Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian Loves His Kitty

Buster the cat is almost twenty years old. His yellow hair is matted and thin. His flesh is dwindling and his bones rising. His hind legs will barely hold him up now and he's making the most plaintive cries day and night. I'm afraid he's suffering. I don't have any money for a vet. I guess I'll have to put a bullet in his head. I don't want to do that. Several years ago his brother Catsup became very ill and was suffering so I took him out in the backyard and put a nine mil. hollowpoint in his ear. To my great anguish it didn't kill him instantly so I shot him again and then again. The highway patrolman next door came to the fence and asked me what I was doing. I had tears in my eyes. I looked at the gruff, crew-cut, scowling trooper his buddies called "Niggerchaser" and shook my head. He left me alone. I'd always made sure that he thought I was crazy. I learned the hard way that's the best way to handle cops.

When you put your own pets to sleepy bye bye you have to hurriedly dig a deep hole and cover them in lime. You don't dig the hole beforehand because you can't stand to think about what you're about to do. While you're digging, your eyes burn from the tears and you ask yourself why such creatures have to put up with a world full of humans. When you're through filling the grave with dirt you have to put a little cross there for your kids. Then you think about what it means to live with animals who speak a different language. Animals who have lived with you and slept with you and shared moments great and small. Who have helped calm you during those times of turmoil and stress. Animals who have stayed the same even when the whole goddamned world seems to be crumbling.

Buster wasn't even a friendly cat for the first several years. It was like he was autistic. Try to play with him and he'd dig his claws into you so deep he'd bring blood. I don't know what happened but he changed all of a sudden. I can't explain it and don't give a damn if no one believes it, but when Rita got sick and my mother had a stroke and I couldn't sleep to save my life, to save anyone's life, and I was strung out and thought I was going to lose my mind, Buster must have sensed how cast down I was because he did something he'd never done before. He started sleeping on my pillow. He'd never even slept in the bedroom before and he never got up on the bed. The first time he did it it really startled me. I thought, what the fuck is this crazy cat going to do, shit on my head? But he just curled around my head and purred. And since Rita was in such bad shape at the time she couldn't stand to be cuddled, Buster was the only creature contact I had. And just like that my heartbeat slowed, my anxiety diminished, and I slept for the first time since those traumatic events occurred. Every night for the next twelve or thirteen years, at bedtime Buster would hop up on the bed and curl around my pillow. Usually, after he knew I was asleep he would get down and take care of his other responsibilites. I never told Buster I was allergic to cat dander. My pharmacist knew.

Last year when we were still in Oklahoma, Buster started having trouble jumping up on the bed. When he couldn't make it he would sleep on the floor on my side. I had to be careful not to step on him when I had to get up to piss. Now that he's sixteen hundred miles and almost twenty years away from his birthplace, his legs are failing and he is surely announcing his death with those agonizing pleas for mercy. Rita is better now and we can cuddle again like we did the first night we spent together thirty seven years ago after I persuaded her to leave home and embark on a great adventure. Along the way we have had many animal friends but none I love so much as this loving old cat. He is worth more to me than most of the humans I've met in my life. And now I have to kill him and it's killing me.

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian Blues

What do you do
when your heart turns
against
you?

And your eyes can't see
in the dark
anymore

And your feet sit
still in waiting rooms
that used to make
you squirm

And wrapped up in your bed at night
you dream and toss and
dream and turn dreams
that cause you to wake crying
and you can't understand
why

those fucked up years in junior high
are suddenly so
goddamned important

Feels like treachery creeping
in, some cellular kamikazes
of karma, dying for
your demise

You can't say you weren't
forewarned