Goodbye to Julie

2007, in East Boston, from the days when she was Lola . 

Julie isn’t herself.   I’ve barely seen her for five days. She’s not eating her food.   But, she does still have an appetite. I’ve handled her three of her squeeze treats, and she’s eating them. (As a side bonus, I’m able to put a few drops of Gabapentin in there.) The Palladia routine isn’t working. It makes Julie miserable. It makes me miserable. There is no point to this whole endeavor if we are both miserable, especially her.   Tomorrow, she is due another dose — provided I ever see her. I’m going to try to wrap it inside a treat or equivalent. I’ve tried this before, with pet pill pouches, but it merits another shot.   If that doesn’t work — and I don’t have my hopes high — I might just go with the Gabapentin to treat her pain, and see how it goes from there. I know the cancer will kill her eventually. That day could be soon. I’d rather her take pain meds to be comfortable and spare her the torture of giving her a pill she does not want.  

A few weeks ago, I called Julie’s vet to ask a question I’ve been dreading.   Since COVID, veterinary offices have limited access to their buildings. I have not set foot inside a vet’s office since 2019, even though I’ve made far too many trips to them by now. They instead offer curbside service. When you arrive, you call to let them know you’re there. They come out to your car, collect your pet, and go inside. You wait in the parking lot for however long it takes.   Makes an already miserable experience that much worse. I began to wonder what will happen when the day comes that I take Julie in to be euthanized. Will they let me inside? Surely they will.   So I called my local vet to ask.   “Of course,” I am reassured. “We let you inside for that. We always have.” “And I’ll get to hold her?” I ask. “Yes, absolutely.” I was this close to asking them to put that in writing. The lawyer in me, I guess. But I refrained.   You see, back in 2011, my wife and I had a se...

I’m back at a familiar place. The Balkan restaurant in Clifton, NJ, where I’ve bided time during Julie’s radiation treatments. Julie is back at the oncologist this morning, but not for another radiation session. She’s all done with those. (There’s a chance, in a best-case scenario, that if she’s better and still with me in a few months, that she can go in for another round of radiation treatment. But I don’t want to let myself think about that until it’s an actual possibility.) Today’s appointment is a checkup to see how she’s doing, test her blood cell counts, and see what the mass in her jaw looks like.   And how is she doing? I wish I knew. For a few weeks, I daresay she was the old Julie again, or pretty damn close. She looked good. She had her usual level of spunk and affection. It was an amazing site.   For the last few days, though, she’s been reclusive. She has adopted a repulsion to the medication that far exceeds anything I am used to seeing from her. And while she’s...

From ten years ago today.

Lounging on my lap in Manhattan, circa 2014. 

It was going to be a good Julie day.   I woke up with her on my legs, as all days should begin. For the last two hours of sleep, her purring formed a harmonious soundtrack for my dreams.   When I woke, she flitted around the bedroom, and while I showered and dressed, she kept a watchful eye.   And when I came downstairs, she was up to her old mischief. She had that look in her eye, the look that tells me she’s okay. She was rubbing her face against the kitchen table, frolicking around the kitchen and dining area, and the rest of the time was no more than a foot or two away from me.   I thought it would be a good time to medicate her. She was nearby and accounted for, and would be easy to grab. Every other day, I give her Palladia. Twice a day, Gabapentin. She last got the Palladia on Friday morning, and it was a battle. I could give both in one fell swoop, then feed her breakfast and get on with the day.   And I grabbed her, and did the deed. Palladia is a chemo...

Julie’s always had an obsession with shoes.   There’s just something about a solitary shoe on the floor that will incite Julie, when she’s in one of her moods, to a borderline hysteria.   The hysteria usually ends with Julie attacking the shoe in full-on predator style, holding it in place with her front legs while going to town with the back legs and biting with full force, and a look of undeniable joy in her eyes.   (Below photo was taken November 1, 2015 in Staten Island.) 

In November 2020, I became a statistic.   November 1 was a Sunday, and I was a little under the weather.   November 2 was a Monday, and by mid-day, I had a full-fledged cold. Over dinner, I mentioned it to my wife, the physician. “Do you have your sense of taste?” she asked.   I took a bite out of something, whatever we were eating at the time.   “Shit,” I said.   I finished my meal in the formal dining room, and slept that night in the guest bedroom. The next day was Tuesday, November 3, Election Day. How appropriate that I spent Election Day 2020 waiting in a two-hour line in a public park to get a COVID test. After another day of isolation, I get the results: positive for COVID-19.   Ah, 2020. What a year it was. In any other year, with the same symptoms, I would have thought nothing of my condition. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of work. It was a minor cold, I thought. I was a little sore and tired, with a stuffy nose and that annoying lack of a sense...

In Philadelphia, we had a small back patio. It wasn’t much, but we weren’t complaining — we had a house in a cool city with outdoor space.   Julie loved going out there and lounging on the concrete. (There was no grass to speak of.) As far as I know, it was her first outdoor experience of any kind.   The patio was fenced in completely. I gave it a thorough casing before even considering letting Julie out there. But there was one thing I did not account for. The patio curled along the side of the home, a narrow but traversable alleyway. At the end of the alleyway sat a generator that was about four feet tall. The fence itself was about eight feet tall.   This was in 2016, and let’s just say it was during Julie’s more voluptuous years. I was sure that she could not jump up to the generator. And in the off chance she could, there would be no way she could clear the fence.   I was wrong.   One weekend, my dad was visiting from out of town. He enjoys sitting outside,...

For the past decade-plus, my wife and I have been vagabonds.   Every move had its own reasons, but employment has been the underlying issue. Hers, mostly. She bounced from medical school in Westchester County to residency in the city to fellowship in Baltimore to attending in Connecticut. Along the way, we went from Queens to Westchester to Queens again to Manhattan to Staten Island (for me) and Baltimore (for her) to Philadelphia to Connecticut and finally to here, our (hopefully long-term) home in New Jersey .   All that moving means a whole bunch of moving days. I can remember each one in varying degrees of detail. The first few, we did all the work ourselves, unless we were fortunate enough to have friends assist. We just didn’t have the money to pay movers. By the time we were moving to Philly, Connecticut and Jersey, we did, and that made the days less physically tolling. But the mental turmoil of a move transcends achey muscles.   And when I think about all the mov...

From a Facebook "on this day," from 2017, in Philadelphia.  I'm sorry to say their relationship never did blossom, as this photo suggested it might. 

In Philadelphia, we had a nice window in our townhouse that overlooked the street below, at a nice elevation so Julie could look out.  Here she is, being super chill. (Photo was taken in 2017.) 

When I spoke to the oncologist last week, I asked her something I’ve had on my mind but been terrified to say aloud:   “What caused Julie’s cancer?” This question has subtexts, which I’m sure the doctor recognizes.   Is this my fault?   Is there something I could have done? Could I have stopped this?   The short answer, thank God: No.   “We don’t know what causes this carcinoma in felines,” she says. “The research shows some correlation between this and cats that spend most of their lives outdoors. And there is a correlation between this cancer and a certain brand of dry cat food. We do not know if there is any causation, just correlation.”   “She’s barely been outside, and she’s never eaten that cat food,” I say.   “It’s a very common cancer,” she says. “Most likely, it’s just random, or genetic. We really do not know.” The genes of Julie, a spectacular purebred from the snows of New Hampshire, may be her undoing.  

It’s a debate as old as animal domesticity.   Cats or dogs? Or, to phrase as the kind of question one might be asked on a date or at a dinner party:   Are you a cat person or a dog person ? Now, let’s get this straight: I love dogs. I can’t imagine not loving dogs and having them in my life. We have Annie, a rat terrier rescued from the hard streets of the Bronx, and I adore her. Before that, it was Bandit, another rat terrier who was Angela’s childhood dog, who I then rescued from an animal shelter in Westchester County. (Long story, that one.) I adored her, too. Growing up, my family always had dogs. When I was a baby, Greta, a gorgeous German shepherd. Then Tasha, a golden retriever, and Bud, an American Eskimo. (Bud remains the namesake of my dad’s office building; people often ask if he’s affiliated with Anheuser-Busch.) Then Cali, a shepherd mix that was abandoned at a nearby home and was a sweetheart, albeit a head case. Lady, a dopey mutt who followed my dad home on a ...

As a German-American and a beer snob, I'm proud to collect beer steins. The more unique, the better. This one, like Julie, is one of a kind.  (Original photo was taken in 2012, at the height of Julie's voluptuous Renaissance model phase.) (Mug photo was taken today while barbecuing outside for the Fourth of July. Happy Independence Day!)

To celebrate Julie's improving health and spirits, today I wore what I call my Julie tie.  Now, it's not really a Julie tie, certainly not in the way there's a Julie figurine and Julie sweatpants . The tie was not designed to look like her. But it does bear a considerable resemblance, especially with the three black spots on her back. 

As I wrote a few days ago, Julie was back to her old escapades over the weekend. She sat by the backdoor, watching birds and chipmunks for a few hours, situated in the middle of sunbeam. It’s the first time in several weeks she’s had that kind of enthusiasm for the outside world.   So I let her out on her leash.   The two of us were quite the site. Julie on leash, cautiously exploring, then lounging in various places — the lawn, the concrete, the bushes. A few times she chased a bird or a squirrel, which meant I had to be on my toes, since she’s on a leash. Most of the time, she just chills on a new surface and soaked it in, while I sit next to her, sipping Pastis. It’s in the mid-nineties. I’m shirtless and shoeless, just relaxing here in gym shorts.   Altogether, we are out there for over an hour.   We got a few great pictures — my favorite is this one, which echoes the nature documentary of the big cat hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce.   This one is a ...