Zombie Cat

My boy walked in dizzy circles on the piss-stiffened carpet. He was gone already, in a way. His eyes were unseeing, and his already thin frame was now skeletal. And that awful hole in his face, the one that never quite finished scabbing over before he sliced it open again, was tinged with gray, drops of blood and pus leaking out.

“Zombie cat” was what we used to call him. We never knew for sure how he got that hole in his face. It took up his entire left cheek, the fur around it crusty and matted. Most likely, and most horribly, it was an attack from his sister. My sweetest girl. I forget, sometimes, how they used to fight. When they were both young and spry, when they’d chase one another up and down the halls, paws batting paws, claws cutting ears and noses. It never troubled us much, their stints of violence. It was much more common to find them curled together in a spiral on the same couch cushion, him a pale orange, her a dark gray; a yin and yang.

He was often sickly. Undoubtedly the runt of their litter, never growing to the same extent as his sister. A recurring tooth infection was the source of most of his pain and most of our anxieties in the later years of his life. He wouldn’t eat or drink. Hours would go by, and we would realize with worry and shame that we could not remember the last time we saw him, and we would turn over the house looking for him, shaking a bag of treats all through the house and the neighborhood, until finally, someone would discover him hiding at the very bottom of a hamper beneath a pile of clothes, or wedged inside of a sofa.

It was a relief when he was found, though I never wanted to be the one to find him. Just in case the worst had occurred. I still remember, with shocking clarity, the death of my first pet. He was barely older than a kitten, white with orange tail and toes. He was named Johnny before he became ours, and being young and not trusting myself with the responsibility of naming him myself, we kept the name. But being young and craving agency, I did later opt to give our Johnny both a middle and last name. Johnny Blue Kazoo. It was fun because it rhymed, and somehow it suited him, our Johnny Blue.  

We had him only a few months, and then I came home from school or thereabouts and I was the first to see him, sprawled on the floor, deep in sleep. I crouched down to pet him, and in a strange voice my mother said, “Wait,” because she had realized more quickly than me. But even with her warning, my hand made contact with his fur. And I felt it. The lack of heartbeat, the lack of breath. Death is often defined by absence, but it is still a tangible thing. When I rested my young, small hand on our Johnny Blue, I felt death.

We never did find out what killed him. Maybe something undiagnosed, or a string lodged in his throat, or who knows what else. There was no sister to blame.

Back to my boy. I do not think he was my boy anymore when he began to walk those dizzy circles around the basement, leaning to one side as if drunk. I had to place food and water directly in front of him for him to notice it, and even then he hardly touched it. This was not like the tooth infection or the hole in his face, a visible or physical ailment. His mind was gone.

We couldn’t let him walk around the house in his current state, so he stayed in my room. It was scary to see him move around, even in that confined space, when he didn’t seem to know where he was and could have been toppled over by a breath. But it was scarier to see him sleep, which is most of what he did after that day. We padded a cardboard box with blankets. I gave him one of my plush toys to sleep with, a small penguin that I’d named Petey. I like to think it brought him comfort. I don’t know if he felt anything beyond pain.

It was a slow and horrible week. I woke up each morning, checked to see if he was still breathing, and told him I loved him before leaving for school. The only thing I hated more than being with him, watching him slowly die, was not being with him. I needed to be there when it happened. Not my mom or my stepdad or my sister or anyone else. Me. I needed to be there. I didn’t know how I could forgive myself if I wasn’t with him in those final moments.

It was Thursday night when my mom called the vet to schedule his euthanasia. It felt like the right decision for the pale, limp creature in a box in my room, barely clinging to life. It felt like the right decision, even though part of me still hoped he would pull through like he always had. Every time his tooth infection flared up, he pulled through. Every time he scratched open the scab on the side of his face, leaking blood and pus, he pulled through. When he took a nap in our top-down washing machine, unbeknownst to us, and went for a brief spin before we realized he was inside, he emerged damp but uninjured aside from one small scratch.

He always pulled through. It felt greedy to ask for anything more, knowing that he’d already lived years beyond any of us expected. But still I hoped.

We didn’t need to go through with the euthanasia in the end. I awoke Friday morning and before I even got out of bed, I knew. I got my wish to be there when it happened, though I was sleeping. I should probably be grateful for that. But I wish, even now, that I could have held him as he passed. That he could have curled up on my chest one last time. That I could have planted a kiss on his head, in the spot between his ears, the same way I did to his sister. The way I still do.

The day he died was also the day of my senior prom. I mourned during the early hours, and then at night I danced with my girlfriend as if nothing had happened. As if no one was lost. And I was grateful, in a way, that he was dead, because he no longer had to suffer in pain, nor did I have to suffer in hope, and I could have this great night with my girlfriend, who is no longer my girlfriend, who is just a blip in time and significance compared to him.

I hold him in my heart, along with my Johnny Blue. I imagine them playing together; they would have made good friends. I write him into my stories. I wear him around my neck. I see him in his sister when she sleeps, lonely, one half of a yin yang. I hold her and tell her I love her while I can, and hope I can be there for her, too, when it’s her time, the way I was for him. I look for him in every spin cycle. Zombie cat. Martin. My boy.