanon' and everything, but everything in our conversation was related back to sex. She had decided, after living a life of complete and avowed selfishness, to try and look after something - hence Star Wars. And it would have worked beautifully if only the cat had assented. It was when I returned to collect her, in failure and shame, that she chose to register her disgust with me. I popped her into my car and then returned to get her stuff from the apartment, saying my goodbyes, only to open my car door and find a fresh cat turd plopped out neatly on the front seat.
So I took her home again and she positively relished her return. My girlfriend at the time, still a full week away from laying her own disgusted gesture on me, had offered to co-foster in her house so that I wouldn't feel so stuck with an animal I had been ambivalent about. I took the symbolism to heart - this poor destitute rag of cat, once many years ago a great and vital beast no doubt, would be rehabilitated by our good care and love and would flourish once again.
I would commit and make this work. It would be beautiful, rewarding and demonstrative of our amazing ability to renew our love.
And then she dumped (on) me.
I still don't know exactly what happened or why I was responsible for what did, but a year down the line it's got all the relevance of a footnote to a foreword in a book about bollocks. I'm here and now and making different mistakes, thank you. I was left, quite literally, in a world of shit. Came home from the dumping to find Star Wars had somehow psychically, empathetically vomited all over the flat. My bed, chair and lounge carpet were the big recipients. I was, i'm very ashamed to say, violently fucking upset and very grateful that she was faster than me or i'd have done something i'd have hated myself for, forevermore. As it is, I shouted at her with the deeply angry voice of God himself and she vanished quicker than *sniff* my hopes and dreams 20 minutes earlier (oh piss off. I've written precious little about the worst day of my entire life thus far. Can't tell the Star Wars saga without the Nutgroist Love-Lost Telenovela). I sat down, stared again at the vomit, and spent the rest of the week puking my eyes out.
But of course, symbolism be damned, I still had a cat to care for. So I made peace with her and realised that the real meaning of all this was that there but for the grace of Dog went I. Staring down the barrel of my empty future, I was now deciding whether I was going to go and live on the streets (tempting but highly stupid and, as romantic gestures go, suicidally silly), keep on living in hope and Dublin (very tempting but not the most comfortable state of extra-marital affairs to maintain, when i'd just spent a year creeping along the tether) or just fuck the fuck off to wherever the fuck and try to forget the last ten years ever happened (ummm.... I've done much better than I expected, but I don't necessarily recommend it). Really, my cat's life had been a mixture of all three. Clearly a housecat of origin, for she had little problem understanding what indoors was and showed no obvious feral traits, yet cast out to live on her own she obviously didn't manage to make a good go of it.
But she also never gave up.
I would redouble my efforts to relocate her but this time, we'd try out of Dublin, now a city of blight for us both. And in the meantime, we'd have a laugh. I'm not consciously trying to put a photomontage in your head of us sitting by the fire, playing monopoly, gorging on cake, getting pissed on Grappa, dancing to James Brown and the like. But nevertheless we had some good times and she became ever more friendly. Whilst the shit and piss decreased, regrettably the vomit increased and so I tried a few different dietary regimes to see what the offending foodstuff was.
I also let her out of the apartment a few times, trying to give her a feel for the area, meet the local alleycats who ruled the backstreets of the stadium near my place etc. But she'd just hide in the nearest bush and not come out for hours. I even decided to give her her own home entirely, in front of the washing machine in the utility room, located outside and underneath the stairs. With a basket, a door left ajar and me topping up her food and drink, I thought she might become an independent cat again who I could regularly visit and feed and give affection to (shit, only now do I see something more symbolic in this relationship, but anyway...) but instead, some local fucking brazen Tom came and nicked all her food and sent her scurrying to the very far corner of the utility room, behind a MASSIVE pile of accumulated crap from the landlord that was covered in grease, oil, shite, glass, leaves, cobwebs and more shite. And I, tired and sick from a cold, having not eaten in several days nor slept in weeks, spent 4 or 5 hours emptying it out into the driveway, cutting both hands and breathing in huge bags of 1980's dust, breaking all manner of materials in the process, long into the night, just to reach my poor, frightened pussycat. Who then bit me very fucking hard when I finally reached in to get her. It took all the willpower I had left in my broken body not to lock the door and melt down the key.
And then, a miracle. A friend of friend of a wonderful comedy promoter friend of mine had found someone about 3 hours drive away in the middle of the country who would simply love to take her. They fostered all manner of cats and no matter how difficult this one was, it wouldn't be a problem and would I like them to drive over and collect it?
No, fuck it, my dear, I shall come to you. You're doing me and my cat the biggest favour possible, so it'd be a pleasure. Is there anything I need to do beforehand? Oh, get a blood test? Vaccinations? Sure, I can do that. I'll do it first thing tomorrow. Yes, of course I understand. Can't have one animal infecting all the others. The vet seemed to think she was clean from all that sort of stuff but yes, one can't be too careful and no I don't mind at all
The next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and get the tests started. The vet is very happy to hear we've found a home for her and bids us on our way.
The next next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and are told that the results of the blood test mean that poor Star Wars is suffering from jaundice, which is leading to liver failure and a prolonged and extremely painful death. We have to put her down. As we walk back in some distress to the car outside, we notice something is missing from this picture. It's the car. I'd inadvertently left it in a zone in which you can only park when there's a fucking R in the Month or an S in the Day or some screw-the-people greedy bullshit and so the Dublin Municipal Parking Enforcement and Waffen SS Department had picked it up and taken it away. Oh Star Wars, if you'd only known how much a blood test and car requisition cost these days, you'd have had the good grace to tell me you were dying and ran under my car when you had the chance. Although in retrospect, if I'd have had any common sense at all, I'd have been able to read the vomit more accurately. Which, by the way, had recently become much rarer in frequency. Things had been looking up, at least for her.
In fact, as the ex-sis-in-common-law and I tearfully, defiantly discussed when we did finally return home, Star Wars had never been in better health. Could the vet be wrong? We couched opinion from all sides and eventually all but I decided it was for the best that she be put to sleep. And so, with a heart heavier than Led Zeppelin playing on the Titanic, we took her back a few days later to be, oh what a pretty word, euthanised. The vet explained very simply that she would inject my cat with a strong sedative that would make her fall asleep and within a minute her heart would stop beating. In fact, because Star Wars was in such a weak state, it shouldn't take more than ten seconds. I made one more feeble protest to the effect that she was no ordinary cat and should be given more time to improve, but it was quickly brushed aside by many years of accumulated medical evidence and my own scorched-earth policy in regard to, well, anything and everything that was associated in any way whatsoever with my about-to-be former life.
I don't think it's right to describe her death in detail here, though I remember it all too clearly. Let's just say that after 30 seconds, she was looking at us with puzzled eyes and I knew I shouldn't have brought her.....
TEN FUCKING MINUTES LATER, AFTER MANY SOOTHING EMPTY WORDS OF REASSURANCE FROM THE VET AND ANOTHER, MORE POWERFUL INJECTION, SHE WAS STILL MOST PALPABLY ALIVE. HER HEART BEAT AND HER CHEST ROSE AND FELL. I STOOD STARING AT A THING DETERMINED NOT TO GIVE UP.
It took a third injection, directly into the heart to kill her.
We drove home, my little sis in tears and I as numb as a coma. 10 days later I was gone too.
Star Wars, Dublin, August 5, 2006.
A superb breakbeat taken from an album I used to own a very rare original copy of a long, long time ago.
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As the weeks went by, it became obvious that Wars and I were stuck with eachother. I had even managed, in the last weekend of July last year, to find an eccentric old lady in Dun Laoighaire who was delighted to take her. 4 days later, I was called to recollect these damaged goods. SW had made a mockery of her goodwill, her care and her beautiful apartment. This woman was of a certain age, for sure, but she was also very French, a wealthy-looking art collector (ie. a kept woman) and completely fucking noisettes. I remember she 'had a lover in the Lebanon' and everything, but everything in our conversation was related back to sex. She had decided, after living a life of complete and avowed selfishness, to try and look after something - hence Star Wars. And it would have worked beautifully if only the cat had assented. It was when I returned to collect her, in failure and shame, that she chose to register her disgust with me. I popped her into my car and then returned to get her stuff from the apartment, saying my goodbyes, only to open my car door and find a fresh cat turd plopped out neatly on the front seat.
So I took her home again and she positively relished her return. My girlfriend at the time, still a full week away from laying her own disgusted gesture on me, had offered to co-foster in her house so that I wouldn't feel so stuck with an animal I had been ambivalent about. I took the symbolism to heart - this poor destitute rag of cat, once many years ago a great and vital beast no doubt, would be rehabilitated by our good care and love and would flourish once again.
I would commit and make this work. It would be beautiful, rewarding and demonstrative of our amazing ability to renew our love.
And then she dumped (on) me.
I still don't know exactly what happened or why I was responsible for what did, but a year down the line it's got all the relevance of a footnote to a foreword in a book about bollocks. I'm here and now and making different mistakes, thank you. I was left, quite literally, in a world of shit. Came home from the dumping to find Star Wars had somehow psychically, empathetically vomited all over the flat. My bed, chair and lounge carpet were the big recipients. I was, i'm very ashamed to say, violently fucking upset and very grateful that she was faster than me or i'd have done something i'd have hated myself for, forevermore. As it is, I shouted at her with the deeply angry voice of God himself and she vanished quicker than *sniff* my hopes and dreams 20 minutes earlier (oh piss off. I've written precious little about the worst day of my entire life thus far. Can't tell the Star Wars saga without the Nutgroist Love-Lost Telenovela). I sat down, stared again at the vomit, and spent the rest of the week puking my eyes out.
But of course, symbolism be damned, I still had a cat to care for. So I made peace with her and realised that the real meaning of all this was that there but for the grace of Dog went I. Staring down the barrel of my empty future, I was now deciding whether I was going to go and live on the streets (tempting but highly stupid and, as romantic gestures go, suicidally silly), keep on living in hope and Dublin (very tempting but not the most comfortable state of extra-marital affairs to maintain, when i'd just spent a year creeping along the tether) or just fuck the fuck off to wherever the fuck and try to forget the last ten years ever happened (ummm.... I've done much better than I expected, but I don't necessarily recommend it). Really, my cat's life had been a mixture of all three. Clearly a housecat of origin, for she had little problem understanding what indoors was and showed no obvious feral traits, yet cast out to live on her own she obviously didn't manage to make a good go of it.
But she also never gave up.
I would redouble my efforts to relocate her but this time, we'd try out of Dublin, now a city of blight for us both. And in the meantime, we'd have a laugh. I'm not consciously trying to put a photomontage in your head of us sitting by the fire, playing monopoly, gorging on cake, getting pissed on Grappa, dancing to James Brown and the like. But nevertheless we had some good times and she became ever more friendly. Whilst the shit and piss decreased, regrettably the vomit increased and so I tried a few different dietary regimes to see what the offending foodstuff was.
I also let her out of the apartment a few times, trying to give her a feel for the area, meet the local alleycats who ruled the backstreets of the stadium near my place etc. But she'd just hide in the nearest bush and not come out for hours. I even decided to give her her own home entirely, in front of the washing machine in the utility room, located outside and underneath the stairs. With a basket, a door left ajar and me topping up her food and drink, I thought she might become an independent cat again who I could regularly visit and feed and give affection to (shit, only now do I see something more symbolic in this relationship, but anyway...) but instead, some local fucking brazen Tom came and nicked all her food and sent her scurrying to the very far corner of the utility room, behind a MASSIVE pile of accumulated crap from the landlord that was covered in grease, oil, shite, glass, leaves, cobwebs and more shite. And I, tired and sick from a cold, having not eaten in several days nor slept in weeks, spent 4 or 5 hours emptying it out into the driveway, cutting both hands and breathing in huge bags of 1980's dust, breaking all manner of materials in the process, long into the night, just to reach my poor, frightened pussycat. Who then bit me very fucking hard when I finally reached in to get her. It took all the willpower I had left in my broken body not to lock the door and melt down the key.
And then, a miracle. A friend of friend of a wonderful comedy promoter friend of mine had found someone about 3 hours drive away in the middle of the country who would simply love to take her. They fostered all manner of cats and no matter how difficult this one was, it wouldn't be a problem and would I like them to drive over and collect it?
No, fuck it, my dear, I shall come to you. You're doing me and my cat the biggest favour possible, so it'd be a pleasure. Is there anything I need to do beforehand? Oh, get a blood test? Vaccinations? Sure, I can do that. I'll do it first thing tomorrow. Yes, of course I understand. Can't have one animal infecting all the others. The vet seemed to think she was clean from all that sort of stuff but yes, one can't be too careful and no I don't mind at all
The next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and get the tests started. The vet is very happy to hear we've found a home for her and bids us on our way.
The next next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and are told that the results of the blood test mean that poor Star Wars is suffering from jaundice, which is leading to liver failure and a prolonged and extremely painful death. We have to put her down. As we walk back in some distress to the car outside, we notice something is missing from this picture. It's the car. I'd inadvertently left it in a zone in which you can only park when there's a fucking R in the Month or an S in the Day or some screw-the-people greedy bullshit and so the Dublin Municipal Parking Enforcement and Waffen SS Department had picked it up and taken it away. Oh Star Wars, if you'd only known how much a blood test and car requisition cost these days, you'd have had the good grace to tell me you were dying and ran under my car when you had the chance. Although in retrospect, if I'd have had any common sense at all, I'd have been able to read the vomit more accurately. Which, by the way, had recently become much rarer in frequency. Things had been looking up, at least for her.
In fact, as the ex-sis-in-common-law and I tearfully, defiantly discussed when we did finally return home, Star Wars had never been in better health. Could the vet be wrong? We couched opinion from all sides and eventually all but I decided it was for the best that she be put to sleep. And so, with a heart heavier than Led Zeppelin playing on the Titanic, we took her back a few days later to be, oh what a pretty word, euthanised. The vet explained very simply that she would inject my cat with a strong sedative that would make her fall asleep and within a minute her heart would stop beating. In fact, because Star Wars was in such a weak state, it shouldn't take more than ten seconds. I made one more feeble protest to the effect that she was no ordinary cat and should be given more time to improve, but it was quickly brushed aside by many years of accumulated medical evidence and my own scorched-earth policy in regard to, well, anything and everything that was associated in any way whatsoever with my about-to-be former life.
I don't think it's right to describe her death in detail here, though I remember it all too clearly. Let's just say that after 30 seconds, she was looking at us with puzzled eyes and I knew I shouldn't have brought her.....
TEN FUCKING MINUTES LATER, AFTER MANY SOOTHING EMPTY WORDS OF REASSURANCE FROM THE VET AND ANOTHER, MORE POWERFUL INJECTION, SHE WAS STILL MOST PALPABLY ALIVE. HER HEART BEAT AND HER CHEST ROSE AND FELL. I STOOD STARING AT A THING DETERMINED NOT TO GIVE UP.
It took a third injection, directly into the heart to kill her.
We drove home, my little sis in tears and I as numb as a coma. 10 days later I was gone too.
Star Wars, Dublin, August 5, 2006.
A superb breakbeat taken from an album I used to own a very rare original copy of a long, long time ago.
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