Cat Diaries, Me, My Cat, and My Life, part 1
THE CAT DIARIES
Prologue
November 16, 2005, Oakland, California
If you lose someone you love, part of your spirit will go with him. The last time I heard those words, I was at my great uncle’s funeral, a young man of seventeen, and fresh out of high school. My great uncle, a Roman Catholic bishop in Manila and a close friend of my father's had just been murdered. Nights before, thugs broke into the cathedral in Quiapo, bound him and an assistant in the rectory, and failing to find the day's collections, slit their throats and took off with a couple of chalices. I thought it odd that despite the passage of time, I still remember those words.
The rain drummed on the roof of our house like marbles rattling on tin. The wind shook the panes, clanged the pipes, and battered the junipers swaying outside the window. I burrowed deeper into the sheets and watched the storm unfold. The raking sound behind the door had become unbearable, a frantic scratch-scratch-scratch, like fingernails clawing on a blackboard. If I held my ground, I knew she would leave. She had been roaming the house all night, agitated, delirious, preoccupied. The cries that came from her were haunting, not the “yow” of a normal cat, but hollow drawn-out meee-aaa-ooows that echoed in a ghostly way. It was as if she were revisiting her favorite nooks, intimate places she had spent memorable experiences--the bedrooms, the closets, the secret hideouts behind the sofa--not once, but over and over. Perhaps she was committing them to memory. Last night, in the middle of her restless wanderings, I picked her up and tried to comfort her. I was surprised by how much she had shrunk--only brittle bones now, held together by fur. Every time I hugged her, I was afraid she would break. “What’s the matter, baby,” I whispered in her ear, the words catching in my throat. Through clotted eyes, she had looked right through me. It was as if she didn’t know me anymore. The vet at the Oakland SPCA said she had a renal failure, that her kidneys were no longer functioning, that she was slowly poisoning herself. My wife thought the toxins might have gone to her head. “That’s why she’s delirious,” Sandy had said, for the irises of Kitty's eyes, normally bottle green, were now red and tinged with blood.
I sunk lower into the blanket, the sorrow I felt swelling unbearably inside me. Get up, I told myself. Face up to it. You can't let Sandy handle this alone.
I pushed away the covers and sat up in bed. The winter's chill sent a shiver across my shoulders. Outside the window, the rain fell in leaden sheets. Thunder rolled behind blue-black skies that intermittently flashed and cracked. I slipped into a Cal Bears sweatshirt and pulled my sweatpants over my boxers. The scratching noise had stopped, but I heard Kitty's muffled cries in the distance. She had probably gone to the laundry room and squeezed behind the washer and dryer like she'd done the day we brought her home sixteen years ago.
I opened the door and padded down the stairs. The aroma of French roast seeped into my nostrils, toasty and bitter. It was Saturday, a day earmarked for fun and relaxation. But the way things were developing, it might as well have been Monday.
I found Sandy on the couch with a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle, a cup of coffee sitting on the end table. Gavin Newsom dominated the headlines again, something about the mayor being spotted in a club binging with an under-age woman. A very pretty under-age woman.
I glanced at Sandy’s face. She was staring at the paper, trying to ignore the meows as a furry stick figure scurried across the floor in front of her. I sighed. Kitty didn’t even look like a cat anymore. More like an emaciated rat.
Outside, the storm gusted into the skylight, sloshing a mottled pattern on the bubbletop pane. Sandy put down the paper. In her blue eyes, I saw the falling rain. How did it ever get to this? I thought. Our journey with Kitty had been a long one, a transformative passage fraught with doubt, recrimination, laughter, and epiphany. Still, I didn't expect it to hurt so much. She was, after all, only a cat.
1
The Christmas Gift
Sixteen Years Before, Oakland, California
In the Philippines where I grew up, cats are considered feral. Few people look at them as pets. They are more of a nuisance, really, no different than a cockroach or a gecko or a mouse nesting behind the kitchen wall. They rummage around the festering garbage cans, hiss when you get too close, and drop their smelly feces all over the lawn where people would step on them. They multiply like bacteria, their litters appearing like toadstools in secluded corners of the yard. Because they are wild and have to scrounge for what they eat, they often look sickly. Their fur is patchy, their eyes are murky, their ribs stick out of their sides like guitar strings. Since quite a few of them carry rabies, quite a few people die excruciating deaths because of them. It is perhaps the Filipino’s superstitious nature that makes him shun these much-maligned creatures far worse than any animal. Beware of the cat, the popular saying goes. He will steal your baby’s breath. Or red cats will bring financial ruin while a black one will cause death in a family. When I was ten years old, I once saw a dead cat hanging from a frangipani tree. A neighborhood boy had just died of polio and his father, an engineer in a nuclear plant in Manila, apparently blamed the stray cat for stealing his spirit. And to think scientists were supposed to be rational.
Growing up in Manila, I often heard these pesky felines settle scores beyond the shutters of my window. It was usually a battle over territory or a battle for a mate. They snarled, hissed, and shrieked at each other in all hours of the night. They fought under the jack fruit trees, on top of bamboo fences, and on rooftops of tin and thatch. To break up the fight, people threw wooden clogs at them or anything they could get their hands on.
When I told this story to Sandy, a born and bred American who grew up with beloved house cats in Rochester, New York, she couldn’t believe it. She probably thought it was a barbaric way to treat animals, which it may very well be. After all, she was raised with a cat named Stanley, another one named Narda, a black cat named Jinx who, ironically enough, was run over by a car outside their driveway, and yet another cat with the silly name of Christopher Columbus, a retarded male calico who supposedly lost his way exploring their forested backyard. She found it hard to believe that people would treat these lovely animals in such a fashion, for here in the U.S. these same animals were fed, brushed, and pampered as if they were part of the family.
“They’re boring animals,” I once told her when, during one of our walks in the lush hills of Oakland, she commented on her desire to adopt one. “They don’t love you like dogs do,” I added to put a cork on the idea.
She had looked at me askance and began to tell me the virtues of the cat, that they were sweet and adorable animals with unique loving personalities, that they were smart and very trainable to which I looked at her with the same skeptical look she had given me. Heck, I told her. You couldn’t even get them to come to you, much less love you.
That exchange pretty much summed up that we would have no cats in the house. It’s not that I disliked these snooty felines. I simply never paid much attention to them, at least not in the way Sandy did. Behind their furry faces and attractive markings, which I admit were cute enough, my wife saw something more, an endearing quality worthy of friendship, just as one would have with, well, a dog. You see, unlike the cat, dogs show their love for you. They wag their tails, they whimper and grovel, they show you without a doubt that you’re the boss.
Not to give a glib excuse, but generally, Filipinos are indifferent to animals. It is the culture, you see. In a country where food is scarce, pets, especially cats and dogs, are looked upon as a luxury if not a source of food themselves. Ask any Filipino immigrant in Daly City and he would tell you the same thing. In fact, my family had been a rare exception to this. During my growing years, we were one of the few households who kept dogs as pets. Every now and then, a few feral cats that the maids mistakenly fed with leftover food found themselves in the mix. For this reason, there was a time in my life when I actually adored animals. It happened during my sentient years, those formative days of innocence when I saw animals as cute cuddly creatures I wanted to possess, much like I would a toy or a stuffed animal. In fourth grade, while my classmates spent their allowance on candy and chewing gum cigarettes, I would take a jitney to Chinatown located in the ramshackle part of Manila and buy myself a green love bird or a striped angelfish, which I would take home in a brown paper bag or in the case of fish, a plastic bag filled with water that showed them swimming around, ogling at me with round marble eyes. I loved these beautiful creatures, especially the Java sparrows which were blue-gray, black-topped, white-cheeked with beaks as red as roses. Though I gave them all my love, they all died on me within a week. Because they were alive and interacted with me, the feeling of loss was far worse than losing a toy. For a day or so, I would get depressed. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Did I not feed them enough? Not talked to them enough? Did they die out of loneliness? In the store, they had other birds to tweet with.
But like a hamster on a wheel, I would do it all over again the following week, spending the allowance I had so fastidiously saved, coming home with yet another Java sparrow or another exotic love bird or a gold fish. Later, out of fear of killing them, I eventually set them free.
To be continued.
Prologue
November 16, 2005, Oakland, California
If you lose someone you love, part of your spirit will go with him. The last time I heard those words, I was at my great uncle’s funeral, a young man of seventeen, and fresh out of high school. My great uncle, a Roman Catholic bishop in Manila and a close friend of my father's had just been murdered. Nights before, thugs broke into the cathedral in Quiapo, bound him and an assistant in the rectory, and failing to find the day's collections, slit their throats and took off with a couple of chalices. I thought it odd that despite the passage of time, I still remember those words.
The rain drummed on the roof of our house like marbles rattling on tin. The wind shook the panes, clanged the pipes, and battered the junipers swaying outside the window. I burrowed deeper into the sheets and watched the storm unfold. The raking sound behind the door had become unbearable, a frantic scratch-scratch-scratch, like fingernails clawing on a blackboard. If I held my ground, I knew she would leave. She had been roaming the house all night, agitated, delirious, preoccupied. The cries that came from her were haunting, not the “yow” of a normal cat, but hollow drawn-out meee-aaa-ooows that echoed in a ghostly way. It was as if she were revisiting her favorite nooks, intimate places she had spent memorable experiences--the bedrooms, the closets, the secret hideouts behind the sofa--not once, but over and over. Perhaps she was committing them to memory. Last night, in the middle of her restless wanderings, I picked her up and tried to comfort her. I was surprised by how much she had shrunk--only brittle bones now, held together by fur. Every time I hugged her, I was afraid she would break. “What’s the matter, baby,” I whispered in her ear, the words catching in my throat. Through clotted eyes, she had looked right through me. It was as if she didn’t know me anymore. The vet at the Oakland SPCA said she had a renal failure, that her kidneys were no longer functioning, that she was slowly poisoning herself. My wife thought the toxins might have gone to her head. “That’s why she’s delirious,” Sandy had said, for the irises of Kitty's eyes, normally bottle green, were now red and tinged with blood.
I sunk lower into the blanket, the sorrow I felt swelling unbearably inside me. Get up, I told myself. Face up to it. You can't let Sandy handle this alone.
I pushed away the covers and sat up in bed. The winter's chill sent a shiver across my shoulders. Outside the window, the rain fell in leaden sheets. Thunder rolled behind blue-black skies that intermittently flashed and cracked. I slipped into a Cal Bears sweatshirt and pulled my sweatpants over my boxers. The scratching noise had stopped, but I heard Kitty's muffled cries in the distance. She had probably gone to the laundry room and squeezed behind the washer and dryer like she'd done the day we brought her home sixteen years ago.
I opened the door and padded down the stairs. The aroma of French roast seeped into my nostrils, toasty and bitter. It was Saturday, a day earmarked for fun and relaxation. But the way things were developing, it might as well have been Monday.
I found Sandy on the couch with a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle, a cup of coffee sitting on the end table. Gavin Newsom dominated the headlines again, something about the mayor being spotted in a club binging with an under-age woman. A very pretty under-age woman.
I glanced at Sandy’s face. She was staring at the paper, trying to ignore the meows as a furry stick figure scurried across the floor in front of her. I sighed. Kitty didn’t even look like a cat anymore. More like an emaciated rat.
Outside, the storm gusted into the skylight, sloshing a mottled pattern on the bubbletop pane. Sandy put down the paper. In her blue eyes, I saw the falling rain. How did it ever get to this? I thought. Our journey with Kitty had been a long one, a transformative passage fraught with doubt, recrimination, laughter, and epiphany. Still, I didn't expect it to hurt so much. She was, after all, only a cat.
1
The Christmas Gift
Sixteen Years Before, Oakland, California
In the Philippines where I grew up, cats are considered feral. Few people look at them as pets. They are more of a nuisance, really, no different than a cockroach or a gecko or a mouse nesting behind the kitchen wall. They rummage around the festering garbage cans, hiss when you get too close, and drop their smelly feces all over the lawn where people would step on them. They multiply like bacteria, their litters appearing like toadstools in secluded corners of the yard. Because they are wild and have to scrounge for what they eat, they often look sickly. Their fur is patchy, their eyes are murky, their ribs stick out of their sides like guitar strings. Since quite a few of them carry rabies, quite a few people die excruciating deaths because of them. It is perhaps the Filipino’s superstitious nature that makes him shun these much-maligned creatures far worse than any animal. Beware of the cat, the popular saying goes. He will steal your baby’s breath. Or red cats will bring financial ruin while a black one will cause death in a family. When I was ten years old, I once saw a dead cat hanging from a frangipani tree. A neighborhood boy had just died of polio and his father, an engineer in a nuclear plant in Manila, apparently blamed the stray cat for stealing his spirit. And to think scientists were supposed to be rational.
Growing up in Manila, I often heard these pesky felines settle scores beyond the shutters of my window. It was usually a battle over territory or a battle for a mate. They snarled, hissed, and shrieked at each other in all hours of the night. They fought under the jack fruit trees, on top of bamboo fences, and on rooftops of tin and thatch. To break up the fight, people threw wooden clogs at them or anything they could get their hands on.
When I told this story to Sandy, a born and bred American who grew up with beloved house cats in Rochester, New York, she couldn’t believe it. She probably thought it was a barbaric way to treat animals, which it may very well be. After all, she was raised with a cat named Stanley, another one named Narda, a black cat named Jinx who, ironically enough, was run over by a car outside their driveway, and yet another cat with the silly name of Christopher Columbus, a retarded male calico who supposedly lost his way exploring their forested backyard. She found it hard to believe that people would treat these lovely animals in such a fashion, for here in the U.S. these same animals were fed, brushed, and pampered as if they were part of the family.
“They’re boring animals,” I once told her when, during one of our walks in the lush hills of Oakland, she commented on her desire to adopt one. “They don’t love you like dogs do,” I added to put a cork on the idea.
She had looked at me askance and began to tell me the virtues of the cat, that they were sweet and adorable animals with unique loving personalities, that they were smart and very trainable to which I looked at her with the same skeptical look she had given me. Heck, I told her. You couldn’t even get them to come to you, much less love you.
That exchange pretty much summed up that we would have no cats in the house. It’s not that I disliked these snooty felines. I simply never paid much attention to them, at least not in the way Sandy did. Behind their furry faces and attractive markings, which I admit were cute enough, my wife saw something more, an endearing quality worthy of friendship, just as one would have with, well, a dog. You see, unlike the cat, dogs show their love for you. They wag their tails, they whimper and grovel, they show you without a doubt that you’re the boss.
Not to give a glib excuse, but generally, Filipinos are indifferent to animals. It is the culture, you see. In a country where food is scarce, pets, especially cats and dogs, are looked upon as a luxury if not a source of food themselves. Ask any Filipino immigrant in Daly City and he would tell you the same thing. In fact, my family had been a rare exception to this. During my growing years, we were one of the few households who kept dogs as pets. Every now and then, a few feral cats that the maids mistakenly fed with leftover food found themselves in the mix. For this reason, there was a time in my life when I actually adored animals. It happened during my sentient years, those formative days of innocence when I saw animals as cute cuddly creatures I wanted to possess, much like I would a toy or a stuffed animal. In fourth grade, while my classmates spent their allowance on candy and chewing gum cigarettes, I would take a jitney to Chinatown located in the ramshackle part of Manila and buy myself a green love bird or a striped angelfish, which I would take home in a brown paper bag or in the case of fish, a plastic bag filled with water that showed them swimming around, ogling at me with round marble eyes. I loved these beautiful creatures, especially the Java sparrows which were blue-gray, black-topped, white-cheeked with beaks as red as roses. Though I gave them all my love, they all died on me within a week. Because they were alive and interacted with me, the feeling of loss was far worse than losing a toy. For a day or so, I would get depressed. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Did I not feed them enough? Not talked to them enough? Did they die out of loneliness? In the store, they had other birds to tweet with.
But like a hamster on a wheel, I would do it all over again the following week, spending the allowance I had so fastidiously saved, coming home with yet another Java sparrow or another exotic love bird or a gold fish. Later, out of fear of killing them, I eventually set them free.
To be continued.
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