Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits, George Carlin is dead.

I get up at 4:30 in the morning. On weekdays it’s work related. On the weekends it’s the cats. As any servant of the feline knows, cats don’t do weekends.

My usual routine at that hellish hour is to first plug in the IV bag of caffeine while groping about for a cigarette and trying not to trip over the cats in the process. Next comes the feline feeding frenzy, of course. Once the clamor has died down, I’m free to check; 1) Backspace, and 2) my email. This morning I wish I’d checked neither.

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Spring has sprung. Well, here in Albuquerque there was never really a winter, leastwise not the sort of winter I’m used to; wet, cold, dark. Here it got cold but it was a dry cold and not so hard on the old bones. And the Sun! This is the first winter I’ve ever spent without being depressed out of my mind. Places like Albuquerque could make a real dent in the profits of pharmaceutical companies that spew out anti-depressants like M&Ms.

The place I moved into is out in the North Valley. This used to be all farm land but, as Albuquerque has been ‘discovered’, the farms are disappearing faster then you can say “Westward Ho the White Folks!”. The Place isn’t bad for a temporary stop and I do like the neighborhood. It’s kind of funky; a mix of eccentric, dirt poor and filthy rich. This is a part of town where a beat up, sun-bleached Pinto sits on blocks next to a house where million dollar thoroughbreds roam the immense grounds which sits next to a house with the weirdest metal sculptures rusting in the yard. Los Ranchos de Albuquerque.

The Place is a large, rectangular house with a yard big enough to own a cow or a small horse or an Alpaca or two if I could convince the landlord to go for such a thing. And if I had any intention of staying in this house, which I don’t.

When I moved here last year, there were these old roses, in the ground thirty, forty years, that no one had tended to in probably half that time. They were wretched, weed chocked, spindly things with scarcely a bloom much larger around then a dime, the pedals so scrunched together you could hear them groaning at night from the strain. I cut them all back to ground level in mid-winter, filling about fifty peat pots with cuttings. All the cuttings survived and are flourishing and the roses in the ground are blooming like mad; huge, fat, pink blossoms with a scent that is nearly orgiastic in nature.

Around the yard I have hung bird and hummingbird feeders of all shapes and sizes. Sitting outside, as I am now, is like sitting in the middle of an aviary. There must be a bajillion hummingbirds about and birds of every color imaginable. The eaves around the house have become a bird condo. The cacophony of chirping in the morning wakes me. An altogether pleasant way to awaken, I might add. Certainly better then an alarm clock.

The other day, while trying to work on my WIP, which is almost finished at last, I noticed one of my cats paying undo attention to the rose bushes beneath my bedroom window. The birds in the tree nearby were putting up quite a fuss, but they usually do when the cats are out so I hadn’t paid them much attention. In this case, though, with the cat actively trying to get into those thorny bushes, I figured something was up. Sure enough, upon inspection, there in the midst of the thorns sat a baby starling.

A quick rescue ensued followed by a several calls to the bird rescue hotline. I have to say that the bird rescue hotline here in Albuquerque has made good use of voice tree technology, the kind of thing that usually frustrates you when what you want is an answer and what you get is some idiot voice directing you in every direction but the one you need to go in. In this case: “If you’ve found a baby bird, hit 2″. Wow. What a concept.

So, after imprisoning the cats, I spent the better part of the day perching precariously on a fence pole, all the while being dive-bombed by dad, and trying to put the baby back in the eaves only to watch him flutter back into the rose bushes. Finally, I guess I managed to actually get him in the nest since I have seen hide nor hair of him since. I know he’s still up there, though, as I can hear him whenever mom or dad make a feeding run.

I figure that any day now, he, and all the other baby birds living in the eaves, will begin their flying lessons. I hope the lessons are brief ones as I think the predators sense this too. My cats have taken to staring wistfully up at the eaves and the yard is suddenly full of Roadrunners who would not be adverse to adding baby bird to their regular diet of bugs and lizards.

All things considered, I suppose I should get back to my WIP while I still can. I have a feeling that in a couple of days I’m going to be quite busy with ground control.

Here comes the flood
We will say good-bye to flesh and blood.
Peter Gabriel

Is death any easier to bear if the death is not that of a human? Is it easier to bear if the death was necessary? A kindness? An act of mercy? Does the decision to end the life come unimpeded? Is that last touch, that last kiss, that last whispered good-bye as the needle slips into the vein and she arcs her head in your direction with one last sigh, eyes wide and searching, any less a ripping out of the very essence of you because it’s only a cat?

The Doubtful Guest is gone and my heart hurts. I am sad and I am angry. I wish oblivion upon every manifestation of a supreme being ever conjured by any human in the entire history of humans on this or any planet. May they all rot and be forgotten and fall away as dust in some distant corner.

She was damaged goods, unwanted, sitting in a cage for weeks when I came upon her over two years ago. Neurological problems, they said. She’s kind of weird. Walks in right-hand circles. Has six toes on each of her front paws. Chases things that aren’t there. Scratches at the walls. I fell in love with her the moment they took her from the cage and set her in my arms. I understand unwanted.

She spent her first month with me, sitting in the kitchen, her nose nearly pressed to the wall. That’s how she got her name. She reminded me of a character in an Edward Gorey book I had. I would sit with her on the floor, scratch her lightly behind the ears. I learned early on that she didn’t like to be stroked. Something to do with the neurological damage she had suffered as a kitten. She was overly sensitive on her back and hind quarters.

She did like to have her chin scratched. And her nose kissed lightly. And, though it was awkward for her, she liked to roll over on her back and drift away on tummy rubs, sighing deeply and slipping into an erratic, halting purr that could only be heard with your ear pressed nearly to her chest.

She attacked the paper grocery bags I set out for garbage. Drove them across the room, trapped them in the corner, crushed them until they were flat. She chased things only she could see. The walls all have scratches on them. In the mornings when I cleaned the litter boxes, she would follow me from one to the other. When I was done, she would crawl inside, rearrange the litter, mark it again.

At night she would sit on my bed, just behind my curled knees, and stare off into space. Sometimes I would tug lightly on her tail. She would turn to me then and nuzzle my hand.

Early last Monday morning she had a seizure and took a hard fall from the bed. The vet I took her to was useless. Didn’t even take her past history into account. Never noticed the uneven dilation of her eyes. Tests, she said. An MRI. An x-ray. I took her home and tried to care for her myself.

We made some progress that first week. It was like having a baby again. Up every few hours at night. Bottle feeding. Cleaning up the mess. I thought, hoped, we were getting somewhere. She would eat and then curl up in my arms, giving me several more hours of sleep before waking again to start the process over.

And then the progress stopped. She started to yowl. And then the growling low in her throat began. I feared she might be in pain. I took her to another vet. This one was up front, more concerned with Doubtful then the money she might receive for doing a battery of useless tests. She gave it to me straight up. The prognosis was poor.

I buried The Doubtful Guest yesterday morning in a deep, glazed planter the color of the sky at dusk. I gave her a feather and a small ball and then wrapped her in my shirt and put her beneath the ground. Over her I will grow roses, lavender and irises.

As I walk about the house, trying to resume my life, trying to get back into my writing, I keep checking to see where she is. It was always like that with her. She wasn’t tuned into this world enough to watch out for herself. That was my job. Now she isn’t in this world at all, but I can’t seem to keep that thought in place.

And I just want to follow her wherever she went.