Goodbye to Julie

(Warning: Gratuitous movie clips ahead.) The Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite movies. Now, you could write thesis papers on Shawshank and argue that it’s about just about whatever you want it to be about. But the main theme of the movie is hope.   “Hope is a good thing,” says Andy, “maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”   And in the last few days, I’ve seen reasons for hope.   Over the weekend, Julie was her normal self. But for the discoloration of her face and paws* from the hypersalivation, she looks and acts ever bit the old Julie. She’s perky. I woke up both Saturday and Sunday mornings with her asleep on my legs. She spent much of the day with me on the couch. She ate. She didn’t even seem too disturbed when I gave her the Palladia and Gabapentin.   *Annie, our tricolor rat terrier, has seen her brown fade to white with age. We joke that she’s now a bicolor. Conversely Julie, a stunning black-and-white purebred tuxedo I somehow foun...

As you may have inferred from this post , I’ve watched more than my share of nature documentaries.   There’s something about them. They tell a story, but no one you have to pay much attention to. They depict a spectacular picture of a complex world. And I usually learn a thing or two. If I’m working on my laptop at home and just want something on the television as background, I often choose a nature doc, a Wild China or Planet Earth or Night on Earth .   I’ve learned a lot about big cats from nature documentaries.   Most big cats are not classically social animals. (Lions being the notable exception.) They are reared by their mothers. Once they attain maturity, they leave their mothers to spend their adult lives alone. They live in territories defined by the absence of another member of their species. An adult male snow leopard’s territory does not overlap with that of another adult male snow leopard . By design, their paths do not cross, save for in mating-related conf...

2010. Queens, New York. Julie and her brother, Ron, snuggle together on the bed. Ron’s eyes are mostly closed. It’s hard to tell if he’s asleep or not, but he’s definitely not awake. Julie is asleep, motionless, eyes closed. Until she’s not. Her head perks and her eyes open. Ron remains in his semi-slumber.   Julie puts a big paw around her smaller brother’s neck and licks him on top of his head. He rolls his head in her direction, as if hypnotized. He thinks this is all a dream.   Julie gives him another, more elaborate lick, her head torquing to near-whiplash as her tongue slathers across Ron’s face. He stays in utter sedation. The timing is perfect for the twist. Like an M. Night Shamalyan film, deliciously predictable but undeniably fun.   Julie reaches her head back all the way, like she’s preparing for another lick. And perhaps she is? But her mouth opens and her teeth snap down on Ron’s head, in the exact same spot she twice licked… BITE. Ron’s eyes open, his slumb...

In the tradition of ugly Christmas sweaters, I have a Julie sweater.  I don't wear it as often as the sweatpants, but...it's still pretty great.

At Julie’s second radiation appointment, Julie and I receive some good news.   “She looks much better,” the oncologist says. “Her face was swollen and puffy before and now it’s not. She had a UTI before, and that looks better too. She seems active and peppy.” “Okay, great,” I say.   I’m careful not to get too optimistic.   That was a few days ago now. And today, she seems, well, she seems okay. She spends about three hours on my lap as I enjoy a long mid-afternoon couch snooze, sleeping off some day drinking. She eats in the morning. She takes her medicine without much complaint. And right now, I’m sitting on the couch watching a movie, and she’s rubbing her face against my feet.   But for the stains on her face, I might believe everything is normal.   Perhaps it is. Maybe she’s getting better?   I can’t let myself think this way. It’s too dangerous.   Let’s just say it was a good day, and leave it at that.  

Sometimes I wonder when Julie was happiest.   I asked Angela this question once.   “In our apartment in Cambridge,” she said, “right after we got her. She was a kitten and she was so full of life.” I remember.   It was a small apartment, no bigger or better than Amy’s, but it was hers . No older cats who had their run of the joint. No chinchillas or tarantulas or tapirs or whatever else might have lived in Amy’s place. Just me, Angela, and Julie. She weighed about four pounds. How can something so tiny have such a presence? I swear that she could access every inch of that apartment. In a flash, she’d go from the couch in the living room to the bedroom; from the bedroom to the top of the fridge; from the fridge to the bathtub. Every place she went was brand new. Sources of wonder abounded.   Some Julie pics from this era are timeless, like the debut album of your favorite band.   There's Julie in the dishwasher, pure mischief in her eyes.  There’s Julie in t...

I’m a man who likes sweatpants.   I have more pairs than I need. But I still want more. Every Christmas, I’m bound to get a new pair. They symbolize the spectacular slothfulness of a perfect Sunday. Sometimes when I’m in court, wearing a suit in the middle of a long weekday, I close my eyes and imagine myself on the couch on a Sunday, sweatpants on my legs, Julie on my lap. You can imagine my reaction in September 2014, when I got these for my birthday:   The reactions they get are fantastic. On the trip to Montauk a few weeks ago, I wore them on the drive down. We stopped at a towny bar in some Suffolk County town for a bite, and a table full of high school boys talked about them for five minutes straight.   “Yo, a cat!” I heard one of them say. The others laugh in the way you do when you’re sixteen, a huh-huh-huh drone. Some people would be embarrassed, but I’m cracking up.   The next morning, I wear them to a coffee shop in Montauk. This is a decidedly more bourge...

All of these veterinary appointments are stressing me out. I can only imagine how much worse they are for Julie.   To boot, she’s now on two medications. The Gabapentin, still, for pain. And now Clavamax, an antibiotic. She has developed an infection in her mouth.   The Clavamax requires refrigeration. But I forgot to take it out of the car when delivering Julie home after her first radiation. Now it’s heading to work with me. I panic; is the medicine going to go bad if not refrigerated? So I drove with one hand on the wheel, holding the Clavamax next to the air conditioner, which is blasted full power. I must look like a madman. (I have a fridge in court I can use during the day, in case you were wondering.)   Julie has taken to hiding more than usual. Especially when she sees me going into the kitchen, or carrying a vial of medicine. I have to sneak up on her if I’m going to give her meds these days.   On Saturday, I don’t see Julie for most of the day. I’m meeting...

A few years ago, Angela bought me a Julie figurine.   Today, it has a revered place in my office, on a desk near the decanters, various travel mementos, and family photos.   I’m amazed how much it looks like her — and I love this photo of her checking it out.  

February, 2021. Three stages of Julie taking over our new recliner chair. 

Alas, Julie’s birthday was not the best of days for her.   On Sunday, June 13, she didn’t eat. It’s the first day I can recall her not eating a bite.   In the morning, she came downstairs, but every time I went to the kitchen to get food for her, she scurried off, as has become her wont.   She slept in the bedroom the rest of the day, never coming back downstairs. I know cats sleep a lot, but damn. As far as I know, this has never happened before. I left a bowl of food for her at bedtime, hoping she would come down to snack during the night. In the morning on June 14, I checked the dish. She did indeed come down and nibble, but she didn’t eat much. And what little she ate appeared to have been vomited out a few feet away. I call the oncologist to ask what this means. At this point, I am wondering if I should even proceed with the radiation. If her life quality is decreasing so quickly, it might not be in her best interest to go through all of that, just to stay at this le...

 In honor of her "birthday" -- the first known photo of Julie, taken in April 2007. 

Today, June 14, is Julie’s birthday. Sort of.   We adopted Julie in November of 2007. She was a kitten at the time, but not a newborn. We didn’t really know her birthday. For whatever reason, we surmised she was about five months old, so that meant her birthday was in June. For the sake of picking a day, we picked June 14, maybe because it’s Flag Day? I have no idea. Anyway, Julie’s official birthday, for many years, was June 14, as memorialized on her Facebook page , which I made back in 2009.   A few years ago, I combed through some old Julie photos, and noticed something I hadn’t before. The first known photo of Julie, taken before I ever met her, had a time stamp. April 13, 2007. I would guess she was about four weeks old in that photo.   Of course, the time stamp could have been wrong. But that suggested to me that Julie was born well before June 14, 2007. Most likely, she was born in March of that year.   Something’s always amused me that Julie spent most of he...

Sometime in 2018, atop the headboard of our apartment in Connecticut. 

Julie didn’t have the best of days today.   She was in my lap a bit, sure. Today is Saturday, and I was home most of the day. I fed her a mousse treat in the morning, with her Gabapentin mixed in, and she ate most of it. But after that, she was mostly MIA. She slept on my bed for most of the afternoon.   But after dinner, she was weird.   She seems to have connected the dots between me putting gloves on and her getting chemo pills. I’m told to wear gloves when I handle them. Her ears must recognize the squeak of the latex.   Every time she approached me on the couch, I would walk over to the kitchen to get the pills, figuring now was the time to give them to her. And every time, when she heard the gloves, she scurried away.   I figured maybe I could lure her out with food, then grab her after she ate. The lure worked, but I wasn’t able to get her — I didn’t want to interrupt her mid-meal, and she scooted off as soon as she finished.   By then, it’s 10 p.m. ...