Transmissions from Nowhereland

Issue 009/November: Interlude. In which I tell you about Karl, a good little guy

It was around October of last year that an old ginger cat started appearing in my backyard, then quickly running off when I stepped out the door. But he kept coming back, and the weather was nice, and I was spending a lot of time sitting outside reading and having jasmine tea, and so slowly, eventually, I would put a silver bowl of cat food out, far away at first, then closer, then closer still, and then I could manage to pet his head once, then a little bit longer, and then a little bit longer still. And pretty soon Karl adopted me.

That’s Karl as in Marx, by the way, because he looked like an erudite gentleman, and also Karl is a good cat name. 

There were questions, of course. Did he belong to anybody in the neighborhood? Was he abandoned? How long had he been on the street? Was he feral or homeless? And who could abandon a cat?

And there were restrictions too. I’m not supposed to own a cat in this rental. And this really isn’t the best set up. There is no operational cat door. And I’m not home for a lot of the day. But I thought of my dad and the last time we had a cat, which was in the UK in the ‘80s, and how our cat was an outdoor cat, but with a shed in the backyard he could sleep in when the rain and snow came. And somehow, despite putting him out at night, the cat, Karl, came back.

I’m writing this all down because today I had to have Karl, the good little guy, put down, and I’m quite heartsick over it. (It doesn’t help that it’s a day after the Trump re-election, but I still think it would hurt just the same). So I’d like to honor his brief presence in my life before returning to our regularly scheduled newsletter programming, because honestly, this is all I’m ruminating on tonight. 

I always wondered how long Karl might be around. He was, whether he liked it or not, a cat that had lived on the street, and there were a few days I wouldn’t see him and I wondered if this was it, this time, the last time he wandered off, taken by nature or by auto or whatever happens to cats when we’re not around. But then I’d hear his meowl (a plaintive cry between a meow and a cry) outside the kitchen window and here he was again, sauntering in like he owned the place.

He took a little bit of time to even come in after that, making it as far as the welcome mat, then the hallway, then the living room (around March). We earned each others’ trust, with a few guidelines–I didn’t like him to go upstairs because I couldn’t keep track of him and had no idea what he was up to. Plus, over time, I wanted one room in the house that didn’t have Karl’s hair all over it, and I value my bed and my sleep.

I started to figure out he must have been a domestic cat, as he was housetrained. No nightmares of cleaning up cat pee or worse. No yakking on the carpet. 

And a cat will test you. You can’t punish a cat or make him feel bad. But he’ll do things that are annoying, and guess what? You have to roll with it. You are dealing with a creature that doesn’t know human rules, doesn’t know human right from wrong. A cat will hopefully teach you Buddha nature. You might as well get angry at the wind for blowing your hat off. A cat just *is* and any annoyance (“GodDAMMIT KARL!” was uttered a bit too much in this house) ultimately reflects back on you. (Karl, I apologize for raising my voice, I hope you forgive me. On the other hand, a cat knows no right or wrong in human terms, so can he know forgiveness? Probably not.)

But he did understand love, and my comfort is knowing that at least for most of 2024, Karl was loved, and he loved me back, and I’ll never know the last time he felt loved before me. Once he trusted me the purrs flowed. And then the meowing. In the last few months, he was outspoken. He was talking all the time, about Karl things, about Karl concerns, and making Karl announcements. And I responded right back, with an “oh really?” “oh yeah?” “Is that so, Karl?” etc. Maybe he was trying to tell me he wouldn’t be long for this world. Or maybe he was just living Buddha nature, one day at a time, happy to be outside when it was warm, happy to be inside by the fire when it was cold and pissing down. Cat stuff. Karl stuff.

Karl had his idiosyncrasies. He had a habit of placing his paw in the water bowl while he drank, then track his wet paw through the house, amazed that it was wet. He kept changing favorite spots to sleep: on the footstool by the fire, on a far chair, on a near chair, under my chair, on top of the kitchen island, on top of papers on top of the island, on top of my backpack. The living room became covered in a series of cheap towels, because of the hair and his claws were starting to ruin the furniture. 

But his favorite place was my lap and my chest, and eventually I went to our local Indian/Asian clothing outlet and bought a hooded gown that I’d wear while I watched movies, letting Karl shed and claw to his heart’s delight, settling stretched out vertically up my chest, his paws resting on either side of my collar, nodding out and purring. And I’d think, how long, Karl, have you been wanting to rest like this, to sleep so deep and so trusting that your head just flops to the side? How long had you been running and hiding and sleeping in hedges? 

Other times I’d throw down a pillow on the rug and have a little nap, and Karl would either sleep on my chest or snuggle next to me. It was like he was waiting for me to get down to his level. And there was always a tinge of regret when inevitably I’d get up to do something else.

I’m not sure you can train cats, but I did have a little routine at the end of the night before I turfed him out. I’d ring a little meditation bell to show the night was over, and I think he did get it after a while, because I’d detect a little rueful mew while the bell’s chime died into silence. But he’d be back. And I’d hear him sadly cry outside to be let back in for a while, and I did feel bad about it every night, but I told myself there wasn’t much to be done, not in these situations, and *technically* he wasn’t my cat, even though he would disagree. 

Again, thinking of my dad, I would buy chicken livers like he did for our UK cat, boil them up, and then add them to his food as treats, which he’d scarf right down. At first his water and food bowls were outside, until one night I heard plaintive cries and found Karl petrified that an interloping hedgehog was nose down in the food bowl. Another night there was a huge commotion and discovered a black cat was trying to eat Karl’s food, and before I really knew what I was looking at, Karl chased the other off with a fury.

Karl’s deepest shame: owned by a hedgehog

I always told myself that somehow I was nursing him back to health, and I didn’t really want to know what might be wrong with him. He drank a lot of water, which was probably kidney related. He shed like he was donating to charity wigs. He probably had fleas, but I never saw any, and none bit me. Karl was missing a lower tooth. His tail has a weird matting on it, like it had dragged through sap. His little nose was discolored. Karl couldn’t tell me about his previous life, but his body did, as did his love for me. 

And by the end of September he was getting frisky, like I hadn’t seen before. He’d run and take a jump up onto the footstool. He had more energy. One night he climbed up on me and kept climbing, until he was up on my shoulders, sure and balanced. 

“Oh, are we doing this now, Karl? Really?” I asked. I was able to walk around the house with Karl next to my ear, purring away. It’s my favorite photo of him. And us. Even though I look annoyed, it’s a mock annoyance. (Sorry, Karl.) On another day, like the dutiful cat he had been in a past life, he left a dead mouse on my doorstep. Good boy, Karl! I said, even as I felt a bit bad about the mouse, who I swept into the bushes for the worms.

Let me also add, because it’s just coming to me now, that since that UK cat, a tuxedo-black’n’white cat we called Pud, I haven’t had a pet since I was a teenager. This is for a number of reasons, mostly my own conception of my responsibilities (or lack thereof) and how most places I’ve rented have had no-pets policies. Karl was bringing that all to the forefront. What if I went on vacation, even for a week? I was anxious. I wasn’t supposed to have a cat. And if I moved, I couldn’t imagine not taking Karl with me, but to what kind of place? Karl would add all sorts of qualifications and complications.

In retrospect, that burst of energy was Karl’s last, a brief revisit to the kitten he once was, a final conversation with himself about where he came from and what he used to be. Last week he stopped being his chatty self. Yes, he’d call to be let in, but it was more a plaintive, simple meow. And he’d walk in and not know what to do with himself. He couldn’t rest. He didn’t seem interested in food, but he started drinking resting water out of the cast iron skillet filled with butter and burnt food. 

On our final night together he came in with bloody matted paws. He was distressed. So was I. I started looking for local vets, with a plan to take him in the morning. But that night we had one last snuggle, Karl stretched out once again, claws near my throat, and I petted him, calling him my good guy. Because, you know, he was a good guy.

In the morning I went and got a carrier from the vet, kept it open and ready around the corner, and let Karl in. He looked worse. Blood was now all over his mouth. As this was near Halloween, it was a good costume, I have to admit. But I had to trick him, and once he settled down on my backpack, plainly exhausted, I swept him up and put him in the carrier. He offered little to no resistance. Karl was ill.

The vets here in Petone were all very lovely, and searched him to no avail for a chip–to be honest, I hadn’t really thought that he might have one, or that anybody might be looking for him. And so he sat in his little cage, and I said goodbye to Karl, but not for the last time. I went home and cleaned up. Karl would not be coming back. Even if he got better, he would be put up for adoption. I called the next day and they had already moved him to the SPCA in Wellington. But they did tell me that yes, Karl indeed was male, and was around 15 years old. He was an old man. 

And so to today, when I got the call. Despite their efforts, Karl was too far gone. The blood had come from a massive tumor under his tongue, which had exploded, so even when he went to clean himself, he wound up bleeding over his paws. His kidneys didn’t work. They’d have to put him down. I knew I’d have to be there. I didn’t want Karl to pass without seeing his last friend in this life. 

Karl, obviously more handsome than Brad Pitt in Killing Them Softly

The SCPA is an old building up in the hills above Newtown. In a previous life it was the Fever Hospital, an isolation hospital for infectious diseases, now retooled into an animal hospital. I was taken back to a room of plexiglass cages, where I drew up an office chair and saw Karl. He didn’t look like himself, the tumor had quickly deformed his mouth, and there was nothing they could really do to stop the blood, so dark patches were all over his face. And in so much internal pain that while he did see me, he looked past me, and there wasn’t much I could do but pet him and hope he remembered me. The vet and I talked a bit, and I shared a few stories, but I was already getting a bit misty about it. I just kept petting him, and the vet gave him a sedative so they could ease him out of the cage onto an operating table, on top of a cheap towel, much like the ones Karl had slept on back at mine. 

The vet shaved off a patch on his arm and while I petted him and told him he was a good little guy, Karl received the injection that would quickly stop his heart. The vet’s assistant petted him too, while she listened to his heart stop with a stethoscope. All three of us were petting him as he passed over the rainbow bridge. 

Goodbye

Karl’s eyes didn’t close. His pupils fully dilated and though he was still warm while I stroked and kissed his little ginger head, his body looked collapsed and deflated. To do this often, while all manner of owners cry over their little babies, takes a certain kind of person. Vets need to be paid more. I told him so. He told me it’s rough, especially on the day years ago when he had to put his own cat down. Just imagine.

Who knows what Karl knew when he started hanging around? Was he hoping my lap was his last stop after years of trying to get back to a home and owners that weren’t there anymore? Was he annoyed every night when I dropped him outside the backdoor (but always with a goodnight and an “I love you” and a “see you in the morning”).

Either way, Karl, you were my good little guy, a most unexpected part of my 2024, a little bit of love in my life. May your purrs keep going beyond this reality. See you in my dreams.