adjustment disorder, n.o.s.
Thursday 1 February 2007 | 2 cookies in the jar
Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, right? So, around 4:30 this morning the Brujo and I found out why she hasn’t been using her litter pan: So she could pee generously all over my grandmother’s quilt, the duvet, and, eventually, the properties of liquids being what they are, us. I woke when I felt/heard her scrabbling at the bedclothes, trying embarrassedly to conceal her misdemeanor. That was 48 hours worth of pee; she probably felt a lot better afterwards. The B. was a good sport about it, once he’d had a cigarette (”She must have been, like, ooohhh, that feels good! Uh-oh….“) and I’d changed the bedding; we lay in the dark and giggled while I privately plotted my behaviorist plan of attack. New litter pan, because Eloise’s must still smell like it belongs to Another Cat, even though I’ve washed it multiple times; new horrible toxic noxious clay-dust litter, because she apparently doesn’t like the hippie recycled-newspaper stuff from Trader Joe’s; and new litter box location, because she seems oblivious to its existence where it is. And when I leave the house for any length of time, she has to be confined until she learns that the foot of the bed is Not an Okay Place to Whiz.
Now I’m off to buy cat elimination supplies—and to do a couple of loads of laundry. I wasn’t prepared to have all these thoughts about and memories of Eloise, whose ashes are still on their little altar in a handpainted Italian sugar bowl, along with her rhinestone collar and pink heart-shaped tag. Her independence, her sunny joyfulness, her fierce little spirit; her intelligence, her unhesitating, utter devotion. And I feel guilty. This is a really weird week.
BABY-SITTING
I am sitting in a strange room listening
For the wrong baby. I don’t love
This baby. She is sleeping a snuffly
Roseate, bubbling sleep; she is fair;
She is a perfectly acceptable child.
I am afraid of her. If she wakes
She will hate me. She will shout
Her hot, midnight rage, her nose
Will stream disgustingly and the perfume
Of her breath will fail to enchant me.
To her I will represent absolute
Abandonment. For her it will be worse
Than for the lover cold in lonely
Sheets; worse than for the woman who waits
A moment to collect her dignity
Beside the bleached bone in the terminal ward.
As she rises sobbing from the monstrous land
Stretching for milk-familiar comforting,
She will find me and between us two
It will not come. It will not come.
—Gillian Clarke
2 cookies in the jar
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Oh my but Pyewacket is gorgeous, even in her urinary confusion. I will consult with my fabric guru regarding feline piss and quilts, though I expect the web has advice just as sage.
Dear Eloise was so fine and fleet.
Did you get Eloise at the Shelter? Was Eloise her given name?