Aloysius

[brandywine28]

I've felt, at times, like the only person on the entire internet who doesn't really do much gushing about my animals -- and the thing is, it's not like I ever made a formal decision not to! Best I can figure, my mindset was always a sad, haphazard combo of "I don't wanna annoy the pants off of everyone" (which, uh...the jig is up, Self. You're annoying. Own it. Work it. If annoying the pants off of people was literally possible, at least sixty percent of your address book would be walking around bottomless on a near-permanent basis, yo) and "There's time. I'll get there eventually", which -- yeah. Sad. Extra-pitiful, now.

(Not to mention the crippling self-doubt that, most days, makes me feel too timid to voice my own damn thoughts on my own damn blog, though honestly? I so do not have the wherewithal to deal with that at this particular juncture.)

So here we are, LJ. Four months since my last update, and what's my big comeback? A cat eulogy. Awesome.

Aloysius:...wow. Aloysius was huge, orange, and INTENSE. I've never met anyone clingier, man or beast. Way too eager, way too friendly. We had this "bit", where I'd throw my arms open wide, wide, wide -- in a kind of "Honey, I'm home!" gesture -- and he'd let out a pathetic little yawp and launch himself straight at me like some desperate, love-deprived thing. Kind of like the final scene of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, only even more emotionally exhausting because we did it up to fourteen times a day. :) Sitting Indian-style was nothing less than a sign that you were cool with having your lap taken hostage for anywhere from twenty minutes to upwards of two hours (and an afternoon of Aloysius-in-your-lap always, always ended the same way: with a hard kick to your pelvic region to let you know he was finally tired of you.)

He loved strangers. He loved men -- a baffling trait he sure as hell didn't pick up from me. :) Whenever I ordered a pizza, he'd climb all over the delivery guy like he was auditioning for a tacky, low-grade porno. And yet -- I swear to Jebus, the damn furry weirdo had NO sex drive. No urges, whatsoever. He was the only cat I've ever owned who never. Humped. Anything. Ever. What's more, he'd lay there for hours while his little brother grinded (ground?) all over him, an expression on his face I can only call...bemusement? I have to believe he had no clue what was going on. He was just happy for the attention. Freak.

You know that urban legend about the couple who come across a little stray dog while on vacation and try to sneak it back home through the border patrol, only to have a customs agent tell them it's really an enormous, mutated rodent? Yeah, I'd be lying if I said Aloysius never made me think about that story. Appearance-wise, he was just an orange tabby; nothing out of the ordinary, aside from his ginormity (big cat was biiiiiig). But I wouldn't have been all that surprised to learn he had a little cocker spaniel blood in him. Or that he was maybe part ferret, or -- I don't know -- some kind of inexplicable, J.K. Rowling-esque hybrid? A Crup mix? (Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a mega-dork. This is not news, people.) And his semi-mysterious origin story didn't really do anything to quell that idea: the super of the building where I was living back in '02 - the dankest of crapshacks, just outside of Corona - knocked on my door one Saturday morning, plopped him in my arms and said "I found this little guy playing in the street and I know you like cats, so...d'you want him?" Which...yes. I totally did, no hesitation there, but still: mysterious. He didn't exactly come with a Certificate of Cat Authenticity or anything. :)

He yowled constantly. He spent the first two years of his life creepily attached to my stuffed Eeyore, kneading and suckling at it like a milk-starved fiend. He went nameless for a stupidly long time - I'd guess...six weeks? Maybe more? - because I could not for the life of me come up with a label big and expansive enough to encompass all of...that; but when I did - oh, when I did - you can bet I made up for it. I wrote entire songs about that little psycho, embarrassingly unimaginative nursery rhyme-gibberish (his favorite was called "Aloysius, ho, ho, ho", which...yeah) that's only worth mentioning 'cos of the way he acted when I sang them: his pupils would dilate 'til he looked positively insane with happiness. It was pretty funny. And wonderful.

I ended up getting evicted from that dank crapshack, and we couch-surfed for awhile, Aloysius and I. Actually, there was a two-or-three year chunk of time in which the two of us moved around a lot, now that I think of it. Apartments near the train tracks, weird penthouse sublets...a crazy assortment of places. I know for a fact there are households that are nicer and more stable, with fancier and pricier surfaces for languishing and butt-dragging, those noblest of kitty pastimes, but...I cannot, and will not, feel sorry that he was mine, instead of someone else's. I just...can't. Is that selfish? (No, wait. Don't answer that.)

Pickles and Smokey, my two childhood cats, lived to be 22 and 21, respectively -- and while I'm incredibly and wildly grateful for that fact, I definitely think it left me with kind of a warped attitude about what's reasonable to expect vis-a-vis animal lifespans. Up until 72 hours ago I still thought of Aloysius as a silly, troublemaking mushbaby, not an old man with congenital heart disease. I never once pictured losing him, that's for damn sure.

Six nights ago he ate spaghetti off of my plate and narrowed his eyes at me when I laughed at him.

Thursday morning was the first time in over a decade I didn't wake up boiling hot, with a snoring, twenty-five lb. lump of fur wedged underneath my left armpit.

I'm a bone-deep cat person; I will always have a cat. (Or two. Or three.) But, fuck. There won't ever be another Aloysius.

Dammit. This is really hard.