Сигрид Нуньес - The Friend

When people ask me why I stopped having cats I don’t always give the true answer, which has to do with how the ones I did have died. Suffered and died.

All pet owners go through this. Your pet is sick, obviously sick, but what is it, what’s wrong? It can’t say.

The intolerable thought that your dog, who believes you are God, believes you have the power to stop the pain, but for some reason (did he somehow displease you?) refuse to do so.

The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was now clear that he had always overrated me. And there was no time left to explain it to him. He continued to gaze at me, surprised and solitary, until it was over.

The suspicion that your cat, proud independent stoic that she is, is hiding just how bad things really are.

The trip to the vet, the diagnosis, well, that at least, at last. Surgery, drugs. (Stop spitting out those goddamn pills!) Hope. Then doubts. How do I know if she’s in pain, and how much pain? Am I being selfish? Would she rather be dead?

Over the years, I’ve been there, several times, too many times, holding a cat that, the vet assures me, will go gently. My mother, who has been there too, said, The little honey lay in my arms the whole time, right up to the end, purring. (I know: that’s just a noise they make.)

Shortly after one of my last two cats died (in my arms, but not purring)—a cat I’d lived with for twenty years, longer than I’ve lived with any person—the surviving cat got sick. She paced the apartment, unable to rest, not for a single minute. Imagine: a sleepless cat. She wanted to eat, she tried to eat, but she couldn’t. Her voice had changed, always now the same troubled and insistent mewing: Help me, why won’t you help me.

The ultrasound revealed a mass. We could operate, said the vet, a soft young woman in assuringly rose-colored scrubs. But consider her age. I did, as well as how much she was already suffering, and the fact that, at nineteen, she might not survive an operation. The other option, said the vet, is to put her to sleep.

How Ackerley loathed that “dishonest” euphemism. But his word— destroyed— has always sounded odd to me when used for a sentient being. And neither he nor anyone else ever uses the honest kill. I had my dog Tulip killed. I took my cat to the vet to be killed. It would be better to have the poor thing killed. There’s no hope, she needs to be killed. If we can’t find them homes, they’ll all be killed.

Do you want to be with her?

Of course.

Two injections, the vet explained. The first one is to calm her. . . .

The first injection was problematic. Something about dehydration and how that affected the veins. And now the cat, who until that moment had kept herself very still, grew alert. She stretched out a paw and touched my wrist. She lifted her head, wobbly on its frail stalk of a neck, and gave me a disbelieving stare.

I’m not saying this is what she said, I’m saying this is what I heard:

Wait, you’re making a mistake. I didn’t say I wanted you to kill me, I said I wanted you to make me feel better.

The vet was clearly flustered now. Before I could say a word, she scooped up the cat and headed for the door: I’ll be right back.

We were in a large, busy hospital with many different wards. I had no idea where she’d gone.

Ten minutes later she returned. She placed the cat on the table, dead.

Do you want to be with her? Of course.

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: What have you done .

I have heard of a study according to which cats, unlike many other animal species, do not forgive. (Like writers, perhaps, who, according to an editor I know, never forget a slight.)

Maybe the guilt was worse because, of all the cats I’d had, this one had been my least favorite, the one who always remained aloof, the one who would not let me cuddle her or hold her on my lap but who waited till I was asleep before sneaking onto my hip. Now she became the one I could not stop thinking about. I would find a cat hair or whisker somewhere in the apartment and hear again the hoarse, frantic mewing of her last days. No, I did not want another cat. I did not want ever again to watch another cat die, suffer and die. Not to mention that other anxiety: If I did get a cat, what would happen to it if I died first?

Thus was I saved, perhaps, from becoming an old cat lady. I am glad that, in the age of the internet, which has revived the ancient worship of cats as gods, the label is losing its stigma. I was once told by a medical resident that he’d been taught on his psychiatric rotation that owning multiple cats could be a sign of mental illness. Thinking of the horrific instances of animal hoarding I’d heard about, I thought it was good that the psychiatric profession had its ear to this particular ground. But when I asked him how many cats were said to put a person over the line, he said three.

Given a dog’s extraordinary powers of smell, I know that, even though it’s been years, Apollo is aware that this house was once feline territory. I want to know: What does he think about that?

There is a Hungarian film called White God , in which the dogs of Budapest rise up against the oppressor. Like all uprisings, this one has a leader. This is Hagen, the beloved mixed-breed pet of a girl named Lili. His ordeals begin when Lili’s father refuses to pay the tax imposed on anyone in possession of a dog that isn’t a purebred. Thrown out in the street, Hagen tries to find his way back to Lili (who meanwhile is doing all she can to find him), but is thwarted, first by dogcatchers, then by a brute who, using the cruelest methods, trains Hagen to fight. It is after he’s killed another dog, Hagen’s first time in the ring, that he understands not only what he’s done but what has been done to him. He escapes his trainer but is soon trapped by dogcatchers and hauled off to the pound, where he is slated to be destroyed. But again Hagen escapes, at the same time liberating a large number of other dogs who follow on his heels as he tears through the streets. The pack of running—in some cases attacking—dogs are joined by more dogs, dogs from every corner of the city: Hagen has raised a canine army. One by one his enemies are sought out and viciously killed. By now, though, the once gentle Hagen has been so transformed that when he finally meets Lili again, in the courtyard of the slaughterhouse where her father works as a meat inspector, he bares his teeth and snarls. She is a human being, after all—and her father, who started this war, is there with her. Ranged about Hagen are the members of his army, every one prepared to strike. The frightened Lili remembers how Hagen used to like when she played to him on her horn (her instrument in the school orchestra), and the soothing effect it had on him. She takes the horn from her backpack and begins to play. Hagen is calmed and lies down. Then all the other dogs grow quiet and lie down too. Lili plays on, prolonging the moment of peace.

It is not a happy ending, because we know, of course, that the dogs are doomed. But they have had their revenge.

It’s easy to see why many people—including myself, before a high school English teacher set me straight—believe that someone once said, Music soothes the savage beast.