Death By Kitty

llow me to just come out at the front of this thing and tell you that I do not like cats. I’m not some weirdo militant cat torturer or anything, its just that in my house there’s room for exactly one distant, disaffected, lazy animal and that spot’s been filled (nice to meet you). You'll read in the next couple of graphs about our cat dying and you might detect a certain lack of emotion from your humble scribe. Go ahead and hate me: I don't miss her much. This post is not about the dead cat. It's about my live kids and how they handled it and how a parent needs to trust their kids to be resilient and strong. The cat? What cat?

While Darth was away in Delaware arguing the validity of ferret slang, our beloved (by three of four) kitty, Share (pronounced shar ray), started losing weight by the minute, hid under our bed, and stopped eating. We took her to our vet, thinking maybe she had a virus but instead we learned she had one of those bizarre semi-genetic kitty cancers and it had grown into her stomach. My wife called me from the vet while I was picking up the kids and told me the sorry news: Share probably wouldn’t make it through the next hour.

Meanwhile, my daughter’s dress rehearsal for her lead in Annie Jr. was scheduled for after school. My daughter, calm cool and super pro as always, was sailing through the play prep with aplomb. But she loves her cat. When I say her cat, let me tell you: this is a one female feline. Share slept at Sarah’s feet. She cried when Sarah wasn’t home. They were connected. So I had a dilemma.

Should I tell her right then?

It’s a tough question because I’m all about full disclosure. My son asked me what libido meant the the other day and I told him. While he was eating an egg roll. I had to scrape it off the wall.

But my daughter’s professionalism would go out the window at the news of her kitty’s impending demise. The whole play depended on her, an entire school having worked tirelessly for weeks to put on their first musical in something like 80 years. She was the carter-pin for the whole thing. She’s in every scene. Freak her out and the entire production stops.

Because she is good. And when I say good, I’m talking future full of limos good. I’m talking American Idol winner good. I’m talking Britney Spears’ ass flattening kick ass good. I’m talking look for her name in lights soon good.

I called the school. I asked for the music teacher, my daughter’s biggest fan, and told her and she went Montessori on me and told me: don’t tell her. Please wait.

So I did.

I knew it meant her kitty might croak before she had a chance to say goodbye and I knew that Sarah would not forgive me for it. But I felt there was a responsibility to the other kids and teachers, adjunct staff, volunteers, janitors, principals, parents and the other seven hundred thousand people it took to get this thing off the ground.

Sarah walked out of the school on top of the world. She floated out of the school. She was three feet off the ground. Not only had the dress rehearsal been a tremendous success, the local paper had interviewed and photographed my daughter, directing the limelight like a blinding nuclear flash into her eyes and she hopped into the car and I dropped a bomb on her. I might as well have punched her in the face.

She didn’t take it well. I felt horrible. She plummeted from cloud nine to the seventh circle of hell, bounced, and drug her soul across the rocks and cried hard. We drove to the vet, our dear friend, Lady D, who showed the kids the xray of Share which made her look like she’d swallowed a football. She was ¾ cancer and ¼ cat. She was quiet and still and breathing with difficulty and my kids held her and cried like soldiers and said goodbye.

Sarah was particularly strong about it. She talked to the cat and sang to her and I had to take my cynical self and stuff it in a hole and absorb this. It was a critical moment, an unfunny moment, a moment that was engraving itself into my children’s mind right before my very eyes. I had to handle it carefully and I thin I did. I was hands off about it. I facilitated tissues and hugs, trips to the bathroom, council with the vet, and kept my mouth shut. I explained things quietly and succinctly without my usual pedantic lecturing and over explaining. I respected their hearts.

I was proud of them for their powerful grief. I know that sounds weird, but not everyone—not even every kid—-is capable of real grief. I guess I should say that I was proud of the power of their grieving. It was unabashed. It was without artifice whatsoever. It was noble.

So we drove home while Darth did the dirty work (she is a lawyer) and I felt like I needed to steer their grief toward mirth and so I turned to our most powerful tool: television. We turned on American Idol and Sanjay’s faux-hawk was waggling on camera and we all cracked up instantly. I served ice cream and we made jokes and watched the Simpsons and the grief tapered off.

Like any parent I was afraid of the grief. I hated to see my kids go through the pain of it, the fear of it, the intensity. I knew what it was like--I'd had a favorite dog killed by a truck when I was young and it was terrifying. And I know parents who try to soften it with euphemisms, delays, and outright deceit. I chose the path of honesty (albeit delayed by two hours for the sake of the play) and trusted my monkeys to handle it. And yes they grieved hard, they hurt, they were deeply affected and powerfully sad. But it was good. It was proper.

I kept my own secret relief, which I know is evil and perverse, to myself. I was consoling my kids but in my mind, I was thinking about who would inherit the $300 robotic cat box and how fast I could get rid of it.

The next morning, I dropped off my son and he could barely rocket out of the car fast enough. All that crying and heaving and sobbing and he tumbled out of the Camry yelling at his friend: “Dude! We put our cat to sleep!”

American Idol and ice cream: the balm of patriots.