My Lap, USA
Updated: 3 days ago
Some visitors have referred to my apartment as a museum which is well-intentioned but not a compliment as nobody feels at home, or yearns to recline, or wishes to spend more than four hours maximum in a museum. But I've come to terms with it and I'm not going to change. I can't; it's genetically Lewenauer.
There are six purpose-built seating options in my apartment: two kitchen chairs, two living room chairs, a stool, and the couch. (No, the toilet is not included in this list but good joke, surely no one else thought of that one.) I have literally never sat in the knockoff Eames chair, and if you're looking for me on any given night, it's most likely you'll find me in the leftmost kitchen chair.
But I won't be lounging, nor will I even be sitting really on any meat of the cushion. I will be perching my size 29/30 behind on the front-most support beam, because Floo is manning the middle. Over 1,000 square feet of apartment and you can find all 176.6 pounds of us (I contribute 96.26% of the weight) on the most objectively uncomfortable chair in the space. Me, poised to leap up at any moment with my calves bracing the balance of my body to stay upright on the four inches of pillow with which I've been graced, like a wall sit at the gym. In that way Floo helped me get stronger for biking. She was always looking out for my best interest.
I didn't feel like Floo told me it was time. I didn't necessarily see in her green, brown-lined eyes that she wanted to leave Earth. But I did see her fall over in the litter box, and onto the floor after throwing up, and into my face when she marched up to stomp on my hair as I drifted to sleep. Her mood was still strong but her tiny kidney disease-riddled body was weakening. We had to tag team her last few turds and she did look at me in those short moments, with disdain.
I don't have any Kleenex in my apartment because not only do I consider them an unnecessary luxury satisfiable by any other number of paper products, but an eyesore as well. Tissues, and their repositories, were immediately kiboshed by the museum curation committee. I have Kleenex in my hip pack but last time I used them was to gift to a small child in the bike park who had just smashed his face on a rock. Because it's Bend, I know that's going to happen again, thus I need to keep that supply stocked.
So I sat with a roll of toilet paper on the left kitchen chair, working my way through it in two-square increments, propped up against the front support, sitting with Floo. In years I haven't sat in one place for this long unless it was at a movie or in a car. I never felt I had a good excuse to sit at the kitchen table and do nothing. Thank goodness Floo chose to spend her final hour there and I could take in how much I love the trees outside my apartment window and not be hauling out on a ride; or hurrying to pickup a new item for the latest museum exhibit off Facebook marketplace; or worse yet -- working at my computer. By the time I'd gotten through the same amount of toilet paper as my brother does in one sitting (i.e. half a roll), JoAnne arrived.
When I left my old job I set up a meeting with my boss to go over everything that I was leaving unfinished. Upon joining she said there's too much to even tell her and reviewing it won't change their ability to get it all done. It is how I felt with Floo: no amount of cramming in more pets or squeezes will make life without her any different, or make my memories last any longer than they will last.
Two days before she died, I hemmed and hawed in the Petco aisle about buying an entire box of salmon Tiki Stix. How many more nights do I think she's going to last? Ok, that, times three packets per night divide that by six packets per package... Perfect I'll buy four since she'll be dead in a week? I went with the entire box manifesting that she'd pull through and eat them all.
The day before, on the way into Safeway I hemmed and hawed about keeping her ashes. Inside I cried in the spice aisle. Store patrons asked quietly, "What did coarse ground black pepper do to her?" On the way out I reserved the appointment.
The night before I cried in my bed with her curled up on the curve of my straight hips. On my back, my eye sockets pooled up like the Great Lakes and overflowed out the sides, all over the great Midwest.
What's nuanced about pet grief, for me, is that our relationship was completely in my control. I didn't not spend enough time with Floo because she had kittens and we lost commonality, or because she was self-centered, or because we had opposing views on whether the windows should be up or down on the freeway. Our relationship was uncomplicated: she was a cat and I am a lap with hands.
I only have one regret in my life so far, which also happens to be animal related... I'll have to dive into the psychological relevance of this at a later date. Or, ok maybe two regrets, time will tell. But I will add now that I wish I would have sat still long enough for her to settle in on my lap more often.
That said, all day long, every day, I pet her. Guaranteed once a day, I would squeeze her like a non-sentient being until she let out a miniature chocolate chip-sized chirp. She was but a pillow with working legs.
Obviously life will continue without Floo. I will keep buying things at a premium because they're "vintage" and then sell them at 20% of what I paid because I only liked, not loved it, and want it out of my museum now. I will continue to fume at my computer and eat refried beans out of their can and change out switches for dimmers in the middle of the night by the light of a headlamp. Now, without a tiny cat overseeing. I will be without a fuzzball shadow, a meandering ball of lint wafting after me from room to room waiting for my quads to get parallel with the earth so she may stand on them.
I will miss everything about her, the least of which is the gift of tasks. I love tasks. They are simple and generate a false sense of accomplishment. And as every successful museum operator knows, task lists bring order and structure and keep the museum operating smoothly.
I vacuum every day because I love vacuuming, and Floo with all her fuzz was a substantial supplier of things to vacuum. That will now probably only be weekly. In the mornings I will not check off my list "mix constipation medication into ham baby food" and in the evenings I will not check off my list "gag on the stench of tuna flavored potassium powder mixed with salmon Tiki Stix" or "watch Floo light up at the scent of a liver Prednisone tablet." On Friday I will not cross off "fluids administration at vet."
Because she flicked ham baby food everywhere when she tongued it out of her food dish, her pet sitter and I coined the term "ham nose" which I loved to see because it meant she may keep some of her 6.6 pounds. It also meant I could add "scrape dried ham droplets from surrounding area" to my list.
And because she was on a slow decline for two years, every day I asked her "Are you ok?"
Seven fewer tasks.
Floo's last gift was a final list of to-dos. Always looking out for my best interest. In "me" fashion (it's genetic!), I have already packed up all of her stuff. In fact I did it almost immediately after she died. I have no use for most it and I want it out. I kept only her favorite things, and the nice lady who killed my cat will send me a clay paw print in seven days (thanks JoAnne). I will keep her food dishes because they are ramekins; maybe I'll put my refried beans in them and coin a new term, "bean nose." I will take 11.5 packages of salmon Tiki Stix to the humane society, as well as all of her unopened food and her carrier and her other two beds and her harness and litter supplies and pet-specific cleaners. I have canceled her autoship medications, prescription food subscriptions, and microchip service. I recycled her extensive medical records and I washed the blanket covering the floor that I laid down in her last week to protect from bodily fluids.
Amazon asked for a reason for canceling my most recent kidney disease dry food order. Because she's dead, Amazon, would you like to ask anymore personally traumatizing questions? Maybe the most hurtful thing someone's ever said to me, or possibly something else personal like my two regrets in life (maybe, three, time will tell)?
Will I miss finding barf on the rug and noticing the stain it left every time I walk into the room (at least until the next one)? Surely not.
For a while I've been saying I won't ride my bike across the country until Floo passes because I can't leave her for as long as it would take me (4-5 months). I revised the end goal from a little town in New Hampshire to San Diego, and now that the time has come, I have a lot of muscle to grow and psychological resilience to build. Up two tasks, I guess. I've route planned 400 of the 1,100 miles and it looks like, if I stay on track, it would take me a month. At that rate I'll either need to quit my job or get fired, both of which increase in likelihood every day. Without Floo to keep me regulated on calls, being fired is growing at a faster rate than quitting.
More than anything I will dearly miss when she shoved her head in the crook of my elbow; and how deeply perfectly fuzzy she was, especially when you are looking at her from three inches away; and what it feels like on my face when she slides her butt onto my shoulder and her tiny body along my chin and cheeks and her paws on my collarbone.
I've never lived with anyone when I had Floo so none of our companionship has really been documented, save for the few times I traveled with her to friends' houses. It makes me sad to think I won't have those memories in pictures but happy that our museum didn't have any permanent patrons who may overuse the comment cards to share their differing opinions on the amount of horse décor, or the trail of partially finished tasks I leave through the house throughout the day (always finished by night!), or the lack of kitchen supplies because two knives can do everything we need it to, or that the dishwasher isn't being used as it was intended but instead as an overpriced drying rack.
Except for maybe four nights when I dropped her off with my parents in Wisconsin and went back to Chicago for an early morning flight the next day, I haven't been alone in my place of residence since I was 25 years old. She was always there. I don't know what that means or how it will hit me, and I certainly am not asking to be communicated with at any differing level of frequency than you already have been to fill what will likely materialize as that elusive
l o n e l i n e s s
that I've never felt since 2017. Solving loneliness doesn't feel to me like socializing more, sometimes that will probably make it worse. The only solution is a ball of fur hovering behind me.
As much as I've grown socially, when I'm pushed beyond my limits, like scheduling the death of the thing I love most on Earth -- the Mona Lisa of my Louvre, stolen -- I can't be that expanded person Bend has helped me become. I don't want to talk to anyone because every conversation is still to serve the other person and there aren't too many more people that need to be consoled in this. This is the first time I'm the one that loved something that died the most and therefore I'll do, and say no to, whatever I want.
Right after JoAnne drove away, I walked to Newport Avenue Market as the sun was just setting and blubbered in the dark. I bought a vase of flowers that I could never have because Floo would find them even on the highest shelf, chomp on them, and spittle them up.
I cleaned and disposed of her litter box and cleared her food and water areas. I don't feel guilty capitalizing on the opportunity to bring one iota of happiness back to me by further curating my space free of pet supplies. They're an eyesore. If making my apartment more aesthetically pleasing is the only thing that will bring me joy at the expense of seeming like I'm moving on too fast and never wanted her in the first place, well so be it, though I disagree. Conflicting things can both be true. I would live in an absolute dump with Live, Laugh, Love wallpaper in every room if it meant I could share a chair with Floo again, even an ugly chair.
Refining my space did not bring me as much joy as I thought it would and I'm actually glad because even though I said I don't feel guilty, I do. You caught me! I lied. Most surprising to me, the barf stains on my very expensive rug which used to fill me with despair, I actually don't want to remove with a rented steam cleaner as I had planned to do. And I'm not even lying.
There's nothing to get home to anymore, except of course to get free admission to the latest exhibit at the museum. There is no need to check any of the six places Floo may be sleeping. Just a bunch of funky objects to dust infrequently and sink-washed dishes air dried in the dishwasher to put away.
I have a Floo-killing outfit that can never be worn without that lens, and a lot of emptiness to fill in a lot of ways. So I will go to the ranch antiques store and buy an antler candle holder that I'll never light because it aesthetically looks best in a spot that would burn the house down if I were to actually use it for its intended function. I have sconces on order, arriving in October, so at least I can plan to dedicate a few hours to ripping apart the electrical and Googling "is it okay if there's an unconnected wire in my wall?" Floo won't be there to supervise the electrical work this time, so I'll have to plan to do it during daylight.
A man on Hinge with the most embarrassing tattoo I've ever seen in my life asked for my Instagram. I had decided to give him a chance because I lower my standards with every day that passes. The latest posts on my Instagram are a series of comedy videos with Floo. After sharing, he never spoke to me again. Pretty rich for a guy with a tattoo that says "DO NOT LET THE FEAR OF DEATH KEEPING YOU FROM LIVING" on the entirety of his forearm in the font from the Goosebumps book series. Hmph.
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