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Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2005 / 3:46 p.m. ~The Book I Should Have Written~ I suppose for a moment there I forgot I am sick. I came home at lunch, but not to eat, I came home to stay home, again. People had asked if I'm better, "Feeling better?", and I had replied, matter of factly, "No". So it was I left, and knew I'd not return. But there were the clean sheets I had to put on the bed, and the vacuuming I'd been putting off, and I can hear someone downstairs hammering and making assorted and sundry carpentry-type noises, as someone new moves in the first of April, and I wondered how much of a disturbance it was to him to hear me vacuuming every room, one at a time. Then my canned chicken soup, and the idea of herbed dumplings sounded so enticing, but they tasted like wads of glue, no flavor at all, and I thought I'd do more than rinse the can for recycling, I thought I'd attempt to wash it, but knew I suddenly regretted the idea the second I felt the metal slice into my skin. I sat to eat, only to have one cat circle me endlessly, like a shark circling her prey in open water, and now another tears at paper, or threatens to eat things that will make her throw up, and really I'd like this time to myself, but this is an impossible desire. The irony of being circled by a neurotic attention-seeking housecat whilst I attempted to eat my soup and read my new book will become evident upon knowing the title of said book: Waiting For My Cats to Die, a memoir by Stacy Horn. This book has been recommended to me by two or three people, and when I heard the synopsis, I knew I had to read it, so I ordered it from Amazon.com and just received it yesterday, settled in to start it as I ate my soup with the glue-like dumplings, no herbs in sight or taste. Stacy Horn was forty-two as she wrote her memoir, living with high maintenance diabetic cats, and it's possible, nay, more than likely our similarities do not end there, but so far I feel I want to underline, or highlight, or get online and quote her. Per example: I don't know what I'm going to do. I'd like to give it all up and hit the road, where it is easier to pretend that everything goes on forever. I'm just waiting for my cats to die. Then I'll quit. But is quitting liberation? Or hiding? Who am I kidding. It's an excuse. Like my life is my cats' fault and I'm off the hook until they're dead. My cats must live forever. This is hard. Growing old is hard. Plus I'm alone. And then there are my sick cats. I'm scared. But not always. This is the book I should have written. But maybe I have a different one inside me yet. This is all just from the introduction, all I've gotten to before the shooing away of the one cat, and the preventing of the other cat from 'getting into things' to get my attention, and coming here and having to re-boot my computer numerous times because it shut off for no good reason while trying to boot the first time. I like this part too: When I meet new people and tell them about my cat situation, they ask, "Why don't you kill them?" People. Because I can lean down and sniff my cats' heads and smell earth and trees and leaves - it's a swampy smell, the scent of eternity, the opposite of the smell of bleakness. A small comfort perhaps, after all that work, but that pretty much describes everything. I can relate. How I can relate. Just now, the one who was circling has settled down somewhere, and the one who was tearing at things, and looking for things to eat to make herself throw up so she would get my attention and sympathy is here at my feet, calm for now. They can't possibly understand my schedule now, coming home sick, taking an entire day to stay in bed, going to work, coming home early again, there are no signifiers to indicate feeding time, and surely the noises downstairs are unsettling as well. At least I know them well enough to figure these things out. Still, I need time to myself, and that is a rare commodity. I have a Spiderman bandage on my hand where the can took a bite out of me, and I have a new book to read, amongst many, and until I take a breath I tend to forget I'm sick, but I remember that I am, and the reason I left work was to come home and lie down, not vacuum and change the sheets and clean the litter and write online. My supervisor asked if the cats take care of me when I'm sick, it's her running joke because she knows it's just these cats and me, and I tell her they're useless, these cats, and that still, though I'm sick, I'm expected, required even, to clean up after them, and care for them, and though we stopped the fluids long ago, they are still high maintenance, and in a way I am waiting for them to die as well, but in truth, I want them never to die. I'd prefer us to go on like this forever, only somehow improved, if at all possible. Cost of the War in Iraq
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