Blue-Footed Musings

Dear Peeps,

I was thinking more today about what a wonderful cat you were. Do you know that we never had to warn the children to be careful around you? Even Mojo, who is normally calm, can get a little crazy when he’s scared. Zoulie was notoriously touchy and could never be trusted to keep her claws to herself. But Peeps, you never scratched or bit. You were a sweet-tempered cat.

And you used to drape yourself over things in a way that was lovely but looked terribly uncomfortable. You did it more often when you were young, but even recently I had to kick your draping self off my new office chair. Not before you put some holes in it with your claws, but that was OK. I didn’t even yell at you. You weren’t intentionally destructive. Not to say that you never scratched things on purpose, but usually you were content with your cardboard scratcher and left our stuff alone.

We called you Peeps because sometimes you made a cute, not-at-all-meowy peeping sound. Sure, you knew how to meow. You were a cat, after all. But you also peeped. You were our Peepser, our Sweetie Peeps.

I wish you could peep for me again. I miss you.

Love,

Your Person

Dear Peeps,

Late last night I went downstairs to tell Faithful Reader something. He said, “Shhh. Peeps is making the strangest sounds.” I stood on the stairs, listening, looking down on you. You were sleeping on your favorite spot on the couch. You stretched and relaxed. Faithful Reader said, “Her eye is open.” I said, “She looks dead from this angle.” I was only joking, but then you didn’t breathe. We waited for you to breathe, but you didn’t.

Faithful Reader scooped you up and moved you around and tried to make you breathe. Why didn’t you breathe? I stroked your fur and called your name and soaked you with my tears, but you did not breathe. Why didn’t you breathe?

I don’t understand. I had always that thought Mojo would go first. You were younger, only nine or ten years old. You weren’t sick. You had acted normally all day long. Why didn’t you breathe?

We were looking forward to so many more years with you. We thought someday you’d be our only cat, and you deserved to be our only cat, because you’d always had to share us. Yet you were so good about sharing, never demanding, always happy to take attention when it was offered.

And you were such a beautiful cat, Peeps. When I wrote the story about the night you got out, I imagined you being hunted for your pelt, because you were surely the most beautiful thing in the woods that night. I described you as having gray fur, but that was just for convenience of storytelling. In real life you were a mackerel tabby, with a mix of black, brown, and a little white. You had one paw that was completely brown. I called it your “peanut butter paw.” Your eyes were close-set, exotic.

You were a champion mouser. We could always tell when there was a mouse in the house, because you’d stake out its hiding place. If it dared come out, you’d show us where it was. One time you cornered one in the kitchen, and all I had to do to get rid of it was open the back door. Now who will warn us when a mouse gets in, and who will corner it for us? We need you, Peeps. Why didn’t you breathe?

You brought so much trouble into our lives at first. You had a disease of some kind that you gave to Mojo and Zoulie, and the litter boxes were disgusting until we finally found a cure. Then when Livia was a baby, you started smearing poop on the floor. We didn’t want our baby crawling around in that, so we thought about finding another home for you. We could never trust anyone else to take care of you, though. So we cleaned up after you, reorganized the litter boxes, hoped for the best. And we got the best. We chose you, and we kept you, and we wanted to keep keeping you.

But then you didn’t breathe. I will never understand why you just stopped, or how it was that we were both there to watch you die. In my mind’s eye, I replay the moment. I watch you stretch and relax, and then I wait for the breath that never comes. I wait and I wait. I am still waiting. I will always wait.

We haven’t told the children yet. They had to go to school this morning. We didn’t want to drop such terrible news on them without giving them time to digest it. Livia told me just the other day that you were her favorite. I don’t want to have to break her heart. Marshall is sensitive and introspective. He will ask us why you died. We will have to tell him that you were old. It’s not a good answer. He will see right through it. He will feel lost, just like we do.

We miss you desperately.

Love,

Your Person

Sometimes I wish I could give my kids a more old-fashioned upbringing. It would be so good for them, but our society works against it. I can’t give them a really close extended family, because most of their family members live far away. I can’t give them a traditional neighborhood with built-in friends, because that’s not the kind of place we live. I can’t give them nearly as much unstructured playtime as I had as a child, because school hours don’t allow for that.

But I can at least let them play outside by themselves when they have free time. It feels almost neglectful to leave them out there on their own. By modern standards, it sort of is, though of course I can’t help but check on them from time to time. You wouldn’t believe the looks some other parents have given me when I said that I left my kids alone outside.

People think the outside world is unsafe, but it’s not. It’s life. It’s learning. It’s growing up. Unless you want your children clinging to your leg for the rest of your life, you have to let them loose. I would call myself a failure as a parent if I didn’t give them at least this much.

Some days I get so angry that I could scream. And some days I write a ranting post, and then I say to my husband, “Am I allowed to say this?” Because I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure what part of “free speech” is still free. So much of it seems to come with a penalty, if not yet a legal one, then at least a social one. That old saying, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” should be updated for the modern age. The new version: “Go ahead and judge. Everyone else does.”

Some days the wind is at your back, and other days it’s knocking over the recycling bin and blowing your recyclables across the neighbor’s property, and damned if you’re going to hack your way through the neighbor’s overgrown jungle of a yard to retrieve that shit.

Some days I think it is a good thing we don’t have a basement or an attic, else I might be tempted to lock my kids in one of them.

If I had a dollar for every dollar I’d ever wasted, I’d never have wasted a dollar.