Being Alice: Slowly Electric
Sep. 23rd, 2009 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightlotusmoonI don't know where it started. Couch or bathroom. I felt suddenly unreal. The room began to move away from me. The photos on the wall began to shift and change colors. The trees out the window moved in slow motion. The fan and the television slowed. The world slowed. Lightning in my head increased. There was slight pressure, not physical but psychic. I don't remember getting up or walking. I remember staring at the walls in the hallway, because Adam painted a mural on those walls when we first got the house. I remember watching Luna stare at me from the bathroom doorway. She meowed at me. She jumped up onto the stair ledge and sat there, and meowed, and when I stroked her, she nipped my hand and licked me. I don't remember anything else. I am back on the couch. My brain feels electric. Luna is with me. She is meeping now, instead of meowing. See, she only meows when she needs to get a human's attention. She keeps walking across my lap, rubbing her face against mine.
It will end in a moment and I will be fine.
My cats know. They always know. Thank you, my cats.
(For the record.)
It will end in a moment and I will be fine.
My cats know. They always know. Thank you, my cats.
(For the record.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 07:54 pm (UTC)(This is going to be a very morbid story.)
On May 7th, 2007, I wrote my social security number down for Erica. I gave her the account number of my IRA, and the phone number of my IRA specialist. I told her to call in and change the beneficiaries to my grandparents. There was only about $200 in there.
She drove me home.
When I got there, I sneaked into my grandparents' room. I took a bottle of Tylenol, a bottle of Aspirin, and a bottle of Vicodin. I got two glasses of water. I wrote a note, I made my bed, and I put Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on my DVD player. Through the first scenes of the movie, I swallowed ten Vicodin, twenty Tylenol, and thirty Aspirin.
I called Erica and I told her I was sorry and that I loved her. She asked me if I was okay, and I said, "I will be."
I hung up and I started crying. Ten minutes later, Isis and Mambo -- who both disappeared in June of the next year, although Isis returned on Christmas Eve -- came into my room. They each laid down next to me and purred. Twenty minutes later, I was getting dizzy. Mambo howled once, and Isis turned to me, and they both stood up on top of my chest. They meowed and purred in my face. They circled the top of the bed, both howling, and both came up to me again, nipping my cheeks, licking my eyelashes and biting down on my eyelids, clawing my chest.
I got out of bed. They followed me into my grandparents' room meowing the entire way. I woke my grandmother up and said, "I need to go to the hospital. I took a bunch of pills."
On the way to the hospital, all I kept saying was, "Please buy me a pack of cigarettes. I need a cigarette."
I was kept in a room the size of a closet; all of the walls were concrete, and the only light from the room came from a tiny window in the door. Occasionally I would see a police officer step in front of the window and look at me. He looked angry. He looked a little sad. I saw him talking to my grandfather. He looked sad too. I couldn't sleep at all; I can never sleep in hospitals. I was freezing, and my machine beeped every ten minutes. The psychiatrist told me I was beautiful even when I'd been crying. She said I wasn't a threat to myself, that I was just too damn smart, and sometimes smart people know too much to be happy. They released me at 10AM.
My grandparents picked me up, bought me breakfast, got me a pack of cigarettes, and took me home. I could tell my grandmother had been awake all night crying. When I laid down, I couldn't sleep, even though I was so tired and woozy. You know how when you spin around in a chair really fast and then stop suddenly but it feels like your eyes are still going even though you're completely still? Everything looked like that; my mind registered visual stimuli so slowly, like when you're running somewhere in a game and the horizon loads gradually until you finally get to where you're going.
I was haunted by the night before, by the hurt I felt, by knowing that I was still alive and by how scared I had been, by how much I scared everyone else.
I heard a meow at my door. Grandma opened it and Mambo rushed in. She jumped on top of me and I felt her rough tongue licking at my eyelids, her teeth nipping at my lashes again. I turned onto my side and she turned with me, crawled under the blanket, and laid down on my arm. I finally slept, and I slept for hours. When I woke up, she was still there, awake, waiting in the chair at the bottom of my bed.
If she and Isis hadn't gone into my room that night, I don't know if I would have stopped myself from dying. She saved my life. I wish she was still with me.
Shortly before she disappeared, I was lying in bed reading The Sandman. A fly had flown into my room. It was nose-diving at my face. It hit my nose briefly and I let out a squeal. I thought my door was closed all the way, but it must not have clicked into place. A moment after I squealed, she ran into my room, ran onto my bed. She sat for a moment watching the fly's pattern. She snatched the fly with her paw and ate it, then ran back out of the room like a little hero.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 07:57 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing. I'm glad you're alive.
I also love your cats and wish they were still with you.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 08:13 pm (UTC)Isis came back to us like a wonderful Christmas present. But, Mambo? I have no idea where she is. I hope that she's safe somewhere and that she remembers me. Isis is her mother. She went into labor while I was at work one day. She waited six hours for me because they wouldn't let me go home. As soon as I walked in the door and sat down next to her, she began giving birth to Mambo and Miku. I raised her since day one, and I miss her so much every day.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 09:24 pm (UTC)Here's a (long) story:
My friend Charlotte found out her cat Shadow was pregnant and helped with the birth. Shadow was her familiar and sort of "mimicked" many things that Charlotte did, the way she cuddled, or sighed, that sort of thing. Shadow gave birth to three kittens, but the firstborn was deformed. Broken jaw, broken spine. It couldn't nurse or eat at all. It died in less than a week. Shadow mourned it in a powerful way. Charlotte and her husband, Billy, buried the kitten in the backyard and Shadow would go out and sit at the grave and wail. The other two, Baby and Buster, grew healthy and strong, and began to not only mimic their mother, but to mimic Charlotte in odd ways, but Shadow hadn't taught them how. We chalked it up to genetic memory or something.
When Baby and Buster were a month old, Adam and I adopted a month-old feral kitten and named her Tuesday. Tuesday looked exactly like Shadow's dead kitten. Adam and I brought Tuesday over to Charlotte's because Shadow was so depressed that we wondered if Tuesday might help. Tuesday was terrified and freaked out, but Shadow... Shadow thought her kitten had been brought back to her somehow. She knew this couldn't be her kitten, but somehow she felt that maybe this new kitten was a sort of substitute. Shadow would try to invite Tuesday to nurse or cuddle, and the pained, desperate look in her eyes was heartbreaking. When we realized that Tuesday wanted nothing to do with Shadow, we got ready to take Tuesday home. I was standing in the kitchen, and the boy kitten, Buster, ran toward me, skidded to a stop right in front of me, and meowed at me in a very specific tone. I actually felt, in my mind, a strong sense of "Thank you for making Mommy happy." Not long after that, Shadow came out of her depression and began giving me and Adam very specific attention, like she was thanking us.
Unfortunately, Tuesday died two years later due to respiratory failure, but I'll never forget the very human way that Shadow acted around her.
Part I
Date: 2009-09-23 10:08 pm (UTC)Actually, I have a very similar story. My grandparents are rather poor, living on a fixed income, and they are both in terrible health, so they tend to be pretty late on spaying cats. I know that sounds terrible, but all of their cats are well-fed, well-loved, and very well taken care of.
Miku, the daughter of Isis, gave birth to two kittens. We named them Bella and Lola.
Here's Miku with Lola. They looked so much alike:
Do you see the beautiful orange on her? There's an orange-brown stripe right in the middle of her body. After the orange stripe, there's an expanse of grey-brown. An orange-brown spot encircles this area right in the middle of all the brown. She had it on both sides. Her ears were the same grey-brown color. She had a big bushy tail that started with a light brown and faded into a dark grey tip.
And here's Bella:
Miku nursed Bella and Lola for months. They were all so close. Now, you probably know that cats don't get pregnant while they're nursing, but once they stop nursing, they will go into heat. We were planning on getting her spayed as soon as she stopped, but we didn't know that she'd stopped producing milk because they were still nursing on her. They were five or six months old at this point.
One night, Grandpa let Miku out at about 3AM. She had gone into heat literally that day due to the lack of milk, but we'd had absolutely no idea. She doesn't act any different when she's in heat. The next day, I went out and I bought every cat in the house a beautiful collar that matched their coats (Bella got a lovely baby blue collar with white crystals, Lola got a dark red one with white crystals) and a tag. I spent about $60 on all of them. When I got home, I discovered that Grandpa had accidentally let Lola out.
I was devastated, but I'd accompanied her outside before. I used to carry her outside during thunderstorms because she loved the drizzly wind. We all thought she'd find her way home.
I loved Lola so much. She and Bella were best friends. They did everything together. And Lola was my baby, just absolutely my little baby. Every time I went to see my grandparents, I would call for her, and she would run into the living room full speed. As she saw me, she would slow to a trot, stick her tail in the air, and wave it back and forth wildly until her nose hit my hand in a hard nuzzle.
But she never came home.
Bella grieved and grieved and grieved. She would lie in my lap all day long. She and Miku would cuddle and nurse, and I could swear by the look in Miku's eyes that Lola's absence left her heartbroken.
Re: Part I
Date: 2009-09-23 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 10:09 pm (UTC)It dawned on us that the only explanation was that she had gotten pregnant the very night Lola disappeared.
She gave birth to two kittens -- all of her previous kittens had mostly been calico, but these two kittens were like night and day. One was pure grey, one was pure white. As they nursed, Bella would enter their closet and lie down right next to the white one and nurse with them. We called the kittens Spy vs. Spy, but we eventually named them Benicio the Greybeard and Bijou the Silvertail.
Bijou quickly became the sister that Bella lost. They would lay together all day long, face to face, paws wrapped around each other, cleaning each other's ears and faces. They have this little bench in the room where we keep my computer (Grandpa uses it as well, and often gets high before he listens to music and watches the visualizations and meditates in the middle of the night). This old bench is nestled up against a window -- the same window Grandpa let Miku out of when Lola escaped. Bijou and Bella lie there together, looking out the window, cleaning one another, sleeping.
As I said, Bijou was pure white when she was born. And as she grew older, she developed a dark silver tip on her tail. It spread and spread, her thin tail brushing out like a beautiful plume, and then it became a dark grey tail fading into her white body with just a hint of brown at the base. When she plays, she waves her silver tail back and forth, back and forth. Her white-pink ears got darker and darker until they turned silver too. And when she was about five months old -- this was just recently, actually -- we realized she had developed two light orange-brown circles on her sides, just like Lola, like she holds Lola's spirit.
From the tip of her tail to the tips of her ears, Lola's spirit is inside of her, reminding us that love is what keeps her alive, love is what keeps her with us.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 10:26 pm (UTC)Charlotte had a collie mix named Sandy, who died several months before Shadow gave birth. Baby and Buster have orange streaks in odd patches, and Baby has black "eyeliner" exactly like Sandy's.
Shadow is half Russian Blue and half Bombay, black fur tinged with blue. The father, Buddy, was a white and gray tabby. No orange or red in any of them.
Charlotte and I believe that Sandy's spirit is in Baby and Buster.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 11:01 pm (UTC)I've also noticed that cats are portrayed horribly in the media.
My two best friends, Erica and Kevin, were extremely ambivalent about cats before they met me, and they also prescribed to some of the same beliefs that the media holds about cats.
Erica got a cat when we had just gotten out of high school, and she treated him horribly. She liked cats, but knew nothing about them.
She went away for about a year. When she came back, Miku and Mambo were kittens. Kevin's dad has this odd view on animals. He doesn't think they have souls. Being a vehement subscriber to Christianity, a mythology that views nature as something to be conquered and animals, being products of nature, as creatures merely here to do our bidding, Kevin only grew up with one dog, and loved him but didn't really appreciate him. In Erica's absence, Kevin and I became extremely close. He and Mambo instantly formed an insane bond. He'd come over just to love on her sometimes, and he started asking me about animals and cats and really started to love them.
When Erica came back from Wyoming (without the cat she took with her), she saw the bond all of us formed and had this really sudden epiphany: Man, cats are BEAUTIFUL! Now she's firmly a cat person, still loves animals but always prefers cats, and she wants to be a vet tech. :)
Actually, I have another extremely heart-warming story about cats. Kevin's cat is Mambo's son. The way he got him was nothing short of a miracle. But that is a very long story, and I'm afraid I'm beginning to bore you with all of my long-winded stories. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 11:09 pm (UTC)You are NOT boring me at all! Do keep them coming! My heart is warmed very much post-seizure.
Adam says that I may be in danger of one day becoming a Crazy Cat Lady, but I can resist, I swear. After we rescued a poor kitty on the side of the road a couple of weeks ago and brought him to the shelter, we went to the shelter the following week to see him, and I didn't even fall apart while cooing at all the cats. Much.
Right now, Rose is sneezing and I'm worried she has a cold so I'm watching her closely. She's eating and drinking normally, so I'm feeding her omega fatty acids to boost her immune system. Trying not to overreact. Heh. She's getting chicken and turkey for treats!
part i
Date: 2009-09-24 11:11 pm (UTC)Okay, here's my miracle story.
In late April 2007, My grandparents and I had to downgrade to a duplex much smaller than our house, so we were already lying about how many animals we had and we were really stressed out.
Mambo had just given birth to kittens. I swear -- we're not bad pet parents, they just sneak up on us. We have a very rigorous process for adopting animals out if we have them, and we've found AMAZING homes. But this time, I was so stressed out, and I was just trying to find a home for this one kitten. He was a beautiful kitten. He inherited Mika's (Miku and Mambo's grandfather who we saved from my mother's property after she got evicted and ran off) Maine Coon qualities. He was bright and intelligent in such a human way. The look in his eyes was so tragically human that I fell in love with him instantly.
We put an ad in the paper. This guy called me from Circuit City. My gut reaction was not so great, but I screened him and everything met my expectations. How many kids did he have? One, he said. A baby. Oh, that's great! Babies who grow up with animals reap a lot of benefits from the relationship. How many other animals do you have? None? Well, that's wonderful, he's really an attention hog.
Everything sounded good, but I couldn't shake this terrible feeling. I didn't know how to handle the feeling either because I couldn't recognize what it was. I was bawling my eyes out, clinging to my little orange baby with his human blue eyes and huge wet nose. I walked outside to greet the family.
A shitty, small car pulled up. It sounded like it was running on dust. I thought, "Well. We're not rich either, who cares? I won't judge." But in the back seat was a woman holding a baby. That's weird, I thought. Why no baby seat? Well, there was one little girl in the back and one little girl in the front. They bounded out of the car, the dad looking incredibly embarrassed. My cat recoiled at the sight and commotion of everything.
He and the two little girls followed me inside. They saw we didn't have any furniture and one little girl said, "We don't have any furniture either!" The other chimed in like Deedle Dum and said, "Yeah, mommy and daddy says we can't afford them." I didn't want to make them feel bad because she seemed so proud of using adult words. Trying to be understanding, I said, "We just moved in here," and the father mumbled his commiseration, saying they'd just moved to Lubbock from Midland.
The girls were so excited about the kitten. Just so damn excited. I wanted to give them a chance, but the father's lies threw me off my balance. Bawling into his fur, I reluctantly let my baby go. We were desperate; we were afraid of eviction.
I walked back into the house and collapsed. I was so ashamed of myself. This loving creature just went off to a home where the parents can't even afford furniture for their children. How could they possibly support a cat? Days afterward, I kept trying to call Circuit City. I had a few leads on who the guy was, but nobody could help me. The guy didn't work there, he had just been a customer trying to find a job.
For the next year, I prayed every single night. I never pray. I prayed so hard. I prayed with every measure of energy in my soul and my heart. I did tarot readings that were inconclusive. I centered myself and grounded myself as much as possible but I still cried and cried and cried. I lit candles and prayed over them until the wick snuffed itself out.
part ii
Date: 2009-09-24 11:11 pm (UTC)In May 2008, My grandfather called me in the early afternoon after I'd spent the night at Adam's. He told me I should get back to the duplex immediately. When I arrived, he took me into the master bathroom. Opening the door, I was greeted by a huge orange cat with a white chest, white eyeliner, a big wet nose, and the saddest blue eyes.
Apparently, a man called the house from a store. He said, "We got a cat from you and you told us we could bring him back any time. We need to bring him back." My grandparents waited outside. A rickety car drove up and dumped the cat in the yard then sped away.
Immediately, I called my best friend Kevin to come over. He had one of Miku's cats who looked almost identical to this cat, but none of us could remember which litter this cat came from. Someone had declawed him -- in fact, he seemed to have phantom claws, like he was declawed mercilessly and too late in his life. From his behavior, it was clear someone had trapped him in a room. He was a compulsive eater. Someone had seriously fucked this cat up.
Kevin took the cat home and named him Saffron. Sufjan and Saffron. They acted just like brothers.
Everything added up. This was probably the same cat that I had given away so long ago and prayed for every single night. We didn't have proof though.
A month or two ago, Kevin told me that he wished he had kitten pictures of Saffron. My grandfather was playing around with this old webcam of mine, going through all the pictures. I stopped him on a single picture and thought, "God, that cat looks so familiar."
And there he was.
I had taken the picture moments after the man called me. You can see the pain in my eyes. You can see how bloodshot they are, how exhausted I looked. I remember taking this picture now. I remember thinking, "I don't know why, but I need a picture of this cat. I need to remember him forever." I was baffled by the notion. I remembered looking at the picture after the man drove away with my cat, crying, realizing I was right, that I could never forget this cat. And I never did forget him. And the universe never forgot me. The universe sent him back to me. The universe gave me and this cat a second chance at happiness. Everything had come full-circle, and it's the biggest miracle of my life.
Re: part ii
Date: 2009-09-24 11:36 pm (UTC)Wow.
Amazing.
He came back to you. Wow.
The poor baby. Is he okay now?
Re: part ii
Date: 2009-09-24 11:50 pm (UTC)Re: part ii
Date: 2009-09-25 12:04 am (UTC)How is he doing without his claws?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-23 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-25 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-20 11:32 am (UTC)I didn't see the post you made, which was why I was surprised when you had removed me! And I wouldn't have been offended at all anyway. It takes a hell of a lot to offend me enought to unfriend someone. :)
Hell, I thought I was being too whiny and impulsive for you!