Sunday Journal: In Wolf, a reminder of our mortality

The cat would die at 4 p.m. Meanwhile I cradled him, letting him lick baby food off my finger. I had combed him earlier, but at 19, Wolf looked like one of those moth-eaten furs you find in used clothing stores.

My husband and I eyed one another furtively across the breakfast room table, the way executioners would. We were waiting for a knock on the door: the vet with her poison needle.

I had owned this cat longer than I'd known Les, and named him Wolf after the lover I'd thrown out the week before I found him. (The kitten, not Les.) When the lover and I moved in together we made an agreement. Whoever wanted to leave the relationship had to move out. That was the kind of thing people signed back in the '70s, instead of getting married. We formalized it with a Celebration of Commitment, alone, looking into each other's eyes.

The celebration ended the day he came home and told me he was in love with his astrologist. He said she brought magic into his life.

"I can be magic," I said. I was lying. I could plant trees, paint rooms and make a fantastic granola. I could not do magic. God knows I tried. Swallowed the LSD he handed me, along with the cardboard it was on, early one Saturday morning on Sanibel Island. We hid behind a sand bank to avoid the early morning shell seekers. I remember the way the colors changed and how each drop of sea water held itself immobile against the sky. When the crying started, my lover drove us back to our rented house where I sat on the floor at his feet telling stories. Each one started out funny, but then I'd see how unutterably sad it was and cry more. He looked in my face and said he saw an ancient Indian woman. I went to the bathroom mirror. After four hours of crying, I did look like an ancient Indian.

I even tried his Gestalt psychologist. The man's office was the living room of his suburban Miami home. He told me to undress down to my underpants, then bent me over a camel saddle and paddled me. To release the pent-up rage, he said. Which did work. I came up off that saddle with a howl and tried to murder him. I drove home furious. My lover said I was lucky. He hadn't been asked to undress until the third visit.

When Wolfman told me about the astrologist and I finished crying and begging to let me be magic, I asked him where he planned to sleep that night. He was surprised until I reminded him of the agreement. Men tended to leave me in those days. I wasn't sure why. They fell in love and then left. It was worrying. After Wolfman left, I cried some more, but not as much as the first time a man left me, when I carried on for a solid year. The Wet Year.

The next week I found the kitten. This was real magic, a black kitten waiting on top of a garbage can in the alley behind the cottage. Wolfman's replacement, named Wolf.

Now, 19 years later, the cat licked more baby food off my finger, and just to remind me who he was, sank his yellow teeth into my wrist. I wanted to say, "Don't bite me when you're about to die," but I didn't. I smiled at the man across the table, the man who hadn't left, the one I married.

When we met, Wolf was still a kitten and ran up and down our bodies when we made love, excited, nipping at our heels. Les didn't like cats, hadn't wanted a pet, but Wolf was there first. He grew huge and heavy with a luxuriant black coat and a tendency to strike when displeased. Nineteen years. I can hardly believe it, though it's less hard when I notice my face in the mirror or the way my breasts are sliding down my chest.

I cuddled Wolf against my cheek. Two minutes to four.

There was a knock on the door. We both jumped. Les got up and came back with the vet, a woman with a lot of curly hair, and her assistant, a tall blond. Two of them. Was that in case I or the cat got unruly? Les was being unctuous. He did that around strangers. I pressed the cat closer. They both smiled their pity smiles.

"Poor old guy," the vet said. "Let's get the paperwork out of the way."

We signed a form giving permission to euthanize and wrote a check to pay for it -- $73. I stroked Wolf. Maybe we were making a mistake. It wasn't too late. But he slipped off his back legs now and couldn't get up. He couldn't climb the rail into his litter box, and we found pee spots on the upstairs rug, by the back door and, once, next to the shower drain.

My daughter is a veterinary pathologist, and she says it's never too early to euthanize, only too late. I feel like a murderer, I told her. She said, why? One minute you're here and the next you're not. Sensible advice, but it doesn't auger well for my own future.

"So much better to come to the owner's home," the vet said, pulling on a rubber glove. "No need to have the poor old guy scared on a cold exam table. I'm going to give him a shot that will relax him."

I clutched Wolf closer. He was purring.

"This will sting." When the needle went in his haunch, Wolf rose in my arms, the fire back in his green eyes, and gave me a look of pure outrage. "Takes about five minutes to work. We'll go outside and give you some time with him."

Wolf's eyes were half closed. He drooped in my arms. I looked across the table. "Are we doing the right thing?" Les nodded. The rims of his eyes were pink. "We could change our minds," I said. "Wolf would just sleep it off."

"And then what?" he said.

True, and he'd already dug a grave on the far side of the pond. I'd bought a hydrangea to plant on top. The Wolf Memorial Hydrangea.

The doctor and her assistant, who didn't talk, came back. The doctor spread a towel on the breakfast room table and took Wolf from me. He was looking more and more like a rug. "I'm going to give him a shot in the chest now that will stop his heart."

The assistant held up a small towel so that I couldn't see the needle go in. I watched Wolf's eyes. It was like watching a tiny light grow dim. The doctor listened through her stethoscope. "I can still hear a murmur."

Bring him back, I wanted to shout. He doesn't want to die. I started crying, not sobbing, just crying and stroking Wolf. He didn't look much different. All he'd done the last few months was sleep. The vet shook our hands. The assistant packed their stuff and they left.

"I thought we'd bury him in a grocery bag," I said. "So he'll compost faster."

Les got out a bag. I wanted to slide Wolf in like onto a bed, but Les dropped him in the bottom like a sack of meal, which made me mad. It felt disrespectful.

We mixed dirt with manure and peat moss and planted Wolf and the hydrangea. Back at the table, we were unsure what to do next. "Such a good cat," I said.

"Makes you think," said Les.

"Who'll plant us?" I said. We looked at each other. I wondered who would be planting whom. I suspect Les was thinking the same. A race to the finish, the ground yawning and no hydrangea.

- Norma Watkins is a frequent contributor to Sunday Journal.

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