a care routine - #72

A glow from within.

It’s as many steps as I have years. But it starts with tying up my hair in a cheap scrunchie, maybe a claw clip, something that doesn’t strangle the thinning strands. I push up my sleeves, then put corduroy scrunchies on both wrists — water catchers. I run the water until the boiler wakes up, until the water is warm enough to let me nest in my sleepiness. I am not ready for the day. 

—

Do I wake up because I have to pee? Or do I have to pee because the cats have woken me up? Finn will sit right next to my face, purring like a ‘68 Camaro, rattling the bed. He’ll put a paw on my face, claws touching but not clutching. “Mama.” If that doesn’t work, Snoots will finish the job, making the sound a mother would when the Camaro hits her child — a death wail that betrays lung capacity. He wants for nothing, just for you to be in the world with him, to follow you as you take care of 4am things. Finn, though. Finn wants you to stir the food you put in his bowl at 10pm so he wouldn’t wake you at 4am. He does anyway.

—

I woke up at 7:15am. Or I woke up at 4am but Finn was asleep on top of the covers between my legs and Snoots wasn’t there. I pulled each leg up to my chest, individually sliding them up and out to not disturb Finn’s snores, and pad-footed to the bathroom. I pushed the door closed but didn’t latch it, waiting for a black snout with white whiskers to push it open. It didn’t. I made my way to the kitchen, around the couch to the chaise, peering under the still-decorated Christmas tree. Where was he?

—

Once the water is warm, I wash my face. Just a dime size of soap, maybe less, and the bathroom is full of cedar and spearmint. I try to be gentle with my face but I’m not. There is always soap left in my hairline, behind my ears. I reach for the towel and try not to wipe my face, dabbing instead. That’s what they say when I ask how. Only then do I look in the mirror. I am awake. Is Snoots?

—

For Christmas, Snoots and Finn received a present called the Ripple Rug. It’s two pieces of recycled fabric, one meant to act as a base, and the other punctured with various size holes and adorned with small bits of velcro so you can manipulate that layer into any style fort for your cats to jump into, crawl out of, pounce on, whatever cat-like verb+preposition calls to you, to them. Snoots loved it. He was sated by it. Our mountain maniac would sleep in the middle of the room in broad daylight under foot and dog on it. What a wonder! What a success! What a change. 

—

The next step is a bit of gadgetry. I’d seen the ads for Solawave, and I googled and googled until I was swayed by the befores and afters that lived within the depths of the 2nd and 3rd pages of search. It was Buy 1 Get 1, and I Gave 1 to Claire. You put an arctic blue serum on your face, and then you rub the Solawave with its vibrations and infrared light over your face. It’s meditative. It’s a ritual. It gives you time to wonder where Snoots is when Snoots isn’t where Snoots usually is. The ritual ends with a “super serum.” I don’t know what it does, but I am brighter, lighter. The furrow in my brow has been smoothed to submission, but it is called to duty even in its retreat. Where is that cat?

—

The house is big, but not complicated. First, you look under the bed — in my room, then in the guest room. The closets are closed. He’s not there. Next is the bathroom, but he’s never there unless you’re there and he’s not there now. He’s not in the cabinet that the mice used to break into. He’s not under the tree or the couch. He’s not on the Ripple Rug. He’s not upstairs in the basket, or in the envelope box, or in the closet, or stretched to his full length behind the books. He’s not downstairs on top of the makeshift shelves screaming into the uninsulated ceiling, nor is he asleep on the pile of packing paper he turned into a nest in the closet with no door that is segmented off by a repurposed bath curtain. He’s still not under the tree or the bed. He’s still not at your feet. 

—

The next step is new to me, but when you Give 1, sometimes you get one, and I was given the Dieux Forever Eye Mask. The mask is made of two reusable silicone eye pads, plus a cylinder of goo. I don’t know what the goo is, but you put it under your eyes. The cylinder is an enemy. It is a game of operation attempting to pull the wand from the tube and insert it back again without wasting the precious mystery goo by accidentally catching it on the side of the cylinder. I am only barely awake. I swipe it under my eyes, and I smooth the silicone pads over it. The pads make it difficult to blink. There is no need to blink when looking for a cat.

—

Was he there all along? Sitting midway up the fireplace on a rock outcropping, just one below the foxtail fern so he can stand stoically behind its draping fronds? A jaguar ever in the trees, ever on your scent? I call to him and he does not move. He is not stoic, he is something else — his stillness either a lie or a plea. 

“Snoots?” I say to him, sing song.
“Snoots.” I demand.
“Snoots!” I beg. 

He turns like a gargoyle.

—

The next step is my favorite, a sweet workaround to my perfume-adverse husband. It is the rosemary oil I rub into my receding hairline, a natural method of promised growth, or at least promising. There’s no room for wigs in the gear garage, so this is the way. I smell like an Italian kitchen or a beloved garden or a woman who tends to both. I am growing something, after all. I wash my hands of the oil, and then I remove the silicone pads from my face and wash those too. I am taut and moisturized and worried.

—

Can a cat be laconic? I would look for the word I mean, but I’ve been looking for him. I am going to the doctor, and it’s important I kiss all three pets before I leave. It is in the contract I signed with the stars: all pets shall be doted upon prior to periods of non-doting, regardless of length. He is on the Ripple Rug now, his paws hidden, his third eyelids showing. I kiss him on the head and it feels warm against my lips.

—

“God, you’re healthy.” We laugh. I like the look of this woman. She’s wiry and elven and even in the doctor’s office has managed to maintain her style, her white hair brushing against her shoulders, hiding the narrow shawl of her purple stethoscope. “Do you have any concerns?”

I list the swollen lymph node that has been swollen for more than three years, that it has not changed, that I am aware it’s fine, that its fineness does not stop its psychological torment. I mention the plan to get pregnant, to produce tormentors. I bring up the phlegm problem. “My heart hurts,” I want to say but that’s a symptom of something else. 

I leave, any relief stolen. My glow is from a bottle.

—

At the library, I am attempting to work, but I am working on the wrong contract. I can’t see the stars, but I can feel them. I open my email.

“Hi there, debating scheduling an appointment — our cat Snoots (1.5 yrs old) is acting strange. He's normally a maniac, running around and yelling all the time, but about five days ago, he stopped meowing, we haven't seen him sprint around at all, and it's hard to get his attention. He's eating, drinking, and using the litter box normally, but I'm worried about the sudden lethargy. Our other cat Finn and our dog Cooper are both fine. No changes in the house. 

Do you think we should bring him in?

Appreciate your guidance.”

Moments go by, or they don’t. Moments are sticky.

“Can you bring him in today, as soon as possible?” 

—

It was 11:30am and I needed to be in the town park in 30 minutes. 

If you take him, I can pick him up, I texted. Text me when you know.

Ben doesn’t have a phone. He broke it weeks ago. Months ago. Every year. It’s easy to let things break when you hate them. Texts went through to his iPad. He can’t call me because it’s an iPad? No. Because my phone has stopped receiving phone calls — or will only receive phone calls if I’m in the big town where there’s 5G because there is 0G in our town and the Wi-Fi calling stopped working. It’s easy to live with problems when you enjoy the outcome. It is easier to regret that when the outcome changes.

—

I was on my skis, practicing a drill. Knees bent in to see how a simple change in stance can produce momentum from nothing, but it’s not from nothing, it’s from smooth plastic being edged into snow. They are inert until they are not. I felt my skis move, and then I felt my phone buzz.

Back from the vet, they kept Snoots for more testing. He has a fever. They’re going to call you when he’s ready to be picked up. Ben texted from his iPad.

I’m glad you took him, I sent.

Yes me too, he sent back.

My skis edging further apart beneath me.

—

“Hello!” I waved in the cafe toward the door. Alana waved back, a corvid of a human — wry and sharp but brimming with familial loyalty and care. We’d met on the carpeted floor where she was fostering a tiny panther of black and white named Snoop. He’d had a rough beginning, losing most of his littermates and nearly losing his eyes. But he was rambunctious and wild and without question, ours. When he joined the family in the cabin, we changed his name to Snoots, to harken to his first name, to acknowledge the off-center stripe along his snout, to adorn him with a name as peculiar as he.

“Sorry, this is the vet,” I said as I picked up my phone that had been laying face up next to my latte. “It’s about Snoots.” 

“Hello?” I was walking out into the cold air.

“Hi, this is the Animal Hospital. Snoots is ready to get picked up. I’ll explain everything in person.”

What was everything but Snoots?

—

I’d washed my face, put on serums and sunscreen and a smile. I went to my physical, so very healthy. I bought a coffee and tipped the cost. I went to the local library to do my work, to be around people. I went to the park and took a lesson, introducing myself to others. Back to the library, more work, more hellos. I had a date with a friend, I drank the golden milk. I cared and was cared for and it did not stop the fear. It swirled it and coated it and napped very close to it, but it did not stop it. 

—

Snoots has FIP, and FIP is lethal. There is a treatment that works nearly every time. There is a treatment, but it is not available here. Not in this small town, not in the big town, not anywhere here because the treatment is illegal in this the greatest country on Earth. So is French skincare, but the girlies get it. So is cocaine, but the parties are lined with it. So is hate, but we’ve all seen the news.

I joined a Facebook group riddled with rules: don’t name the medications, don’t say too much, post a picture of the cat, someone will be in touch. I joined with Ben’s dormant account because my account is dead, killed under the name of self-care, all my care pouring back in. 

—

I am at home, I am at the library, I am building a fire, I am building with words, I am back on Facebook, I am messaging strangers, I am in the vet parking lot, I am holding him holding him holding him in my heart. The glow is from a bottle, the glow is from him, and it glows and it glows and it glows so when his glow wears thin, we can save him.

—

The cure is a vial. For Snoots it will be 24 vials. For Snoots it will be:

• Baby scale, to keep daily track of his weight

• Churus, to lure him into medicine

• Gabapentin, to help numb the pain

• Prednisolone, to help manage the fever

• Weekly blood work, to make sure he’s on track

• 24 vials making up 84 injections that burn your skin, that cause sores and lesions, 84 injections that will save his life

The cats care for me, and I care for them.

—

You need to move quick to save a life. You need a Canadian facebook group that doesn’t exist. They guide you to a smaller group of vets, and then a larger group of people like you: in your state, in love, in desperation. They may have an extra vial to get you started. This one’s on the Front Range. This one’s in the mountains. This one’s just what you need but it’s gone. It’s just vitamins, they say. It’s just a four hour drive. It’s just the only way.

I am in the car halfway across the state. I am listening to nothing. I am alone in the car because Ben is with Snoots. 

—

The trees hold like victims of Medusa under the weight of the ice fog, watching you without movement, like eyes in a painting. The reservoir steams like a potion and a herd of elk make their way across the portion still frozen. Big horn sheep gather at the guardrail, waiting for a turn, as I hold the steering wheel with one hand and block the sun glaring off the wet pavement with the other.

That’s what they call it: wet. Wet FIP is when the fluids build up in the abdomen. His lithe belly is distended and grotesque, his slender build unsure of how to carry it. But there is a vial near Salida, and I almost to it, to the Arby’s parking lot where I’ll wait with a cooler and a pile of cash.

—

In 2019, your cat died of FIP. Every cat died of FIP. Its cure was developed by Gilead, the same company behind a remarkably similar drug: Remdesivir, the treatment for Covid-19. FIP, or Feline infectious peritonitis, is a coronavirus. Gilead will not license the cure for FIP for animal use because of this similarity. We saw what people did with horse medication. Three years ago, your cat with its distended belly and glazed eyes died in your arms.

Today you are in an Arby’s parking lot on the other side of the state hugging a stranger with an unmarked vial sitting in your cooler next to your lunch.

—

We are in the bathroom with the serums and the Solawave, the sunscreen and the lipbalm, gua sha and scrunchies and face wash. We are in the bathroom with a dying cat of only 9 lbs who can scale the fireplace and disappear like magic, who brings his brother to life, who brings all these dead trees we call a home to life. We are holding him down with a plate of treats in front of him, we are holding him holding him holding him in our hearts and our hands as we inject the unmarked liquid into his skin and he screams with betrayal and fear and we are crying and telling him this is the only way.

—

My skin has been growing and shedding and sunburning and glowing for more than 13,000 days. Only recently, as it begins to hold its creases and pockets have I considered a more robust care routine. That’s the way, isn’t it? Our care is amplified when not caring bears its consequences. Every day now, I make time to nourish my skin, my body, my self.

Snoots is 617 days old. Caring could not prevent FIP. But caring is how we saw it. Caring is how a scientist at UC Davis dedicated his career to FIP, getting molecules from Gilead to test on 10 cats for all 10 cats to recover. Caring is how an international Facebook group of some 30,000 members coordinates the life-saving treatment of cats across the world. Caring is how we save him. Caring is how we save each other.

---

Sorry, I know this is two extremely stressful pet posts in close proximity. But the true care routine is writing. A story is only any good when someone saves the cat. And we are doing everything we can.

If it’s within your means to become a paid subscriber, it will really help this month.