Pardon me while I take my clown mask off for a day to attempt to use this blog and all of you lovely readers as a coping mechanism. Caution to animal lovers: this is gonna be a tough one.
My cat Devo died yesterday morning due to kidney stone complications. Little buddy was only 5 years old - much too soon to be checking out, methinks. I always thought I had at least another 10 years of shoving him off the counter when preparing dinner and getting in my way when trying to work on the computer. He seemed to be a little out of it on Friday, and by Saturday morning he was anything but the crazy little monkey he usually was running around making us laugh. His little body just couldn't handle whatever was going on inside of it and before I knew it, Devo was gone. It's hard not to feel a lot of guilt for not taking him to the vet the second I spotted a change in behavior, but he was this way so many times before and I figured he was just passing another stone and would be back to normal soon.
As any of you who know me or read these blogs on a frequent basis, I'm usually a happy-go-lucky kinda dude who is always cracking jokes (or at least I see them as jokes) and goofing around. It's really rare for me to be completely miserable and have no interest in writing music and being a goofball. One of the very few things capable of making me that way is the passing of a pet. It's worse for me than dealing with a human death, because animals are helpless in the fact that they can't put into words what hurts or what's wrong with them. They do it with body language, but sometimes like in this case, signals get misread and things are much more seriously wrong than you think they are.
I've always said the only bad thing about having pets is losing them, and this one is a particularly difficult one to let go of. Devo was like my shadow, on or near me at all times. When I shut the bathroom door, he'd holler at me until I opened it to let him in. He loved car rides and going up to the cabin. He also loved food more than life itself. 99 out of 100 times when I sat down, he'd hop on my lap and start kneading my stomach. And if my stomach wasn't accessible enough, he'd think "Fine... I'll just find the mushiest part on your leg and work on that then."
I have this strange "What do I do now??" feeling that I don't really know what to do with. We had a pretty big party planned yesterday with a lot of family, friends, and band members invited. It was the day of the morning he died, of course - he always had an impeccable sense of timing with getting sick at times like that. Saying "The show must go on!" was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my 31.75 years of life on this planet. I stand corrected - it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do (to this day at least), but I somehow managed to do it. Although I didn't want to be around a bunch of people who knew what happened and how much I loved that little feller, I didn't want to sit around in a gussied up empty place moping around with salty wet cheeks and a snotty nose all day. It was pretty hard to stay composed in front of everyone... I had to duck out quickly quite often for 5-10 minutes to let out the lumps in my throat, but I'm really glad we had everyone over. It was good to see everybody to simultaneously a) celebrate and b) drown my sorrows in mounds of sugar and Newcastle. Friends/family = pathetic animal lovers as well, so I was in good company.
It's really, really weird without him now; I feel like I'm missing a limb or something. I feel fine for a while and then a breakdown of sorts comes from out of nowhere. I hear a noise and think it's probably him getting into some kind of trouble, but then remember that's not the case. When there's food on the counter, I instinctively want to put it in the fridge before he gets to it. When I go to wash my hands, I look over and expect to see him there waiting for me to finish so he can jump in and take a drink.
It's hard to even fathom having another kitty, as I don't think there will ever be one that was as cool and idiosyncratic as Deevis was. I don't know if will be 2 days, 2 weeks, or 2 months, but I know it will happen regardless. I know when I go looking at the shelters, just like with Devo I will know out of the hundreds of lonely cats the second I spot the feline with a bizarre personality to match mine that deserves the best home and friend a cat could ever ask for. I just hope he likes to ride in the car and drink out of the toilet (I can maybe work around the toilet thing...)
Wherever you are now Devo, I hope there's lots of ice cream, scones, and fried chicken for you to gorge yourself with and lots of hemp twine to chase around. You don't have to worry about those food allergies anymore or kidney stones, so let 'er rip and go crazy.
You'll be missed dearly, buddy!
