021510

I wasn't happy there and I'm not happy here so I'm looking for somewhere else to go. Oh, of course, of course that means I'm running from something. As if, if I could only identify the unidentifiable plague then I would suddenly grab that happiness that has eluded me for so long. Like that search is so easy, like I could just click on my happiness any time I wanted and that I'm just choosing to be lonely and miserable. If I'd just give up the fight to find some place to make me happy, if I'd just settle for whatever's convenient, settle for less, yeah, then I'd be happy. Yeah, obviously that's how life works, it's just and fair and perfect. Maybe it is and I just can't see it, but it's not.

020910.2

Transcribed from my typewriter. There'll be some overlap from the last one.

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Have you ever cried so hard your teeth hurt?

I can’t believe she’s gone and we didn’t get a real goodbye. I felt sick this morning, taking pictures of her before we went to the vet, because I felt perverted and wrong to acy as if we would never see her again. Maybe I was just thinking about taking final pictures of her with two eyes, but I can’t remember. Maybe somehow I knew this would happen. I think she knew.

She slept right by my pillow all night, purring away like a love-crazed maniac. The happiest cat in the world, I thought. She woke me up exactly one minute before my alarm was supposed to go off to wake up and take her to the vet by rubbing her head against mine. I don’t think she’s ever done that before. And it wasn’t just once either. As I came around, I remember I kept telling her, today’s the day, you’ll be okay, I love you so much, and she kept running her head along the back of my own, meowing cheerfully. Maybe she knew and was just ready to go.

I really wish she could have waited around for us, so I could have hugged her at tight as I could. I don’t know if that would have been any easier than what happened, though. I don’t know if we would have taken that pain any better. Maybe she knew that, too.

My whole body aches for her. I found myself freshly sobbing when I realized I don’t have any reason to leave my door open a crack anymore. I don’t have to look around the floor when I’m walking through the dark hallway upstairs. And this is the worst I’ve got. She was the most wonderful friend I could ever have. She was perfect. I loved how vocal she was and I loved her, dandruff and all. That cat could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned. Icky can get on my nerves any day and when I’m in a bad mood, he only makes things worse. I would come up to my bedroom, find my best buddy, and I would love on her until I felt better. It helped when she loved me back so much.

I truly believe that she loved me just as much as I loved her, if not more. And maybe that’s why she chose to spare me and Kyle of having to stand watch while she died under our hands. I just wish she weren’t so wise, doing what was best for us. Either way, death was what was best for her, and that’s all I ever wanted.

I’m glad she could die happy and in no pain. That much is definite. She had a great life and a loving home and plenty of her favorite Meow Mix and head scratchers.

Fuck, I love that cat more than anything I can think of. I can’t think of a single thing that could come even close to rivaling her. She wasn’t just part of my family, she was the most important part of my family.

She was so cloe to her birthday, too. All we wanted was to give her the best birthday of her life, but instead she’ll have the best birthday of her afterlife and Kyle and I are left below to celebrate without her. When she was born, I was just turning six years old.

She was all I had. What now? I hate feeling sorry for myself and wallowing in spite of this, but goddamn, I missed her earlier when I thought she was for just a few hours. I don’t know how I’m going to handle her being gone everyday for the rest of my life.

I can still feel the residue of her fur against my fingertips from holding her at the vet’s office. Her body was so heavy, as if her soul had a negative weight. She was so limp in my arms and collapsed onto my forearm, as if sitting on the arm of a couch and not a person. If I didn’t look at her face, she looked just like my baby girl that I’ve loved so intensely all these years. I could just pet her and pet her and pet her and I could almost feel her purring beneath my hands, almost see her breathing slowly in her eternal sleep.

The people at our veterinarian are so kind. They made a little plaster imprint of her paw for us to take home. Mom suggested we put it in her garden in spring, but god, I don’t want to do that. I never go out to that garden and I want to be reminded of the cat I loved everyday, reminded how much she loved me, too.

Petting her empty body there in the sterile surgery room, looking down at my hands, all I could see was how red and raw and torn apart they were. It seemed as though every one of my knuckles opened up and started bleeding all at the same time. The letters on my fingers red BIRTHDAY but I wasn’t feeling much like celebrating anymore. I wish I had changed it before she died, to something more like ILOVEHER or THANKYOU or CARLYCAT or anything except fucking BIRTHDAY. The last thing I want to do is reflect on my birthday and celebrate.

Maybe I should have seen the signs. She had been using my suitcase to help get onto my bed since I brought it home. Kyle said her eye had been swollen for a couple of weeks before I moved back. I had noticed the other day that her jaw looked lopsided. I had given her wet food last night with her dry food and she hardly ate any of it, a major rarity for her. I don’t know if that means the tumor had started to conflict with her eating or if she just didn’t feel hungry anymore, awaiting the end.

Really, I know I can’t blame myself and I need to stay positive for Kyle so that he doesn’t blame himself either. There was nothing we really could have done. Even if we had gotten the eye out earlier, there was a chance that we’d never have known about the mouth tumor until it was too late for that, too.

I just want to hear her talk to me at night, in the morning, when I come home from class. I just want to be with her always. I don’t know what I can do for her now that we’re on opposite sides of a world.

020910.1

This was supposed to be an English paper but I couldn't think about anything else when I found out she had to be put down. And I was actually in the middle of writing this when she died. If the timeline seems off, it's because it's real time.

My best friend died one day before her 13th birthday.

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My mom looks at me, her best attempt at sympathy in her eyes, and says “It’s okay to be sad; she’s part of your family.” Hot angry rushed into my head and I wanted to scream at her, tell her “No, she’s the most important part of my family.” That cat means the world to me and now, I have to do the right thing and help her end her own life. Thirteen years of being my best friend, my confidant, my sister, my everything, is all about to swept away by a son of a bitch tumor.

That fucker. We had everything worked out. When the vet found the cancer in her eye last week, my brother and I broke. But that was a problem that half my savings could fix. Carly was to get an ennucluation, her eye surgically removed before the cancerous scoundrel could slip into her brain. Once she was put under anesthetics, the veterinarian found that wicked monster, only too late. It was growing on both sides of her teeth, she called to tell me, and surgery could help with nothing.

Oh, cruel world. Oh, cruel fate. I could bitch and moan about how everything bad happens to me, but it doesn’t. This is happening to her, not to me. I just have to live with it. But no, now we’re straying from the point. The point is, I love this cat more than anything in the world and now, happy as she is, she’s going to die in a few days whether or not she realizes it.

Carly is the best cat I could have ever wanted. People say one of the things they love about dogs is how they’ll come to greet you at the door when you come home, as if cats can’t do that. Carly was one of the most talkative cats I’ve ever known. She could gab for hours, telling me all about the latest gossip of the dust bunnies under my bookshelf or what dumb thing the dog did today. That cat would follow me all over the house, even if I was running up and down stairs. As she grew older, she may not have been right on my tail, but she always managed to catch up for a chat or just to rub her head against my head, purring so hard her whole body shook.

Cats are far more affectionate than the average dog-lover gives them credit for. I could see it in her eyes, how much that cat loved me back. Animal experts say that cats rub their heads on things so that the glands in their cheeks will rub their scent off, to claim something as their own. Carly has claimed me hundreds of thousands of times, meowing and purring up a storm, leaving no survivors in wake of her love. She looks out for me, too, even acting as my alarm clock in the morning or telling me when to go to bed so we can sleep side by side.

Some people think that a good cat has to be a lap cat, but I disagree. A lap cat isn’t necessarily a better cat, and Carly was only a lap cat for me. For anyone else, she would fuss and squirm if they tried to hold her and escape to the floor, darting around the nearest corner. But for me, she would sit for what felt like ages, her thick body weighing down my arms to the point that my arm would shake under her furry mass. I couldn’t take that away from her, though. She would just settle herself in, circling my thigh before dropping down to pulse her tiny, quiet paws against my leg before closing her eyes, purring like a racecar ready to explode from the starting line. As soon as I would go to pet her, she would right herself, immediately alert and anxious for attention, returning to her non-lap cat façade.

Even at the ripe old age of thirteen, Carly still loves to play. Christmas is her favorite time of year, because her favorite spectator sport is in season: wrapping presents. Carly is the ultimate sucker for curly ribbons and the sweet, crisp crunch the paper makes when crumpled by her unrelenting paws. Wrapping a present becomes a joyous challenge, trying to convince her not to sit on the roll or tear all of the bows off the packages. Under the tree, some gifts have even been opened preemptively, her fervor for the wrapping materials is so great.

This is the part where my writing is interrupted by the faint, distant vibrating of a telephone.

At first, she woke from the anesthesia just fine, the vet tells me. But then her face went blue and, when put on oxygen, she seemed to recover up until the point when her heart abruptly stopped and the doctors couldn’t revive her. She was gone before we could even pick her up to give her the best birthday ever before her euthanasia.

Have you ever cried so hard your teeth hurt?

Maybe this was just another way Carly was the best pet, as if she knew her time was coming to an end and she didn’t want to put me and my brother through the pain of having her die by our hands. The vet told me later, as my family stood around my cat’s limp body in the cold operating room, that she wouldn’t be at all surprised if Carly had been listening to our phone conversation, hearing the sad indecision in the quivering of my voice. She made the tough choice for us, when maybe we wouldn’t have been able to. Stranger things have happened in that hospital, the vet mused.

Fresh tears stung my exhausted face when I realized I no longer had to leave my bedroom door open a crack. I don’t have to walk as carefully in the upstairs hallway at night, trying to avoid kicking my furry roommate. I don’t have to worry anymore about waking her up in the middle of the night with my tossing and turning, but I wish I did.

020410

I've relocated my old schoolwork blogs into new blogs under my same name. Trying to collect some of my scribbles here now. They'll still go to Xanga only I won't do much other journals here. Aside from this, I suppose. Ha. Oh, Xanga.

020210

A likely story. as real as any other lie you or I have ever told each other. exchanging fake secrets in the dark. Even though I knew it wasn't the truth, I still choked it down, let it pass, because you and I both know I don't like confrontation, but neither do you so it goes without saying.

I guess I should have been mature and gotten angry when it made sense to, when we were living in the present instead of looking to the past. How productive, to spend all your time dwelling on nostalgia but not learning a goddamn thing from your mistakes. What purpose does that serve? Do you take comfort in knowing you've fucked up like this before and went through this pain before and survived this bullshit before?

When you know how the story ends, you then have the power to change it, fix it, make it better. We both knew this would only come back to torture us later, but that didn't stop me from saying okay and letting you go to a family party we both knew didn't exist.