My kid sister
Sun 3.22.20
Chloe died on Tuesday night under the coffee table. She couldn’t stand anymore, had lost her voice; she could barely walk using her claws to drag herself. I knew this was her last day; she hadn’t eaten since the previous Saturday. We sat in the easy chair together for a bit, the place where she always joined me when I closed my eyes to meditate. It was our daily forenoon time of tranquility and regeneration. I sang the song I made up for her. On these last days I noticed she went to sit in each of the places she had occupied. She was making her last farewells. Although she couldn’t climb anymore, she lay under my work desk, which she used to sit on top of stretching out and nodding under the lamp while I worked. She even went to lay on the bathmat in the room where her litter boxes were held. Yes, there were two because of the constant messes she was subject to.
I brought a dish of water for her under the coffee table, she was standing on her paws and could not bend over to lap it up, shortly, she fell over. I thought to give her water by wetting a cloth and putting it to her mouth, and when I tried to do so she whimpered. Two minutes later, her body jerked and her legs stretched out. She was on her side; I looked at the belly to see if it was moving, then felt it. I looked at her face and the right eye was out of focus. She was dead.
I fitted her body in a shoe box and put it in the refrigerator. In the morning, I called the bus station and asked if there were busses that took one to the ocean. In South Portland, at Willard beach I came with the shoebox in my backpack. It was low tide, I separated myself from beach strollers, walking to a remote area and I climbed the slimy seaweed-covered rocks to try and get as close to the rushing water as I could. I came within two feet of it and could not advance any further. There, in a small water filled enclosure I deposited her body. It had stiffened in the shape of the box I had placed it in, and its black and white fur was matted. She was in a place where she would not be discovered and later the waters would come to bring her out to sea.
Afterward at home, I took apart her feeding station, washed and put away the bowls, threw out the cans of cat food, the dry food, the salmon and tuna fish, also her medicine; and then I threw away the kitty litter, washed the pans, the scoop, put them away and I went to bed taking two Acetaminophen PM’s.
None of it helps. Her presence is in every room, in every corner. In the closet, under the bed, her memory assails me and with anguish, and the tears flow. My days are filled with two features: 1. I work on my court case for hours. Chloe was poisoned by a person who lives in my building. The person who did this told management, yes, the very company that I’m taking to court for removing my gazebo, that she was going to poison my cat and they did nothing. An ignorant person, it’s as the Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt said following the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a major organizer of the Holocaust, it was and is “the banality of evil.” We like to cloak our evil doers in fangs and hideous faces, but in truth, they are just ignorant and stupid people. The people one meets every day who are the locomotive that keeps our society running.
2. I spend my evenings watching movies, one after another, then I go to bed take my two Acetaminophen PM’s. Have you seen the Netflix movie, Roma? Chloe’s character was similar to Cleo, the servant girl who works at the rich folks house, a sweet, innocent person who is the strength behind the family she takes care of. My little sweetie killed 8 red squirrels this past summer and a mouse in the apartment. Not only did she kill it, she also ate it all up. She was my beloved friend, my kid sister.
The favorite essay this month has again been, Dandy
