Two cats in the yard September 30, 1985

  

There is too much anger in my life.

This became clear this weekend in dealing with work, my uncle, Safire and overall images of pain.

Even my cats drove me crazy, escaping through the broken screen to wander out of doors.

That alone is enough to make a person give up on everything. Since moving to Passaic, I have lost two cats to the streets -- deaf all-white cat my neighbors called “Snowball,” but I called Flake, and an orange and white ball of fur I called Dudley, who turned out to be as much of a street fighter as Flake, paying a high price to prove himself.

Flake was his own entity entirely, a cat that went his own way, and when he stopped liking the food I offered, he wandered off to beg at other people’s doors, drawing complaints from my neighbors about my not feeding my own cat.

Dudley was a comfort to me during the terrible times with my uncle, when my uncle went crazy and attempted suicide nearly weekly that horrible holiday season of 81. Later, Dudley was there in the summer of 82 when I got together with my ex-wife again after a decade estranged, when all the ugly truths came out about her.

I know this sounds silly that a cat can provide comfort, but he did. We had a real partnership to take care of each other.

When he sensed I was upset, he curled in my lap and purred, without my need to pet him, and if I woke in the middle of the night in the panic, he came up near by head and licked my cheek, curling against me as if to keep me warm.

He didn’t take well to Fran when she became my girlfriend, jealous perhaps or perhaps more savvy at reading her character than I was.

Then, one day, he came home seriously wounded, a fight with a tougher cat, although from the size of the bite mark, more like a dog.

I had to put him down, among one of the saddest moments in a life filled with sad moments.

Now I have two cats I found as kittens, both of whom are female, neither of whom had issues with Fran, who gave them their names. But they are rascals just the same, breaking through screens to get into the yard, always driving me insane in the fear that they might get lost or hit by a car or in a fight with a dog the way Dudley did.

But they rarely wander beyond the carport, a contained little fortress full of garages and limited access to the street, and if I am quick enough, as I was today, I can run them down, drag them back to the house, patching the place in the screens they broke through.

God, I can’t wait until winter when I can close the windows and not have to worry about them.



email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove me out of
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more