time for something actually Important

If you are one of my regular readers...yes, there are a few of you...this post will be different from the content usually located here.

I won't be celebrating music.  I won't be ripping the Palin's for being whatever they are.  I won't be taking the local LEO's to task for excessive force.  I won't be mocking the Muslims for being knuckleheads or laughing at the new moon roof installed in Bin Ladin's cranium.

This one's for real.

I don't like people.  I really don't.  They're full of shit, self-serving and short-sighted. I have room in my life for about twenty people, including friends and family.  Twenty might even be high.  I suffer from social anxiety, among other things.  As a corollary, I genuinely enjoy solitude.

I'm pretty sure that works both ways too.  I think I'm probably a difficult person to like.  I'm a bridge-burner.  I burn my bridges.  Seldom intentionally, but the effect is the same nonetheless.  Three years seems to be about the limit. After three years I completely wear out my welcome with both employers and girlfriends.  Friends too.  In fact, I once burned a bridge with my best friend, but he was "best" enough to deal with it, forgive and move past.

I'm okay to be around, pretty loyal, and fairly interesting, but it's all that baggage that makes it difficult.  Baggage from twenty years of poorly treated depression and mental illness occasionally has me come off as flaky.  Or angry.  Or unreliable.  Or just not someone to be around.  I get that and I'm ok with it.

At this point, I've given up on the idea of permanent cohabitation with a woman because I just don't want to compromise that much.  That's what I remember from my relationships: compromises. Oh, I also don't wanna raise someone else's brat.  No thanks.

I'm losing sight of what this post was supposed to be about.

Let me tell a story.

In September of 1996, I was regularly working the overnight shift at SuperAmerica on south Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis as a Shift Leader.  That's the title they would give you to heap more responsibility upon you but not really the commensurate pay.  Irregardless, it was an okay gig, paying the bills, fitting my night-owl lifestyle perfectly and affording me a sack-a-week habit.  I'd start at ten at night and be home after finishing the books by seven-thirty in the morning.

At the time, I had a girlfriend living with me in an apartment just a few blocks from work.  For me, she was more a girlfriend of convenience than of any particular passion.  She indulged my whims and most importantly, was cool with me hanging out on the couch, getting stoned and listening to music; my prior girl didn't share that same enthusiasm about pot.  Actually that's an understatement: she hated it, naming it as a primary reason for splitting.

My typical post-shift routine was to walk across the street to a little coffee shop, sit and drink a latte while reading the newspaper, then return home to get stoned, listen to music for an hour or so and finally settle into bed for my "nights" sleep.  It was during this sleep on an otherwise nondescript day, that I woke to my girlfriend calling my name.

Waking, I saw a little black kitten crawling up the covers toward me.  It was very cute in that kitteny way, eyes agog and filled with wonder, looking very happy to have a new home.  I didn't remember discussing the addition of a kitten.  I already had Reggie, who was a year and a half old by now, and I was content with that, but somehow between her explanation of why she bought him and this new guys enthusiasm at having a home, I couldn't utter a word in opposition.

She explained that the pet store had him living in a pen with several younger, smaller kittens, obviously from a different litter, and after observing numerous patrons it was obvious that he wasn't going to stand out to anyone. Everybody always goes for the younger, "cuter" animals; she feared his euthanasia.  The reasoning seemed sound, and I've always hated visiting pet stores because of both the overwhelming desire to liberate and love all those animals and the profound disappointment in their eyes when you don't.

My only concern was whether Reggie would accept this interloper.  He did, checking him out without much fanfare and going about whatever he was up to.  That was the final vote: the new guy was in.

Checking out the new guy, circa September 1996.

I quickly named him Rudy because when I looked at him, he just looked like a Rudy.  It seemed to fit well and had a nice rhythm when used in conjunction with Reggie.  I still remember his feeble early attempts at meowing, saying something that sounded like "yick."  My boys, as I came to call them, weren't what I would consider fast friends.  They didn't seem to do many things together, but were very comfortable around each other.

The next year though, when Reggie broke his leg, Rudy immediately laid down next to his "brother" when he returned from the vet, sporting a blue cast on his left rear leg.  I always found that special, the communication between animals and the show of support during a time of distress.  For pain relief, the vet suggested crunching up a children's aspirin.  I knew Reg wouldn't go for that.  I tried anyway and was proven correct.  Desperate to give my animal some relief from his discomfort, I did something I was generally against in principle: I got him stoned.  It worked of course, and his night of misery finally ended.  When he woke the next day, Rudy was still at his side.

Around this time, my girlfriend was considering getting rid of Rudy, as she seemed to develop an allergy from being around him.  From his behavior, it was obvious that Rudy loved her a lot, and why not, after all, she was his liberator.  I lobbied against giving Rudy away, telling her "just look, he loves you so much it feels good for him just to be near you."  So Rudy stayed.

About a year later, the girlfriend left.  In one of the rare instances of foresight in my life, I had declined a marriage proposal from her a few months previously.  She abandoned Rudy to me, finally getting away from the allergens that bothered her so.  At the age of two, Rudy was now mine, and even though I had begun to become allergic to my boys and further develop asthma from that, I never would consider being apart from them.  I hate it when people get pets and then quit on them when they're no longer cute or convenient.  Having animals was always something I took seriously.

The following dozen years were a very dark, listless and depressing time for me.  I went from job to shitty job, moving more times than I care to count, cycling through women and remaining generally unhappy.   More than once, facing imminent eviction, I considered the merits of no longer living.  Those plans never got very far because I couldn't reconcile forcing my animals to have to adapt to brand new people and places; I just couldn't do that to them.  As someone with no children and no plans for any, my boys, at the very least, served as surrogates.  They kept me alive.

Through the years I enjoyed seeing my boys personalities grow.  Reggie was easy, because he closely mirrored his owner: a sedentary homebody with gusto for the dinner table.  Reggie was, and continues to be, happiest when he is near his owner.  He's not shy to ask for affection because he knows he will always get it.  Reg also has a penchant for wagging his tail in rhythm to the music I'm playing.  Having a cat that digs music seems pretty cool to me.

Rudy was always a little more complex.  He wanted the attention and affection just as much, but only when he was ready for it.  He was also demonstrably smarter, figuring out how to open up cupboards or turn door handles.  He had a vocabulary much greater than Reggie's and was trainable as well. Once he learned to walk on the sidewalks, and not wherever his mind and body could wander off to, he enjoyed going on regular walks after sundown with me.  He would often want to stay outside for an hour or more at a time, just hanging out, relaxing, exploring.  I have never seen another cat that would walk around the block without a leash.

In another apartment, Rudy performed his own version of Punk'd by opening a kitchen cupboard and resting inside.  My girlfriend at the time had gone into the kitchen to get a glass, opened up the wrong cupboard and was startled by the sight of Rudy's eyes peering back at her.  She screamed like she had found a corpse.  I laughed.  She didn't.  I'd like to think Rudy did.

A few years later, a roommate of mine took off on a late night, alcohol fueled bender with some friends, accidentally letting Rudy out.  Rudy would absolutely wander if given the opportunity, which is why his outdoor time was always supervised.  I don't know what he did for the six hours he was outside, but when I woke in the morning and noticed him missing, I went straight for the door, opened it, and found him sitting there a little anxious and more than ready to come in.  I'll never forget that he both knew where his home was and had faith I'd come looking for him.

The absolute funniest thing I ever saw Rudy do took place in a whorehouse.  Seriously.  Okay, it had been a whorehouse years ago and was now just another in a long string of apartments for me.  My description of this will never do it justice, but I can't ignore the anecdote.  The place had ridiculous ceilings, eleven or twelve feet high.  Rudy loved heights.  High cupboards, refrigerator tops, anywhere he could achieve elevation, so the converted house of ill repute held great appeal for him.  As I fell asleep on my sectional couch, Rudy went to work, easily jumping up to my kitchen countertop.  Due to the high ceilings, my kitchen cupboards didn't extend all the way up, allowing him to further jump up on top of the cupboards.  There was a water pipe about two inches above the cupboards, about an inch and a half in diameter. The pipe extended about a foot past the front of the right edge of the cupboard, then made a right-angle left-turn for about four feet before entering the wall.  With what I can only assume was an exquisite display of great balance and dexterity, Rudy made his way out on the pipe, perhaps imagining himself as a tightrope walker, and navigated the left turn, finding himself in the center of the lengthy stretch of pipe when I woke.  Rather than seeing him balancing delicately, I saw him hanging there, like he had completed a set of pull-ups.  Casually, too, no sense of panic.  Then he dropped and I panicked, fearing for his safety as I bolted upright.  In the second it took for me to reach him, he was already walking away from the scene as if nothing had happened.  That made the image of him hanging there helplessly, humorous, and not horrendous.

My boys have always been there for me, year after year, event after event.  When I've come home from work, devastated that I'd been unjustly fired from a good position [note: VisionWorld and SunRay Optical can still kiss my ass], they would intuitively cuddle and hang out with me, not letting me dwell on failure.  When I would lay in bed, streaming tears during that initial shock of a relationship ending, my boys were there.  They've simply been the most important things in my life, and the enrichment they've imprinted upon me is substantial.

In January of this year, Rudy became ill, having a difficult time keeping food down.  He lost substantial weight very quickly and I feared he wouldn't see March.  Being unemployed, I was unable to take take him to a veterinarian so I researched everything I could on the internet.  I came up with a few possible maladies, but no real solutions.  Rudy loved life though, and fought valiantly, refusing to "complain" and living his life much as he always had.  The weight loss, and the accompanying loss of strength, affected his ability to jump and he was suddenly landlocked.  I began to carry him up the steps to let him enjoy the outdoors that so fixated him.  When he began having issues with loose stool, the chance of recovery seemed diminished.

Yet he fought on, living with joy into March and April.  When April began, Reggie also knew something was up.  Suddenly, he was always laying by and sleeping next to his brother, perhaps remembering how Rudy had stood vigil when he had broken his leg years earlier, or maybe he was just showing love and support to an ill family member.  Either way, it was touching.

I talk to my boys regularly - I told you I wasn't well - and when Rudy began to struggle with day to day things, when the quality of his lifestyle began to deteriorate, we had a talk.  I had told him that when he reached "that" point, when he had fought long enough and hard enough, if he let me know, I would take him to the veterinarian for a peaceful resolution.

I've always liked the "little" things that my boys came to enjoy.  Reggie loves to lick the condensation on the outside of my soda cans.  Reggie loves cold water and ice.  Reggie loves getting a haircut.  Rudy loved heights.  He loved the outdoors.  More than anything, he loved the sound it made when I would tap my finger on the top of one of his food cans right before I opened it.  He would never fail to get up and come over when he heard that sound.

On April 27, he failed to answer that bell.  Despite his continuing illness, it was still stunning to me; he had just told me, the fight was over.  I placed the horrible call that I will likely have to make at least once more in my life and made an appointment with the pet doctor for the following day.

With his brother and I by his side, Rudy passed that evening in our bed, craning his head back, touching my hand and letting out a last purr before moving on.   That's still the hardest, most difficult and saddest experience of my life and writing about it now still rubs that wound.  My dear sweet little boy with the large personality.  His passing took a piece of my heart with him and not a day goes by where he isn't prominent in my thoughts.

Rudy would have been fifteen on August 8th.  I wrote this to remember and celebrate him on his birthday.  Rest in peace my boy, you will always be in my heart.

The guy just loved to roll around on cement.

Rudy near the end, the fatigue plain in his eyes.