Cat, $35; toys and accessories $783; damage to property $682; playing mean tricks on cat, priceless

Is my cat the feline equivalent of trailer trash if he ignores his new seven-story “cat tower,” but goes bananas over the box it came in?

If my cat hates his new bed and cat toys but loves the worn-out bed and beat-up dog toys that belonged to my recently deceased schnauzer, is my cat possessed by my schnauzer’s ghost?

When my wife and I are reading in bed at night, and we hear claws ripping through leather furniture and knickknacks crashing to the floor all over our house as our cat systematically demolishes everything we’ve worked 39 years to accumulate; would it be an overreaction to shoot, stab, strangle, or immolate our cat?

If I’m unable to wake my cat up to play during the evening hours even if I hold him upside down by his hind feet and shake him, but he wakes me up to play throughout the night by jumping on my face and yowling, does this mean that I adopted a night-shift cat when what I really wanted was an evening shift cat?

When my elderly and blind heeler is trying to make her way to her food bowl, why won’t my young and agile cat move to one side rather than wait patiently for the dog to get within range and then shred her nose?

My cat appears to love me, but I can’t escape the sneaky suspicion that it would kill me and play games with my corpse if I were suddenly reduced to the size of a mouse. Am I simply being paranoid?

Do you know where I can find the book Dogs are from God; Cats are from Satan?

What to name the baby?

Baxter wouldn't understand us getting a cat, and he would be incensed to learn that the cat prefers the chair that he sat in for eleven years, the one that is by the window that overlooks his grave. These things are hard for Peggy and me too.

Peggy "wasn't ready" to get another dog until four years after our last schnauzer, Wendy, died in 1993. That other dog was Bonnie, who is now 13. So, when she suggested going to the humane society two days after Baxter's death to look at dogs, I jumped at the chance for fear that I might not get another one for years. When none of the dogs clicked with us, we visited the cattery--just for the hell of it, you know--and there was a little mellow kitten that, wonder of wonders, we both liked. I want to name him Buzz (he purrs long and loud), but Peggy insists on Brewster, and Peggy usually gets her way. Just between you and me though, isn't Buzz a better name? I won't hate you--and Peggy will love you--if you disagree.

The manner of his passing

Following a pleasant but fatiguing walk and a quiet afternoon that he spent cuddling with Peggy, Baxter began coughing up blood and struggling to breathe last night. Peggy became frantic, and sat on the floor holding him and wailing. She asked me to call two nearby friends, which I did. First Ellie and then Shirley stayed with us until after midnight. Before they arrived, Peggy had said she was going to have the vet come to our house and euthanize Baxter today, but when the normal doses of the medications I gave him proved inadequate, she asked me to euthanize him immediately.

I gave him fourteen times his usual dose of a tranquilizer, but when he was still awake two hours later, I gave him four (human) doses of Percocet, but the entire night passed without him going to sleep, although he was able to rest peacefully in Peggy's arms. He continued to gasp for air, and his heart continued to beat at a phenomenal rate, but he no longer coughed, and he did not appear to be in pain or emotional distress. I saw no point in giving him more pills.

Peggy stayed up with Baxter all night, but I couldn't just sit with him because of his odors and my grief, so I stayed busy doing what I could to provide for his and Peggy's comfort, and I took two naps when there was nothing more to do. I think that, perhaps, Peggy is stronger than I because I couldn't have done what she did. Of course, I suppose it's also possible that she couldn't have done what I did.

As soon as the vet's office opened, I got an appointment to take Baxter in at 8:45 to be euthanized. Ellie went with us. Sean first gave him a shot containing three sedatives followed ten minutes later by an injection to stop his heart. Peggy and I held our hands over his strong little heart until he was gone. Sean was surprised that my own efforts to kill Baxter hadn't succeeded, and he had no explanation why this was so.

The hardest part of the night was to watch Baxter's desperate efforts to live and to think that we hadn't done everything we could to give him that chance. I was all but wild with remorse until Sean said that, if we had treated Baxter, it most likely would have resulted in five months of keeping him alive in pain and misery versus the three months of love and comfort he had enjoyed. Oh, but I want to be with him! Shirley offered that someday I will be, but I can't even begin to accept an idea for which there is no evidence. As I see it, in the entire history of the universe, Baxter existed for 11 years, three months, and three days, and now he has returned to everlasting nothingness. Yesterday at this time, he was taking a nap with Peggy. Now, he is gone, and it's very hard to take that in despite the fact that I have seen more deaths than most people.

As I write, Baxter is lying on the chair that he and Peggy shared for these many years, but he is cold and stiff and his eyes are glazed, so there is no comfort in touching him. Yet, when I look at him, he appears to be breathing. Above his chair is a window and a feeder that I built for the squirrels. Baxter loved to watch squirrels, and I would often hold him in my arms so that he could get a better view. When we brought him home from the vet today, I held him there for the last time. It was a gesture of questionable merit, but I was desperate to do something.

Peggy has been asleep for hours, but sadness kept me awake--that and the fact that I slept, perhaps, three hours last night. I couldn't sleep for the sadness. Ellie's son, Josh, was to dig Baxter's grave tomorrow, but I went ahead and did it. Perhaps, I will be in physical pain a long time for that, but it was what I wanted to do. It was all that was left for me to do. Now, I can be still with my grief.

The following is entitled Baxter's Lullaby. Peggy composed it in 1999, soon after we brought him home:

Sleep, baby sleep, sleep the whole night through.
Sleep, baby sleep, you know that I love you.
And when you wake, the night will turn to day.
Sleep, baby sleep, sleep the night away.

Dream, baby dream, of things you love to do.
Dream, baby dream, dream the whole night through.
And when you wake, your dreams will make you smile.
Dream, baby dream, dream a little while.


This is Baxter's Nonsense Verse that Peggy wrote a few months later:

Baxter-waxter, wally-woo
Best'est dog I ever knew.
Baxter-waxter, wally-west
Best'est dog of all the rest.

Baxter-waxter, wally-wee
Best'est dog for you and me.
Baxter-waxter, wally-wuv,
Best'est dog a girl could love.

Isabella and Baxter

Isabella moved in a few days ago. I took her back out, but it was so cold that I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, so I brought her in again and gave her some fruit. She was quite hungry. She disappears everyday only to turn up again in some unexpected place at night. I let her crawl around on my hand while I watch TV, and then I put her to bed on her fruit plate. I placed an upside-down bowl partway on top of the plate, so Isabella could sleep in the dark, but she prefers to sleep on top of the bowl.

I have a hornets’ nest hanging in the den, and Peggy worried that Isabella was but a precursor to hordes that were about to hatch out, but I assured her that there is no mistaking a yellow jacket for a bald-face hornet, and this made her feel some better, but she still won't cuddle up with Isabella.

Oregon doesn’t have nearly as many kinds of wasps as Mississippi did, and I miss them. One night in 1977 when I was building our house down there, I was smoking pot while painting the upper portion of a vaulted ceiling. A few dozen large red wasps were flying aimlessly in the vicinity of a light that was on the wall above the second floor balcony. They had come indoors that day, had been unable to find their way out, so were now awake hours past their bedtime with no hope of going home again. I was atop a sixteen-foot ladder, a bucket of paint in one hand and a brush in the other, and I was moving ever closer to these wasps.

In my altered condition, I believed I was able to tune into their mental state, and that we were on the same wavelength, this despite their increasing agitation each time I moved in their direction. I kept advancing anyway, certain that their anxiety was not prompted by me but by the smell of paint in the hot, humid air. When I got within five feet of them, they began feinting dives at my head, and otherwise making it clear that they were about to nail me. I finally descended in the belief that my connection with them might not have been imaginary—after all, they had shown more patience than I had a right to expect.

When my father and I painted houses together, he would destroy red wasp nests by dousing them with gasoline. The moment it touched them, the wasps would fall straight to the ground by the hundreds. Then, he would knock the nest down. The rest of the day, the ones who hadn’t been on the nest would fly around aimlessly, but without a family to defend, they seldom stung.

I built a home for solitary wasps, and every year I have a few small nests of yellow wasps in my toolshed. I used to remove these nests, but most years, I would forget to look up to see that they were there until the summer was half over. After a few years of brushing my head against them without ever once being stung, I left them in peace. I think of wasps in the same way that I think of a lot of other creatures that have the power to hurt or even kill me, but don’t go around looking for an excuse to do so. All that they ask of me is that I respect their boundaries.

Unfortunately, this is hard to do with aggressive wasps that I don’t even see—like yellow jackets that live in the ground. There have been years when Peggy and I and both dogs were stung many times because we walked over their holes while hiking. I’ve even seen Peggy stand on top of a hole brushing yellow jackets out of Baxter’s fur while more were pouring out at them. She’s a funny girl when her maternal instincts go into overdrive.

I’ve thought a lot about what is right for Isabella. Her family is dead, and she has no real home and no work to do, so it might be better if I left her to die in the cold. Whether it’s a plant, a dog, or a wasp, once I take something in, I feel morally obligated to care for it, yet I don’t always know what is best.

Night before last, Baxter started moaning and shivering as he struggled to breathe. I have many drugs that might relieve his distress, but which might also kill him. I tried to talk the matter over with Peggy, but she didn’t have much to say, and I concluded that this was one of those situations that she wanted me to handle. I was about to give him a few grains of a Percocet when I remembered that I had a tranquilizer that we give to Bonnie anytime there are fireworks, so I gave a quarter tablet of it to Baxter. That should have been a low dose, but it knocked Baxter on his ass. In fact, I thought I had killed him, and I cried off and on for the next six hours while I waited for him to die. He looked so little and so pitiful that I didn’t know how I could bear it. Every time I thought I had pulled myself together, I would cry some more.

At one point, I tried to rouse him by standing him up, but his every leg splayed out in a different direction. Six hours later, I woke him up enough to pee, but as he was standing in the yard struggling to stay on his feet, Bonnie—who is blind—knocked him over. I couldn’t help but laugh at my two elderly dogs, but five minutes later, I was crying again. Now that I’m getting old and have seen a lot of death, you might think I would handle these things better, but the truth is that death seems even heavier to me now than it did when I was young.

The next day, Baxter was alert and active only to sink again last night. This time, I gave him an eighth of a tranquilizer, and that amount seemed just about right. Peggy suggested that we call the vet to be sure the pills are safe for him, but I told her that I didn’t see any need for that since he’s dying anyway. My only goal is to keep him comfortable. When I can no longer do that, I would prefer to euthanize him myself, but Peggy is determined that the vet do it.