Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [16]
The years drifted by, as years do. We got a Boston terrier, who we named Hercules. He freaked Zimmy out and she started peeing on the couch. Then Regina got pregnant, and we realized poor Zimmy wouldn’t be able to handle a baby. We moved to Austin, Texas, and gave her up for adoption to a little girl who, we hope, let her sit on a pillow in the window for the rest of her years.
Gabby got along great with the dog and with the baby. She was still up in my face all the time, wanting to snuggle, to get on my shoulders, to lick my ears. I was more likely to fling her off than not, saying terribly abusive stuff like “Leave me alone, you little bitch.” She loved me anyway, and I felt guilty, and also somehow blamed her for instigating the whole mess.
We moved the animals across a thousand miles again, this time to Los Angeles, and Gabby kept on trucking. In fact, she seemed happier than ever. This may have been because we finally, after years of begging on her part, let Gabby go outside. Did it occur to us that we were now living in the second-largest city in the country, and that it might be dangerous to the cat? Apparently not.
One Monday in November, around 6:30 p.m., I went outside to move the car from the street into the driveway. When I was done, I saw a cat lying on her side, on the lawn. I walked closer.
It was Gabby. She wasn’t moving.
“Gabby?” I said. Then, I said, louder, “GABBY?”
As I knelt beside the cat, Regina flung open the door.
“What’s wrong with Gabby?” she said.
“She’s dead,” I said.
Regina ran outside and felt for a heartbeat.
“Oh my God, Neal! She is dead!”
Our son Elijah, four years old now, ran outside, screaming, “Gabby’s dead! Gabby’s dead! Oh, no! Gabby’s dead!”
We looked at the body. There didn’t appear to be any major injuries. A thin trickle of blood had leaked from her mouth, and she’d urinated on the spot where she’d passed.
“No,” I said.
At that moment, an extremely tattooed man came walking up our driveway, heading toward the house behind us. I noticed that his earlobes had been elongated. Black discs hung down from both of them. With him was a woman carrying a long-haired little boy. They were going to visit our neighbors.
“How’s it going?” he said.
“Not so good,” I said. “Our cat just died.”
“WHAT?” he said.
He rushed to Gabby’s side and felt her.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
He placed a hand on my chest and gazed at me with deep sincerity. It wasn’t creepy at all, but because I’m not used to deep sincerity, I thought it was at the time.
“She’s a blessing to you,” he said, “and she’s in a better place now.”
“We lost a cat a year ago,” said the woman. “We’d just moved to Florida and she was our guiding spirit.”
They were weird, but also very kind.
“I had her since 1995,” I said. “I’ve known her, or knew her, longer than my wife.”
“Cats are sent here to protect us from evil,” he said.
I wanted to reply, “I don’t know about that,” but I wasn’t in the mood to get into a theological argument with a helpful hippie. Instead, Regina said, “I think she was hit by a car.”
“She died loving you,” said the man.
“No doubt,” I said, not wanting to say, “Yeah, and one time I came all over her!”
The next hour is a bit of a muddle in my memory. Our neighbors behind us provided me with a shovel and a large shoebox. I put Gabby in the box and went into our backyard, where I started digging a hole under the big banana tree. My movements were laconic at best. I was thinking about how Gabby would always drape herself over my shoulders while I was typing, and about how she wasn’t going to do that anymore. I also remembered how she shredded my roommate’s favorite plant the day I adopted her, setting the stage for many years of naughty behavior. For a while, I had a black plastic stick with a feather on the end. I’d wriggle it in front of Gabby’s face, and she’d lunge for it. Then I’d whirl it around in a circle, and she’d lay chase. Then, I’d wriggle it again, just below her chin, and then suddenly whip it up several feet in the air. Gabby would leap high