On Cats and Moons and Writing Again

It's been six months since he died and I still haven't been able to write about Dylan. Six months since I've written. Period. Anything I ever published, I did it with Dylan beside me, or on me. A 26-toed Hemingway kitten, Dylan was rescued from a gutter on Florida Street and when early 20s me picked him out at the animal shelter he sneezed blood and hopped up on my shoulder like a parrot. Then he took it upon himself to rescue me. Over and over and over.

He grew to 28 pounds and became both my bodyguard and muse. He split someone's earlobe. He freaked out rogue neighborhood dogs. People thought he was a bobcat. And he helped me write. 

Dylan sat sentry atop my desk those last frenzied days of the MFA, when I was sleepless and heavily pregnant—formatting a never-ending thesis amidst the backdrop of a crumbling marriage. That cat guarded my 78 pages with laser focus. When outside forces got too close, he let out a roar—by God, yes, a roar, because he did not meow like normal cats. He was not a normal cat. Nephew Max thought he was George Washington reincarnated in cat form, called him "General." 

And there he was there post-MFA/divorce when I published a couple of stories and poems, there with me when I pushed out this blog. Old—he was so old. Was he 19 or 20? In human years what are talking about . . . 100? Like Circe in Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon," Dylan had, by last summer, become a sort of myth; was he really still alive? He was all bones and milky-eyed, silent sneak up on you one minute and then gone the next, wailing in the wee hours of the morning and forever hungry; but still sharp and vigilant enough to catch and kill a mouse for me. I thought he'd never die. I counted on him not doing that. I had a story collection to finish, anyway. 

So last July when I woke up before anyone and found Dylan on the seventh step of the staircase, unable to go up or down, I knew. His breathing was shallow and he looked me hard in the eyes. His back left leg was twisted and who knows if he had been there all night or what—the vet didn't open for twenty minutes. I sat there on that seventh step with my boy and pushed away reality and next things until it was time to call. Then, it was time. It happened as these things usually do. His doctor was kind. I cried. He looked at me the whole time, and then he didn't. Dad collected his body and then Curtis buried him under a shady tree in Mom and Dad's backyard. I still haven't walked all the way down to the tree, and until today I have not written a thing, save cover letters and and social media posts.

I deal in archaic ideas. Thanks to my superstitious Appalachian DNA, I've always put more stock than anyone I know in moons, feathers, and the placement of shoes. I flip coins. I do not, under any circumstance, whistle in bed. I believe signs.

Enter the mouse. An ugly one. 

After Christmas he invaded my patio and every time I opened the sliding glass door to go take the trash out, he'd dart at me. We locked eyes more than once and I can tell you his expression was 100 percent menacing. I stopped going out on the patio. Dead leaves piled up. I'd fling trash out there, then leave through the front door, walk the long way around the house, and enter through the fence door long enough to grab the trash and throw it in the cans outside. Then, I'd walk the long way back around to the front door. 

I hate a mouse. I'll deal with bugs all day long, might even shake a stick at a snake, but I have no truck with mice. Dylan, with his 26 toes, had put the fear of God into the Jamestown rodent population for the longest time, and only twice in two decades did one dare break and enter my home. Both times it was shock and awe. He patrolled, stalked, pounced, and killed dead those mice. But now, I was defenseless, and the mice knew it. They were moving in. 

Curtis decided it was crazy and got his leaf blower out yesterday. As he blew away all the leaves, I put on my coat and rubber boots, took a deep breath and went out to help him. I moved trash things out to the trash. There in the corner of the patio were Dylan's litter box and scratching post. I hadn't touched them since he died. He'd had the post since kittenhood, and it was scratched clean and split down the middle. Later, I went out back and snipped the end off the wornout sisal rope still wound around the post. I put it in my purse in the same ziplock bag that keeps a memorial tuft of fur and his paw print, keepsakes his doctor sent in a sympathy card. 

The mouse seems to have gone, and I am safe again. There are a few deadlines coming up. And I have in my purse the rope that sharpened a warrior's claws. He held his guard and did his job with highest honors. Now it's time for me to do mine. 

And tonight is that Super Wolf Blood Moon or whatever. Onward.