THE NINE LIVES OF PLUTO CAT
(Pluto, on White Mtn. summer of ’82)
THE NINE LIVES OF PLUTO CAT
Prologue
In the spring of 1982 our blond cat “Larch”, who not only glowed at night, but also lacking claws, testicles and any farm sense, had lasted less than a month at our new raw-land homestead (but, oh was he blissed-out for that brief month, his first away from city streets). We were pretty sure it had been an owl that took him, but it could just as easily have been a Red Tailed Hawk or Golden Eagle. Thinking we needed a companion for our young black lab Moonshadow, and a mouser for our rustic tent camp, we quickly found a replacement in the form of a tiny, all black, male kitten who we named “Pluto”.
Pluto-cat came from hardy local mountain stock, and so we felt we had made a good start in our effort to establish a family and alternative way of life in the hills of North Eastern Washington. We were young, my partner and I, fresh out of college, idealistic and enthusiastic to get back to the land, and so the notion of building our mountain home with a new kitten seemed appropriate enough. What we didn’t know at the time was how much of a survivor Pluto would turn out to be, and what he would manage to teach us in the process of shedding his many lives.
Life 1 – Kitten
Pluto was quickly at home in our tent camp. It was early spring in the mountains, still cold and sometimes snowy. Pluto loved to nestle into our down sleeping bags, and spend his days hiding and playing under the old canvas tarp-tent with makeshift visqueen walls. He was a sweet little thing, full of joy and mischief, and he delighted us, even though he would occasionally poop in the middle of the sleeping bags…
As Pluto grew older he showed a remarkable confidence, loyalty and independence. He’d sit for hours and watch us build our home, and come hiking with us as we explored the surrounding hills on days off, often traveling more than several miles with us.
Life 2 – Young Tom – A’wandering
Eventually as a young tom Pluto took off and spent what seemed like months during the next spring and summer out alone chasing mysterious tail. We never saw him during this time until he limped home one day all torn up. His ears where cut, face scratched, and hair matted, but what was most alarming was his arm. He had been cut up fighting and the skin of his right arm was punctured, encrusted and oozing yellow puss from several small holes. He stunk, and didn’t look so good.
I took tinctures of Calendula and Hypercium, and poured them into his wounds, covered them with some gauze, and then wrapped his whole arm in a cast of athletic tape. For a week or two he hobbled around, staying close to home, enjoying what attention we lavished upon him. When I finally cut the bandages away his whole arm was fresh and pink and hairless, and he apparently had no infection. He was healthy and rejuvenated, and he was also completely different in temperament.
Life 3 – Return of the Prodigal Son
So, Pluto was reborn a renewed cat, still a tom, but mellower, and never to wander as much again. He was clearly appreciative of the nursing we had provided, and he showed this by again following us closely on our daily walks along the ridges and forest trails. He also brought us various offerings including some very beautiful birds, like the Lazuli Bunting, Mountain Bluebird, Western Tanager, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, as well as an assortment of rodents like field mice, voles, chipmunks and once, one late summer evening, a flying squirrel - carried alive into the house and then released to find it’s own way out through the open door in three soaring leaps!
During this time we decided to discourage his relentless (and highly effective) hunting of birds by putting a little bell on his neck. I will never forget the look on his face when I placed the collar on him and told him earnestly that he was not going to kill the birds anymore. He looked at me with a mix of shocked alarm and hurt, and then suddenly, furiously, turned his head to stare close into the wall for what seemed like hours.
Life 4 – Jealous Bastard
Pluto was now well on his way to satisfactory domestication, but he still had a few odd and obnoxious habits. One was he would still sometimes shit on the soft downy comforter bedding (never knowing what a litter box or indoor toilet was he took it upon himself to sometimes improvise). Another was he felt the need to claim his territory by marking his scent up and down the walls and furniture. And, he appeared to be jealous.
Once he woke my partner up in the middle of the night by spraying her in the face. It was winter, and I took some small pleasure in simply opening the second floor window and placing him vertically on the log wall exterior. As we lay there wondering what had just happened and trying to calm down we could hear him slowly sliding, trying desperately to continue to hang on, and eventually fall with a thud into the snowy flower garden below.
After this we began to put him out at night, but still had to endure him climbing up the corner of the house and onto the roof to perch on the skylight directly above the bed and watch us (actually more like glare) as the snow fell on him in the sub-zero dark.
So, he became an outdoor cat again, and we settled into an uneasy truce. We’d let him come in when we were there, and let him stay in as long as he didn’t mark up the house, but each night we’d put him out to resume his exposed, and only slightly warm, perch on the skylight where he’d scowl down on us in exile.
Life 5 – Sick and Left to Die
As Pluto grew older and more headstrong (and less welcome in our family), he also eventually became sick. For weeks he appeared to be having trouble urinating. He’d walk around clearly agitated and unable to release more than a dribble, then only a few drops at a time, and finally none at all, even though he frequently tried. We were devout (if not very compassionate) Buddhists in those days, and so had the dilemma of not liking him, but not being able to kill him outright. I remember saying, “If he survives the night we’ll take him to the vet.”
In the morning he surprised us by limping up to the house, and so we drove him the 40 miles in to see the vet. The vet couldn’t believe we had neglected him so badly for so long. I looked at her and flatly said, “We wanted him to die.”
Dr. June proceeded to inform us that Pluto had a bladder infection probably caused by not getting enough water and having too much salt in his cheap cat food diet. Then without delay or any anesthetic, as we stood watching, she snipped off the tip of his penis with scissors, stuck a wire into him and routed out his plugged urethra. His distended bladder immediately emptied onto the steel operating table. He must have been holding more than a pint of urine.
She kept him for the night to see if he’d survive with antibiotic treatment, and when we returned the next day she sent us off with several large bottles of saline solution, a large hypodermic needle, and instructions to keep him hydrated with regular injections. During his stay with the good doctor Pluto had also had his testicles removed. It had been a difficult time for him, no doubt.
The horror and enormity of what we had helped create for Pluto became clear for us once we got him home. For the next week he was very weak and unable to eat, drink or walk. Somehow his back legs were now paralyzed from uremic poisoning and without the ability to control his bladder he would simply drag himself around the floor leaking out whatever fluids we injected him with, leaving a wide wet swath in his wake.
We babied him with guilty, loving care. Now we actually worried about him, and were very happy when we woke one morning to find two little dead mice waiting for us at the bottom of the ladder to the sleeping loft. We knew he’d survive and recover.
Life 6 – A Gentler Kinder Fat Cat
After that ordeal of neglect, callousness and contrition, amazingly Pluto was thankful. Once again he was reborn a completely different cat. He healed quickly, returned to our heart’s affection, and became a full and welcome member of the family again. Once again he’d take long walks with us, watch closely as we worked in the garden and orchard, and even travel long distance with us – once spending a week on the road living out of the small Subaru Wagon with me and our two dogs, taking regular leashed walks in city parks and highway rest stops, and never once making a mess in the car.
Years passed and my life changed. My original partner moved away. The two dogs did as well. Pluto and I remained behind on the mountain, somewhat of an odd couple. No longer young and adventurous he preferred to stay home and get fat. In fact it seemed that for a while his only passion was to eat, and with his eating disorder he became huge. He had reached middle age.
Before too long I met a new lady friend and invited her to move in along with her two young daughters. We eventually got married, got new dogs, and made a daughter of our own. Pluto took it all in stride, and was relatively tolerant of the girls, their expectations of him to sometimes play dress-up, and the addition of several more cats to the household. Life was good, well, usually.
It was also during this time that I had the rare treat of experiencing the full display of his affection for me. One day I was sitting at the kitchen table with him. He was in front of me, close and probably drooling from his nose as he tried to rub against me, suddenly he reached out and grabbed my face in both paws, with claws extended and firmly imbedded in my cheeks, while he also bit down on the tip of my nose. He held me helpless like that for what seemed like minutes, as he stared into my eyes and purred. Later someone told me that was the equivalent of a French Kiss from a cat.
Life 7 – Finally Domesticated, Kind Of…
But as affectionate and passionate as Pluto obviously was he was also still a cat and sometimes acted out his jealousy and selfishness. In fact he was steadily becoming ornery in his old age. When he once in a fit slashed the cheek of my younger step-daughter (then maybe about 6 years old) I decided he was too dangerous to keep (probably if truth be told, more concerned for the safety of our new born girl). I gathered an old burlap sack, some string and a large rock and took him to the car.
I had stopped being a devout and orthodox Buddhist by then, and so had no vows, nor ethical restraints to keep me from killing him directly. I had every intention to do that by putting him into the bag with the rock, tying it up and throwing him off a bridge into a particularly deep spot in the river where he’d never be found. As we sat in the car, he on the passenger seat beside me, I told him of my plan, and his fate. He looked at me with panic in his eyes.
We sat there looking at each other for several minutes in silence. I had every intention of murdering him, and yet… And yet, he was my oldest companion, maybe even friend. Over the years I had even come to see him as perhaps the reincarnation of an old lover, who in his own peculiar way had shown his dedication and fierce love. The moment passed and I told him I couldn’t drown him, and that he’d better get it together and change his ways. And he did, like he had done many times before, again as if turning over a new leaf, instantly transforming into a completely different personality.
Life 8 – Old and Left to Die Part 2
Pluto lived for a couple of more years as the gentle and mellow senior patriarch of the household. When he eventually became blind it was in the late winter of 1998. He was almost 16 years old. He was clearly dying a natural death, and we decided out of respect to let him do it on his own terms. He wandered off one last time alone, in a mix of walking, crawling and tumbling westward down the hillside through the deep snow into the night… We said our goodbyes as we watched him go, but he was clearly preoccupied.
The next day we were surprised by the visit of a well meaning good Christian neighbor who showed up carrying Pluto. She had found him lying in the ditch along the county road, where he had tumbled, almost dead from exposure, and thought we’d want him back home. We thanked her, not wanting to teller her she had foiled our plans for a peaceful natural death for the old guy.
For the next week Pluto stayed in a wire rabbit cage in the living room, unable to control his bladder, eat, see or apparently sleep. All he wanted to do was get out, and so continually spent his days pacing in circles, literally crawling up the walls and bashing his face against the wires trying to walk off again into the sunset.
It was pitiful for all of us.
Life 9 – Prolonged by Good Intentions, Released by Kindness
I had to travel to Seattle to do some construction work for a friend, so I missed what happened next. My wife told me the story, and it somehow remains vivid for me as if I had been there at the time.
It was a crisp and cold March morning when she had called our neighbor Ron to bring his .22 rifle and help put Pluto down. They stood in the driveway, with the girls inside perhaps unaware of what was going to happen, and shot the blind old wretched cat.
The story goes that in a brilliant flash the air became crystal clear, pristine, still, and almost brittle. It was like the limpid clarity behind this world of appearances was revealed. In that moment they both felt an unexpected sense of awe and simplicity and calm. They stood there in that transformed space and hugged each other and cried. In an instant Pluto was gone, and in the release, something remarkable had been revealed.
Later when I heard this story it reminded me of the experience devotees of accomplished meditation masters sometimes witness when their teacher drops their body and merges their mind with the Clear Light. It made me wonder (in more than one sense of the word) if Pluto was not in fact a great bodhisattva here to teach us a lesson or two.
After Life – An Epilogue
It has been many years since these incidences of Pluto’s life occurred, yet as I recall them now they bring back strong emotions. Especially remembering the time I almost drowned him, sitting in the car together as we pondered his fate and our connection, it makes my heart completely open, and I find the tears just pouring from my eyes.
Pluto was more than a cat or companion for those years. He was a glimpse of all of Life. A glimpse of the up close and personal and of the farther reaches, the extremes of what we can all experience, that are both immediate and tangible, yet also beyond the visible.
In the end it seems he was named perfectly.
(April, 2013)
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