Matching Tracksuits

I swore I hated that old cat. Looking back on it, I really don’t know what she did to prompt such a response, but I think I was just being ornery. Trying out the grumpy old man act to see how it fit me. It didn’t fit me too well, because I ended up being the one who did most of Bida’s grooming and I came to enjoy it in a strange way.

It was messy: as she aged, she didn’t particularly put too much stock in the importance of hygiene, and that led to obvious problems. I was the one who bathed her. It was irritating: getting the tangles out of her long fur led to anger, frustrating, growling, scratching.

I don’t know why I started doing it if I hated that old cat. I don’t know why I would let her nestle into my neck as I held her, freshly dried but still shivering. She was terrified, angry, and cold; I held her trembling little body, petted her, and insisted the next day that I hated her.

“Maybe she got run over!” L worried one summer when we returned from Poland and Bida had stayed gone for three weeks past our return.

“We wouldn’t be so lucky,” I snorted and thought I was only slightly joking.

At times, it seems that an impossible confluence of accidents comes together in an impossibly ironic way making it impossible not to think that perhaps there isn’t someone pulling the strings behind it all, weaving something terrible yet beautiful out of all the strands of our life.

I spent the summer helping D, my friend and mentor, the grandfather of L’s closest friend and the gentleman who helped me for several weeks in 2016 to renovate our kitchen. We were working on an addition to the house, an extension of the master suite and additional closet space, and D had decided he was going to pull all the insulation out as well. It was going to be new, from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. Remembering I’d mentioned that I wanted to add some more insulation to our attic, he suggested we pack the still-good insulation into construction waste bags so I could truck it home. Those bags still sit in our basement, almost six months after D gave them to us. Bida discovered how soft and warm they are, and she began leaping on them (they sit about three feet tall, probably eighteen inches in diameter) and sleeping the day away there. That’s the first strand.

Nana has been in rehab for a couple of weeks after a hospital stay, and she’s been having a hard time of it. We visit her daily, encouraging her and doing our best to make her smile. But having someone so close to me so debilitated sparked a new resolution about my own health. Sure, I walk the dog every night, and I ride my bike a fair amount (though “fair” is fairly relative), so the other night, I went out to a sporting goods store and bought some running shoes. I’ve run every night since then. Except tonight. That’s the second strand.

Returning to D, one of the things I admired most about him was his determination to accomplish goals he’d set out for himself. When he was diagnosed with cancer about sixteen months ago, he fought it with everything he had, and he fought to keep his promise to his wife about a new bedroom. The man worked with a small backpack strapped on in the middle of a humid, South Carolina July so that he didn’t have to stop working while receiving his chemotherapy. Yet cancer doesn’t look at someone’s bravery and tenacity. It just attacks, and D passed away this Sunday. K and I managed to see him Saturday morning; his funeral is tomorrow. That’s the third strand.

D’s grandson, E, is the Girl’s oldest and closest friend. They went to Montessori together almost ten years ago, and since they liked each other so much, their joy together drew our two families together. That’s how we know D to begin with. E, like the Girl, is fond of cats. His cat died of over the summer. His mother texted us about it to prepare L for when she saw E at D’s house. (The Boy and the Girl often went to D’s house to help.) “He’s not quite himself,” she explained. That’s the fourth strand.

I’d just been writing and thinking about the fact that Bida is skin and bones, knocking on death’s cliche door, wondering without saying it about whether we might need to have her put down in the near future. That’s the fifth strand.

I’ve been thinking and writing about death and health and age and ignoring pain. That’s the sixth strand.

Tonight, when we came home from visiting Nana and sharing a meal afterward with Papa, K went downstairs to check on Bida. After a few minutes, I heard a panicked voice.

“G, I need your help.” I’d been drawing the Boy’s bathwater, so I turned it off and headed downstairs as K added, “Hurry. It’s an emergency.” As I walked into the basement, she explained: “Bida fell off the insulation bag where she was sleeping. I don’t know if she’s alive. She looks dead.” I pulled back the insulation bag and there was Bida, pinned against some shelving, lying upside down, not moving. I reached down and slid her onto the ground as gently as I could.

“I think she’s dead,” I said. But Bida took a deep, shuddering breath, and K’s sadness overwhelmed her.

I took Bida to the couch in the basement and lay her on it while K went upstairs and got the kids. L was the first one down, tears streaming. E made it down shortly after that with K. And thus began our long vigil, sitting with our poor cat as she slowly shuddered and gasped away after falling from insulation given to us by a hero who himself passed away only days ago.

We sat and talked about Bida, all the silly things she’d done, all the times she’d irritated us. She’d brought chipmunks into the house when she was young and energetic and had a magnetic collar that allowed her to let herself in and out on her own accord. We talked about what an honor it was that a rescue cat, who was initially terrified of us, decided we were a good enough match and stuck with us for over a decade. We talked sadly about the time Bida discovered a rabbit burrow in the grass and cleared it out of all the young rabbits in a matter of minutes. We remembered how she used to torture birds she’d caught but not killed, toying with them in the backyard.

We laughed a little; we brought the other pets down, one by one, to say goodbye; we talked about how the remaining two pets would have to find a new dynamic without the old gray lady there to rule them all; we sat in silence a little; we petted her a lot.

Yet life continues and makes its continual demands on us, and one by one, the others left. K had work the next day — she had to get some sleep. E was exhausted — he had to get some sleep. L stayed with me the longest, but in the end, the sadness was overwhelming and exhausting, so she went up to bed.

I sat with Bida as her breathing went from labored to almost nonexistent, a gasp every thirty seconds or so. A tremor of nerves every ten minutes or so. I sat with her as a strange, sour odor came over her and the time between her gasps increased; the shuddering diminished. I petted her, held her paws, stroked her under her chin, rubbed the top of her nose. Each time she took a deep breath and let it out with tremors, I thought it was her last breath, and then she would begin shallow panting again which would diminish. Then another deep breath. Shudders and twitches. Then stillness. And so it went, on and on, for two painful hours. Her eyes were glassy; her tongue began hanging out of her mouth. At one point she began running her back legs, as if she were dreaming of chasing the chipmunks, birds, or bunnies she used to bring us. She was there and not there.

And then, at 10:54, our beautiful, ornery, sweet, irritating, wonderful Bida, that damn cat I loved to hate, was gone.

I went to the storage room to find a box to put her in and found that K had already taken out a shoebox for me. It was the box my running shoes came in, my latest attempt to outrun mortality I mused.

I gently picked up Bida and put her inside wrapped in the pillowcase we’d put under her on the couch, the pillowcase that covered her old bed she loved until she discovered D’s bags of insulation. I tucked her into the box, making sure her legs were tucked up as if she were sleeping, curling her tail over her legs, and the strands formed a knot, and I wept for them all.