As regular readers of this blog know – I hope their therapists are helping them – I currently reside in Berkeley, California. Ah, Berkeley. Where breathing costs $10 a minute, land is $1000 a square femtometre, and the University actually believes people when they say they’re “progressive liberals" and pays them accordingly - at rates that wouldn’t support a celibate hermit in Fargo. Unless you’re senior management. (Another time.) So you make whatever living arrangements won’t put your great grandchildren in hock. At the moment I’m renting a room in a house. Which is actually a good deal, because the owner is on a world tour and I have the run of the place. All I have to do is practice normal cleanliness (another “another time"), manage the alarm system, keep the arsenal in good working order, and look after the geriatric cats.

Now geriatric cats don’t sprout white hair and bald spots like geriatric people. They look, well, like cats. They smell like cats, howl like cats, trip you in the kitchen while you’re trying to prepare your own dinner like cats, insist on sleeping in the exact middle of the bed like cats. But these cats must have been brought to the house right after it was rebuilt following the 1906 earthquake. And after awhile – not a very long while – you discover the issues.

Cabin Cruiser – he purrs like one, and weighs as much as one – is the more normal of the two. A big yellow cat who pointedly ignores you most of the day and then, without warning, climbs into your lap. While you’re standing at the dining room table trying to remember where you put today’s newspaper. OK, that’s weird, but I’ve seen kittens and middle-aged cats do worse. He also goes around the house at night with a cry that I swear is his imitation of “Hello? Hello?", as in “Is anybody home?" - and then he won’t come when you call him. The cry is odd, but the rest is standard issue feline. But when you feed this cat, he goes after the food like he hasn’t eaten since that earthquake. And then five minutes later, he insists you feed him again. And again. And again. (He has dry food in a dish, and he wants you to stir it for him.) Then he barfs on the carpet. Wonderful. I didn’t know cats got Alzheimer’s. I just hope he doesn’t forget where the litterbox is, and what it’s for. (sniff, sniff) Damn.

And then there’s the other one. Hobbles. The disaster area in white mittens. In her early life (I think this was during the administration of President Harding), she was struck by a car, which took out her left rear leg. Not irreversibly, not this time. But just as she was finally recovering, she was caught by a dog and seriously worried. She’s been lame ever since. And has insisted on remaining indoors, probably in shame over allowing herself to be caught by that dog. The arthritis probably has something to do with the shyness too; this cat’s spine feels more like a gravel road than a bone. And you don’t have any choice but to notice the spine because there’s precious little else on this kitty. Add Hobbles and Cabin Cruiser together and divide by two and you’d get normal-weight cats.

Then there’s the pills. My ailing 80-year-old mother should take so many pills. The one for diabetes. The one for renal failure. The pain pills. The appetite stimulant in the morning. The appetite suppressant in the evening. (I’d better check on that last one, those might be Cabin Cruiser’s.) Every morning and every evening it’s the same drill. Don battle gear. Scrub hands. Sort pills. Find cat. Pry cat from behind sofa. Wrestle cat to pilling station. Pretty damned nimble cat for all that lameness and arthritis. Pry mouth open. Insert pills. Catch pills after they’re spit out. Repeat three times until pills dissolve in hand so cat gets quarter dose by coating tongue with finger. Release cat. Scrub hands. Pour double shot. I haven’t lost a finger yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Maybe they’ll chant my epic in after years: “Nine-Fingered Charley and the Moggy of Doom". (“Moggy" is “kitty" in the Queen’s English, Yanks.)

As if that weren’t enough, Hobbles needs a fluid injection every second day to flush out her not-working kidneys. I let the veterinarian do that one, my patience has its limits. Oh … you knew that. In which case you’ll know why, if I have to put up with too much more of this, I’m going to go get myself my very own shopping cart and join the winos and schizos on the street. It’s safer out there.

I know one thing that this experience has taught me. When it’s time for me to go, I hope it’s long before I reach the state where I’m lame and forgetful and have to take a bucketload of pills each day.

Oh. PS. Don’t believe everything you read. :)

  - O Ceallaigh

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