Cat God becomes Cat Devil.

The Cat God turns into the Cat Devil

This is what happens when a grieving husband runs out of Xanax:

I screamed at the cat tonight. For the third night in a row, she knocked down the pictures of my wife I keep on the mantel in the living room (now known as the dead room—yet I continue to inhabit it).

I went crazy. I would never hurt the cat — her name is Bella Donna but I call her Babe, who I got for my wife Susan when her illness became a lethal presence in our home — or any animal for that matter. But, nonetheless, tonight I yelled and screamed at her like a madman. 

Since Susan’s death last Christmas, Babe is all I have, and I’m all she has. She thinks I am (and I say this as humbly as I can) the Cat God.

But when I yelled at her tonight I told her I was the Cat Devil and that I had killed the Cat God and taken over the house and I howled like a crazy Cat Devil, and Babe — who had assumed a half-hidden supine position on top of the bookcase — looked at me with detached curiosity and I told her, in my Boris Karloff voice, “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

She just kept looking at me with the feline equivalent of ‘arched eyebrows’ as I continued my mad speech: “Well, let me tell you, I’m glad I’m mad! I’m glad I’ve gone mad, because I prefer insanity over the reality of living without Susan — the Cat Mama to you.”

Whereupon Babe jumped down from the bookcase and trotted over to my armchair and looked at me with a look that said: “I understand. I miss her too.”

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12 thoughts on “The Cat God turns into the Cat Devil”

  1. Brother, was YOUR Wife’s name Susan?, that was my Lady’s name also…..Your Lady’s Heart has decided to stop beating, Your’s has not, pull yourself together, and Live your life as a Poem to your Lady Lost, make a difference! What would She think about what I am doing? I like to think my Lady would be Proud of the choices I have made since Her departure……I just talk to my Lady, as if She was still here, with me now! Every-thing I have done since She left me is in Honor of Her! At first I just wanted to put a plastic bag over my head, and end it all, hoping I could just be with Her again,but my Good Neighbors came to visit, and saved my Life, because I had a lot left to do in this Life-time! Turn your-self around and see all of the Good things YOU can do to make this World a little better, utilizing YOUR time, and resources…….Do not dwell on what YOU cannot change, YOU cannot bring Her back!, She is gone into Infinity……Yet you are still Here, Now!…….Advice from a Friend in the same circumstances……

  2. Damn good advice. That post was a bit of crazy shit. Every now and then I stumble drunkenly into a ditch of self-pity. I sleep it off a bit, pull myself out muddied and embarrassed, and make coffee. The coffee is good!
    You and I, funny thing, we’re both septuagenarians, live alone, love our liquor and our soulmates were named Susan — now indestructible atoms somewhere in a Universe of 100 galaxies. Gonna be hard to find.

  4. Brother Mich, I believe the Universe is Infinite, a word the scientist’s seem unable to comprehend, In an Infinite Universe anything and everything is possible! I do not know if My Susan would even want to meet up^ with me again! I sit here some-times and just talk to her as if she was still here! I like your thinking Here, my favorite writer on Astronomy Magazine, Bob Berman, states that at the speed of light time stops, which tells me that the light we see from distant galaxies is right now, not billions of years ago, as no time has passed since it was emitted! I just bought a new Lenovo Lap-top as this one is getting old, but I could not figure out how to transfer all of the data from the old one to the new one, I would hate to have to start out all over again, Do you know a way, Is there a cable I could use to connect the two together?,,, Hang in there, Brother!

  5. Hey George, yeah, damn right, John Berman, I have a couple of his books. (The parallels between our lives are beginning to intrigue me). Haven’t read them for a few years, but I’ll take one down from the shelf and look for something about time & lightspeed. Last I heard Berman lived in a small town just north of me. As for your computer problem, I don’t know shit about computers so I wouldn’t have a clue about that transfer problem — my best writing was done on a Remington typewriter. (Non sequitur: In all your book reading, did you ever read ‘Manhattan Transfer’ by John Dos Passos?)

  6. No Brother Mich, never had the pleasure of reading Manhattan Transfer, but I will seek it out, I am currently reading “Wolf” by Jim Harrison…..I am thinking of the two “Susan’s” Yours and mine, the loss is almost unbearable, yet my neighbors come by with bowls of soup and Love, to encourage me to keep on, because I have so much work yet to do on this Planet of ours!

  7. Your lucky, my friend, to have neighbors who care, I have no neighbors and Susan and I were only in this old house for three years (hoping it would be more like ten) during which time she wasn’t well enough to go out and I was her 24–hour caregiver and no time to make friends around here (except the pharmacist and the liquor store people) so when she lost her battle with the illness last Christmas, that was it — no one! No immediate family left (son, two brothers dead) and a so-called extended family of sister-in-law, nephews and nieces who never visit and seldom phone. So you can see why the hell I wonder Why go on? But I will, for some goddamn reason, You still have work left to do, you say, I don’t know what the fuck work I still have to do, got no money to be beneficent like you, got no drums, ain’t even got no goddamn pot, just six different varieties of rot-gut liquor. Okay, that’s my pitiful whine for today. All I can say to you is Thanks for being out there to talk to.

  8. It is a Great Sacrifice to be a Care-Giver, Kudo’s to you,my friend, That is the true definition of LOVE, that one sacrifices one’s self for the good of another, you have built up^ your Treasure in Heaven, Maybe someday soon we will get you to Alaska, where we will learn how to live together…..Mutual self-respect is the Key to this, so I think…..

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