The truth about Peggy, or at least a start

I have grown, over the decades, to hate cleaning house. When I tell Peggy that I hate cleaning house, she says that there is a lot that she hates about her nursing job, but she has to do it, and so it is that I have to clean house, so I might want to work on being less whiny about it. Hearing this helps me tremendously, but I invariably forget and have to be reminded a few times a year. I can’t say that she seems happy to remind me, but I trust her to do it, and she has never let me down.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that Peggy can’t find her way around town after 25 years of living here? Directions to the most basic destinations are as mysterious to her as are the pottery patterns of the Zhou Dynasty, but Peggy’s mind isn’t just steeped in mystery, it’s drowned in irony. For example—and in regard to her not knowing directions—Peggy always wants to drive when we’re together. Most of the time, I wouldn’t care who drove, but I can’t relax when she’s driving because as soon as I think that, surely, she knows to turn right just the other side of the Alaska Bush Company Gentlemen’s Club, she doesn’t turn right just the other side of the Alaska Bush Company Gentlemen’s Club, and we have to go back. It’s also true that her driving scares the bejesus out of me, a fact by which she seems much amused.

Peggy has other, shall we say, features, that I might allude to while I’m at it. Peggy is intimidated by credit card scanners, so she gave me the job of making sure she always has cash in her billfold. Why she is intimidated by credit card scanners, God only knows (said the atheist with the curly horn), but she generally avoids shopping partly for this reason but also because all she ever wants are buttons, and she can get those from her button cronies who act like pusher/druggies would act if pusher/druggies were addicted to clothing buttons instead of heroin. Peggy is also intimidated by airplanes and spiders. If she’s not worried about an airplane falling with her, she’s worried about one falling on her. Her idea of hell would be eternal entrapment in a burning airplane filled with panicking tarantulas.

Peggy is going away tomorrow for four days. I will be happy, but I would be just as happy if she stayed home. Peggy says it hurts her feelings that I don’t suffer when she’s gone. Peggy also says that she too would like to be alone sometimes, but she can’t because I never go anywhere. This hurts my feelings because of the way she used to bitch when I spent months at a time traveling all over the country having sex with other women. Now she’s bitching because I never go anywhere?! I told her that, look Peggy, I’ll give you some time alone; I’ll put a tent up in the backyard, and you can stay out there all you want. When I went out to put the tent up, she wouldn’t let me back in. Peggy is a lot harder to get along with than any woman has a right to be. I often tell her that if a beautiful and generous rich woman comes along, she can kiss her marriage goodbye, but she just laughs. 

A final farewell

We put Bonnie down because she was suffering from intractable vomiting due to megaesophagus and pancreatitis. An xray showed that she also had a fused spinal column. Despite all this, we tried to treat her, and it worked initially, but she soon started vomiting again, and this time she couldn’t even keep her anti-nausea medicine down. A day later, Peggy and I started out on our daily walk, but only got a block before we agreed that it was time to toss in the towel. I called the vet’s office, and was told that we needed to get there fast because, it being Saturday, they closed at noon. As we drove, I wondered if we would make it on time, or if the new vet we were supposed to see would say that we should keep trying to treat her. Peggy asked if I wanted one of these things to happen, and I said no.

The new vet told us that Bonnie was doomed to die within 12-weeks, no matter what we did. Our original vet had failed to mention this, and it helped me considerably. Despite the hundreds of times I had wished she would die, I didn’t want her to die for my convenience or due to my negligence, and I had been blaming myself for stopping her first round of antibiotics too soon. I still don’t know why I did that, and it will always bother me. Dogs are ever a reminder that I am not so good a person as I should be.

I’ve yet to cry over Bonnie. Maybe the Cymbalta is in the way, or maybe it’s because I’m so relieved to have the stress behind me. I look at her grave, and am stricken that never for all eternity will I see her again, yet the tears won’t come. When she was young, she thought she was invincible. For example, she was lying on the car seat one day when a city bus pulled up beside us, and the sound so infuriated her that she tried to jump out the window and attack the bus (luckily, the window wasn’t open all the way). Her self-confidence was such that she almost had Peggy and me believing that she was the goddess she considered herself to be. Old age, arthritis, and blindness debased her, and she became as timid as she had been arrogant. The joy that had once filled her being died long before she did, and it was very, very hard to see it happen. I would watch her running into walls as she fled a cat that wasn’t even chasing her, and I would think, How low the mighty has fallen. How then am I supposed to grieve? What then am I supposed to grieve, the death of dog whose spirt died three years before she did? If I grieve anything, it’s not her death, but the three years before she died and my inability to be there for her in the way she deserved.

I think my cat is defective

Brewsky will sometimes stare right into my eyes for minutes on end. I’ll stare back for awhile, grateful for the attention, wondering what he’s thinking, and admiring his beauty, but will turn away in disgust when I realize that I’m continuing to stare beyond the point of enjoying it because I think he should be the one to look away first. My attempt to out-macho a neutered housecat who doesn’t know he’s being out-machoed makes me think I might be neurotic, and I blame him for making me think I’m neurotic when he knows I’m not.

When I scold Brewsky, he bites Peggy if she’s home. If she’s not home, he waits for her to come home, and then he bites her. He doesn’t dare bite me so, the dog being dead, he turns to the only target left, the one that can’t chastise him without worrying about hurting his feelings.

Since Bonnie died (a week ago, almost to the minute), Brewsky has wanted a lot of attention. I don’t know why since he wasn’t close to Bonnie, who disliked all four-legged creatures, and whose blindness made her fearful of Brewsky because she was forever stumbling into him as he lay stretched-out in the middle of the floor, making it necessary for him to slap her face. Maybe he thinks we murdered her, and he’s turning into a suck-up so we won’t murder him.

I don’t know why he likes to watch me dance, but he’s really into it, and I always wonder, “What are you thinking that you watch me so studiously?” Maybe he’s wondering, “What are you thinking that you dance so peculiarly?”

Sometimes at night for no apparent reason, he starts yowling and racing through the house at full speed, sometimes running over the tops of the furniture. When he does that, I say, “If I had lived during the Bubonic Plague, I too might have thrown your kind on a bonfire because your behavior is mighty suspicious.”

Most of the time, he sits around looking like the deity of dignity, but as soon as he gets hungry, or imagines that a treat might be forthcoming, or thinks it’s high time for a meal; he becomes a beggar. I ask, “Where’s your pride, man?” but he just begs louder.

I thought cats were supposed to be dainty eaters, but Brewsky eats like a German Shepherd who’s afraid that someone might take his food away (not that he would fight for it if they did). It’s disgusting. He gets three squares a day, frequent treats, and a midnight snack, yet he wants more.

If I hide a treat, and he doesn’t know where it is, he will go right to it if I point. Maybe some dogs can learn to do that, but I haven’t had any luck teaching them. When this usually poker-faced creature who sleeps all day does something smart, I find myself wondering how smart he really is. I mean, what does he know that I don’t? Contemplating this gives me the willies, and I blame him for it.

Brewsky doesn’t just come when he’s called; he runs so hard that it sounds like a stampede. He can be asleep at the other end of the house, but as soon as I call him, he starts running. Give a cat some cheese or canned meat every time you say his name, and that’s what you get.

I thought cats were delicate creatures who hated a firm touch, but I’ve never massaged a dog more firmly than I massage this cat, and he loves it. The only trouble is that he only loves it when he’s on the floor, it being distasteful to him to be rubbed in any location that’s convenient for me.

Brewsky is my first 21^st century pet (circa 2010), and this makes him seem newfangled on one level, yet he still looks and acts like cats that I knew in the 1950s, and this makes me wonder if the pound let him go for half price because he’s a beta version. Maybe the newer versions come with a remote.