The Many Lives of DB and The Physiology of Grief
(DB the blind cat)
The Many Lives of DB and The Physiology of Grief
I’ve never considered myself a cat person, yet I’ve had them my whole adult life. My first, “Mujamin,” I found as a tiny kitten in a dumpster behind a 7-11 walking home from my friend Chris’s house late one night. That was now forty-five years ago in the early fall of my sophomore year of college, and just a couple months later I buried him in my flower bed one afternoon after watching him get hit by a car as he raced across the street to greet me coming home from class. I can still remember the sudden feeling of helpless shock and grief as the inevitable unfolded before my eyes.
Today the latest in a long line of cats that have died reminds me of that first one. DB was different though, a cat I lived with a full sixteen years, having been given as just a tiny kitten on a Memorial Day weekend by my daughter Shae. I’d even go as far as to say old BD was a remarkable one-in-a-million cat who went through so much she became something other than just a cat...
DB’s full name was Diamond Back because of a distinctive dark diamond marking between her shoulders, and she was always gentle and kind (something worth remarking on since everyone who’s ever known a cat knows how rare that is), but became even more so as she lived longer and survived the hurdles of some strange and challenging lives. In the end she went out quickly with her relative health and independence still in tact, and I’m left with such a clear image of her beauty (completely void of self-consciousness which maybe is the blessing of being blind) and such a strong feeling of her specialness, which in perhaps a different context might be called grace.
But before I go on to extol all the qualities, trials and tribulations of DB The Blind Cat, I just want to get it off my chest how terribly sick and sorry I am that she died today the way she did. I feel responsible because last night watching a movie she started to vomit up a hair ball and I quickly and unceremoniously put her out the front door, with Carol immediately saying, “Don’t forget to let her back in.”
In the morning I remembered.
And so… after looking and calling and worrying I eventually have to go to town for a meeting, and so… find your mangled body on the highway at the end of our road, impossible to miss, but almost impossible to identify. We bury you in the arboretum, covering your body with handfuls of fresh roses, then soft loamy earth. But it does nothing to fill the hole you have left in me. And the weight of my responsibility… pulls, reminding me of the depth grief reaches.
"The Deepest Well"
(for DB)
The physiology of grief
is an interesting thing
the way it tugs on our deepest memories
activating layers of neural nets
in a rush-hour tangle of ghosts.
You were our Diamond Back.
Of so many lives, we all lost count
until we lost track of you
putting you out to vomit up a hair ball
then forgetting to let you back in.
DB the blind cat
in the morning remembering
my mistake, calling and looking
eventually finding
you gone for good out on the highway.
DB in sixteen years
to travel so far
to see so much
even though blind
and crippled and half deaf by the end.
I wished you had lived forever
As I do with all my loves
because you became the best cat ever
purified of all selfishness
by all your suffering.
In the morning there’s a hole
as we pile fresh roses in your grave
so sad with what we have done
the gentle friend we have lost
with so many lives.
(9/6/23)
But you were not always as I saw you this morning. I still remember that first summer back in ’07, first as you lived with Oboe, the other greatest cat of my life, and me, until Oboe had done what he was here to do, and we were on our own. As you well knew, I’m not much of a cat person, but I certainly didn’t treat my dogs any better during that year of divorce and change, and you were a welcome joy, as all kittens are!
Your life was pretty normal and uneventful after we moved into town with Carol a couple of years later and everyone settled down to the kind of wholesome lifestyle a newlywed house of cats and dogs provides. But then one dark winter’s morning as Carol was going to work you got your head in the door as she slammed it shut, and so you became blind with what the Vet said was probably detached retinas, something the Eastern Washington University Veterinary School could possibly fix with an operation for about $5,000, each eye. And so you remained blind.
Those first few years of blindness were not pleasant for you. You gradually became something of a wraith to us, obviously depressed and unsocial, wanting to spend your time alone behind the warm TV and stereo, or out of the way in some protected spot, clearly blind as you often missed a doorway and walked into the wall instead. And then this inner neglect and despair started to show externally so that even we took notice. Your matted fur was unfixable, your appetite minimal, and when we finally took you to the Vet she was horrified. She thought maybe we’d brought something contagious into her practice, but then found it was only a severe case of gingivitis. So she kept you overnight on an IV, removed all your teeth, gave you antibiotics and steroids, shaved all you hair and gave you a fifty-fifty chance of survival. When we picked you up the next morning you looked like an Auschwitz survivor, gaunt and scared and down to just four and half pounds, But you started to heal and I later told the Vet staff that that had been the best $500 or so dollars I’d ever spent on a pet.
For the next couple of years we’d take you back for quarterly shots to control the gingivitis, but eventually you stopped needing them, taking to eating and grooming again as if you were back to normal. But with this external cure came a minor miracle, which may have some scientific explanation (which I was led to discover years later when reading about the eyes of octopuses and how they transmit both visual information – to one part of the brain from one part of the eye– as well as spatial information – to another part from another), but which nonetheless was a break through for you. You began to see again, not externally but internally. You stopped bumping into things, you started jumping up and moving with confidence inside and outside. What you did was develop a new sense, a synthesis perhaps of all your other senses, or maybe an awakening of that eye and brain function the octopus taught us about that isn’t visual.
So anyway, cured of gum disease and depression, back to a healthier weight and sleek well-groomed coat all we could say was Life was good, and maybe, just maybe you’d reached your prime and it would be smooth sailing for a while. And so it was.
In January of 2017 after what had been a long cold snap, which kept you cooped up indoors, we let you out to stretch your legs in the deep snow, and then proceeded to forget about you. When we remembered it was evening and as we searched in vain for hours we figured the inevitable had happened. But then at 6am the next morning there you were back at the door, dry and happy and hungry after your 24 hour walk-about.
"The Blind Cat’s 24 Hour Walkabout"
Oh we fretted so.
After she fretted being cooped up
with cabin fever
in our long January cold snap.
So at 6am yesterday I finally let her out
into the dark rainy morning
to wander and stretch her legs a bit
through the deep snow,
and then the day took off and we forgot all about her.
So DB the blind cat was gone…
All evening and half the night we searched,
and worried
and slowly tried to accept
the inevitable
and final
result of all living and adventuring.
Until this morning
when exactly at 6 she was back
no worse for wear, hungry but dry
happily homecoming from her
winter walkabout.
Life was certainly good for such a beautiful and well-adjusted blissfully blind kitty with your huge always permanently dilated pupils. And so it went through that whole year right up until early December when we loaded the dogs up for a cold Sunday walk up on Fancher Flats east of town. When we turned off the paved road onto the gravel Fancher Flats road we heard a strange cry.
I thought, “Oh no, I’ve driven off with DB on top of the car.” But when I got out to check you were under it instead, trapped between the engine and the bottom brush plate dragging your front legs on the road. It turns out being the independent fully functioning blind cat you are, you’d gone on top of the engine block to warm up in the freezing afternoon and we’d driven off without noticing. As I drove you back to town, nestled safely in Carol’s lap, all I could think of was what would be the best way to put you down.
But once home, you seemed to improve and after we cleaned and bandaged your wounds we figured we’d take you in to the Vet when they opened Monday and see what she said. She was more optimistic about you this time and kept you over night for surgery. In the morning we picked you up, all bandaged with paws like a boxer, a few toes removed and your wounds still bare and raw and in need of daily cleaning and dressing. You even had some liquid morphine to keep you suitably subdued for this. And so we doted upon you.
"The Amazing Blind Cat’s Terrible Sunday Drive"
For a blind cat you’d never know it,
as DB does everything
someone with working eyes can do
except see.
I’m not sure how many lives she’s used up,
but I know it’s more than a few,
and I’m sure she used another one today.
When I saw her body hanging under the car
her head and front feet dragging on the road,
dangling lifeless except for the cries
that got us to stop driving in the first place,
I never expected her to survive.
In fact, driving the five or so miles back into town
all I could think was
what would be the best, most humane, way to put her down.
But DB is resting calmly now on a bed of towels
in a quiet spot,
her front legs all bandaged
although the abrasions she suffered
are more than I would ever imagine
horrifically worn down to the muscles and tendons
with ligaments and bones showing in places,
resting and waiting for a trip to see her loving Vet tomorrow.
But DB is a cat,
that strange combination of sensitivity and stoicism,
and I suspect she’d keep it to herself
if she was suffering even more.
It just reminds me yet again
how different we are
and how thankful I am for that.
And so we doted on you, and after a few more weeks you no longer needed the morphine and the bandages could stay on a couple of days at a time without need to be changed. It was something like six weeks all bandaged up like that before you could walk again. But even with a noticeable clunking in your stride now from your damage feet you quickly got back to normal to being your usual friendly, loving, curious, forgiving self (no hard feels for our unintended carelessness), exploring and even hunting outdoors and making your way efforltlessly around the house as if you now had a perfect internal 3-D map.
When we moved out of town a couple of years later you made the transition easier than anyone. Only rarely would you bump into something, usually an object on the table or floor, which had been placed temporarily to obscure your path. But more often you’d amaze us by executing a perfect jump onto a chair that had just been move. You adjusted to being in the country too, and managed to avoid getting eaten by any predators as you explored the yard and surrounding fields. You even occasionally spent the night out.
Over these past four years you were always the sweetest, gentlest of pets, like all your sufferings had purified you of whatever it is that makes cats self-centered and skittish. Maybe you’d lost some basic instinctual survival skill from just having to wing it in the dark for so long. But even with strangers you were always relaxed, tolerant and warm, willing to snuggle in for a pet and rarely if ever demanding attention like a normal cat. We certainly wished you’d be part of our lives forever.
Recently though, you’d begun to show your age, and I had started to wonder how much longer you’d be with us. You’d been eating very little, seeming easily confused, sometimes acting lost (even when trying to find your water and food bowl), and complaining a lot without us having a clear idea why. It was as if your miraculous internal map was breaking down, perhaps with some degree of dementia returning you to your earlier levels of blindness. You were clearly deteriorating, but I also hoped you’d be able pull off a few more miracles. At least I expected a couple of more years with you around, especially for the simple pleasure of our shared early morning ritual as you demanded your little share of half-and-half.
And then last night as we watched that movie you began to yowl with that distinctive pre-vomit warning, and I put you out.
Life hinges on just such actions, thoughtful or thoughtless it really doesn’t matter when we can’t see what’s coming. I think of all the time you had with us, and how you ended up having both years of unexpected contentment and more than your share of pain and suffering, maybe not more than many cats have as they work their way through nine lives, but certainly more than most humans can bear.
Life in this way is just that, full to brim of what we can each just bear, until it isn’t, and we leave a hole, where we used to be.
September 6th, 2023
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