A Cat Named Darwin (12 page)

The next day I could not stop worrying. All attempts at work produced nothing but lost time, and finally it occurred to me that maybe I could visit Darwin in the hospital. Why did it take so long to think of this obvious notion? Were veterinary patients any different from the human kind, to be shut away in the hospital without visitors until cured and sent home?

Dr. Mader and I had liked each other from the beginning; he respected my knowledge of biology and I respected his experience in medicine, so I called and asked if I could visit Darwin. By all means, he replied. More people ought to visit their pets in the hospital.

***

Darwin had a private room on the third level of holding cages, most of which were occupied. In some there was nothing to be seen but a motionless lump curled up along the back wall. In others, a dog, a cat, a rabbit, or some other creature stood behind the bars, waiting with great expectations for its owner.

Darwin lay curled in his litter box, submerged so deeply in sleep that he appeared comatose. His tail and hindquarters lay in urine that had collected around the edges where the litter had not been scattered. A catheter ran from his penis, and an IV needle was taped to his right foreleg. His breathing was so shallow that I had to peer closely to detect any motion. I opened the door and softly called his name. His ears moved ever so slightly, but his eyes remained closed. Tears welled up behind my eyes and in my throat, and I swallowed hard to force them back. Tears are so naked, so vulnerable. An instinct to suppress them.

I bent over and spoke his name again. His eyes opened just a sliver, but signaled recognition, and I ran my hand over his head and down his neck and back as gently as I could, just skimming the fur. I bent lower so my ear was a few inches from his head and stroked him ever so gently again and again. Then, so quiet that it seemed far, far away, I heard a familiar sound. Darwin was purring. Joy swelled in my chest and squeezed more tears from my eyes because Darwin recognized that I was there. With wet cheeks I stroked and stroked his matted, soiled hair, oblivious to time, reveling in the faint and distant sound of the cat's soul.

I don't know how long I stood there, absorbed in his misery, but this was a working hospital, and life and death went on around us. While I attended Darwin, a large, gray-black cat with bold white markings and light yellow eyes had arrived, following a collision with a car. He was a sweet, gentle creature and he made no attempt to bite or scratch or otherwise resist examination. Abducted to an alien world, he submitted patiently to the pokings and squeezings of a strange man, who said in a flat voice that the cat's left foreleg was broken. The owner then telephoned, and Dr. Mader took the call on a cordless phone. The owner wanted the cat euthanized. She did not want to spend the money for medical care.

Dr. Mader did not cajole or beg her to reconsider. He simply said that the cat would recover fully if treated; he asked if she was sure of her decision; without hesitation the owner said yes. Thus was the cat's fate decided. Dr. Mader then turned to one of his assistants and said matter-of-factly that the owner wanted the cat put down. The assistant, a thin, sensitive young man, nodded and set about preparing the equipment. The other assistant, a quiet young woman, held the cat in her lap while the young man shaved a small area on the inside of its right foreleg. Both assistants bowed their heads in a silent, dignified gesture to this lovely creature who was about to die, as if to say "We love you. There is no other way." Then the young man administered a hypodermic injection. The cat lay there, calm, as the young woman held him in her arms and stroked his head and back. Gradually he grew drowsy. His muscles relaxed, almost imperceptibly. His eyelids began to droop, then his head sank slowly onto the young woman's lap and lay there motionless, with his eyes half open ... and lay, and lay ... until there came an instant when you somehow knew his soul had slipped silently, invisibly, into eternity. No raging against the dying of the light. A simple passing into the light.

***

This big, beautiful, vigorous, healthy cat, and the owner had elected to end its life because treatment cost money, and here was my Darwin, his body curled in mortal combat against his own immune system. Tears had irritated my nose and made breathing difficult, and the hopelessness of it all pressed down with an aching, suffocating weight. The blue intellect hovered above, pointing out that health is like wealth: you cannot take it with you. But unlike wealth, you cannot give it away. I would have paid any price to buy the health of that poor, unwanted cat and give it to my friend.

Breathing deeply, I managed to reinstate my composure and regain sight through the liquid blur. Then I noticed a large red tag on Darwin's cage. "FeLV
POSITIVE
," a warning to regard him as highly infectious, a carrier of the plague, a pariah.

***

When I called the hospital the next day, Dr. Mader informed me that Darwin's spirits had lifted noticeably after my visit. He was still in critical condition, however, and I visited him again that afternoon. This time he recognized me as soon as I spoke and leaned into my hand, lingering and savoring my touch.

The visits became a daily ritual. Each afternoon I spent an hour by Darwin's side, stroking, talking, but mostly spending the time quietly, giving thanks, relishing the time we had together. Despite his illness, he still lived, and for the first time in my life I began to comprehend the miracle of each living moment, to
feel
the complexity of a living organism. My knowledge of biology slowly emerged from years past and I began to remember the incredible physiology of the blood, the nervous system, the kidneys, the liver, the spleen, the heart. I savored the warmth from Darwin's body and recalled the basics of temperature regulation and water balance, and then, of course, the immune system and physiological defense. Words could not do justice. What was Darwin but a universe in a skin?

Recovery proceeded slowly. Darwin's temperature remained high. The IV remained in his foreleg, bleeding tetracycline directly into the bloodstream to combat the
Haemobartonella
microbe. As one day led to another and another, the costs added up, although I didn't know what they were and made a point not to ask. I was going to give Darwin the best care possible—that was not negotiable with my rational self—and I would simply have to deal with the cost later, as a separate crisis.

The emotional costs were also accumulating, probably more for Darwin than for me, huddled as he was in his stainless steel sanctuary. Strange hands opened the door several time each day, often to slip needles under his skin for various injections, now and then to draw blood from the carotid artery in his neck. The intravenous needle was repositioned from time to time and the catheter removed for relief. Alien animals occupied the cages above him and on both sides, emitting alien sounds and alien odors, and occasionally shuffling about in search of a comfortable position. What does a creature feel on entering the hospital, knowing only blind, instinctive terror and incapable of conceiving the reasons for his internment? The enormity cannot be imagined. That it saves his life means nothing when he cannot conceive of death.

***

As for me, I wanted to deny the undeniable. The lower, more primitive depths of the mind cannot face the notion of death because the spirit of DNA rises up from the neurons of the brain, coalescing into the genie of the human mind. "Thou Shalt Survive" is the First Commandment of DNA, and each cell obeys it blindly and mechanically, as does the genie. Yet that same mind holds the capacity to comprehend death. It knows that we will die someday. And suddenly we find ourselves staring into the existential dilemma—that nuclear furnace of paradox—where the deepest essence of life, the will to survive, comes face to face with the truth of reality, and the conflict is too intense to face. It is the curse of biological intellect.

The upshot? Why gods, of course, gods created in our image and projected back upon the world. Very large, very powerful mamas and papas who understand our needs and look out for our interests, assuring us that the soul lives beyond the body, and giving us dominion over the beasts and fish and fowl. These self-serving projections comfort us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death and hold us back as we peer over the edge into the abyss.

The gods were small consolation, however, since those of the West have little time for the plight of animals. The only answer was hope, which arises from ashes. Hope is closely allied with augury, an attempt to project the future, and medical science is rife with augury in the guise of data and statistical projections. Body temperature is an excellent example of how this works.

The normal cat maintains a body temperature between 100.4°F and 102.5°F, and although body heat, like breathing, is something we take for granted, it requires a miraculously strong, healthy physiology in order to maintain a steady level. A normal body temperature is therefore an encouraging omen, and each day my first act on arriving at the hospital was to check Darwin's chart for the latest temperature reading.

On the first day it read 103°F, and even though he was nearly comatose, this was essentially a normal reading, a good omen indeed. On the second day it jumped to 105°F, but that was easy to explain. A fever was to be expected in the seriously ill. On the third day the temperature dropped to 102°F, and I walked several inches off the ground on pure euphoria. To hell with the calculating side of the mind, which urged caution in its usual sour way. On the fourth day the calculating side proved right as Darwin's temperature jumped to 104°F and my spirits dropped. No pagan ever stood by his fire, examining guts in the sand, with more trepidation than I stood before Darwin's data attempting to twist the prognosis in our favor.

The same emotions heaved and pitched according to Darwin's weight. Overall he was gaining weight, and hope clutched this as a major sign of improvement. It helped me minimize the forlorn image of Darwin harnessed to medical technology, reminding me of Edward Abbey's immortal description of patients in the terminal ward with "rubber tubes stuck up ... nose, prick, asshole, with blood transfusions and intravenous feeding ... the whole nasty routine to which most dying men, in our time, are condemned."

***

So it went, temperature up one day, normal the next, weight returning to its original point, then dropping below, with hope pulling each observation, each reading, toward a positive interpretation. Finally, after ten days, Dr. Mader released Darwin to my care, accompanied by a bill for several hundred dollars, which still represented a significant discount. Had the animal hospital charged for each cotton swab, each cotton ball, each grain of cat litter, in the spirit of a human hospital, the bill would have been considerably higher.

And it would still have been worth every dollar. Darwin remained a very sick cat, he would require medication for at least another ten days,
but he was alive,
and surely he would improve. As I carried him from the building, I thought of that handsome cat whose broken leg had brokered his death, and I found myself wincing. I winced at the innocent helplessness of animals, huddled at the feet of humanity ... the absolute ending of life ... the finality ... and then I realized that because I had come to love this small creature, whatever happened to him happened to me.

***

On arriving home, I opened the carrier and Darwin walked unsteadily into the room. He looked around as if home were strange territory and stood there, wobbling, feeble, bewildered. His coat was matted and dull, his white belly stained yellow. I walked quickly to the kitchen and opened a can of food, knowing that nothing would catch his attention like the sweet song of the opener. Darwin remained where he stood, staring blankly. I dished several scoops of tuna into his bowl and set it before him. He looked down for a moment, then bent down to investigate. He sniffed indifferently, pulled back, sat up straight.

I pushed the food toward him. He pulled back, turned slowly, walked away. I could not call up his appetite, which stripped me of the power of manipulation and reduced me to a failed human being, feeling helpless and bleak.

Darwin understood none of this. He walked dejectedly to my leather recliner, my one decent piece of furniture, jumped onto it, digging his claws into the surface, curled up, and went to sleep. I went to the linen cabinet, folded a thick, soft bath towel, carefully picked him up, arranged a bed on the leather chair, and laid him on it.

He did not sleep with me that night. Perhaps he simply preferred the chair to my bed, or perhaps, in his sickened state, my tossing and turning would have bothered him. I could not tell. I missed his warm body pressed against my side, and yet, to know he lay a few feet away in the darkness filled me with sweetly sorrowed gratitude as I drifted off to sleep.

The next day he pecked at his food, eating as if chewing were a chore. I called Dr. Mader, who recommended baby food: ham, lamb. This required only licking, and I fed Darwin from a spoon, like an infant. He consumed perhaps two-thirds of a jar, not nearly enough to maintain his body weight, but he chose to sleep on the bed with me that second night, his warm lump softening the bleak realities with a sign of recovery.

On the third day it was time for a checkup. I lugged the carrier into the living room, set it on the floor, swung open the door, and forced Darwin in. He huddled at the far end of the cage, pupils dilated to the edge of the iris, and stared at specters of the hospital with black eyes.

Dr. Mader pulled him from the darkness of the carrier, set him on the scales, and wrote down 12.6 pounds. He inserted a rectal thermometer and wrote down 105.5°F. My rational mind watched without feeling as these figures appeared on paper—temperature was high, weight had dropped by more than a pound.

Throughout the procedure, Dr. Mader showed no emotion. In the praxis of medicine, to indulge feelings is to waste time. With the emotionless calculations of medical cause and effect he explained that Darwin did not need intravenous feeding and he didn't need a catheter and he didn't need incarceration. He needed only to take an antibiotic called Tribrissen. It was more powerful than tetracycline, came as a pill, and would have to be administered four times daily.