BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Even without my glasses I could see that one of the bulbs in the fluorescent fixture overhead was burned out. Yes, it was sort of a blur, but I’m not entirely blind. Close, but not entirely.

So, even with the world being fuzzy around the edges, and even fuzzier in the middle, it was obvious that the bulb was not glowing as it should. In fact, it stared back at me, a dull gray-white tube with blackened ends. The companion bulb, clipped tightly into the contacts on the other side of the ballast cover, was flickering in a rapid staccato. An orange intensity was pulsing at one end, and the whole fixture hummed. A sure sign that it would soon go dark as well.

But I really wasn’t worried about that. Daylight was streaming into the high windows, and besides, this wasn’t the only light. There were several more. Not to mention, I had more important worries.

Now, I have to admit. The dead bulb in the ceiling fixture was not something I would have noticed right off. I don’t usually make a habit of staring at high ceilings for no apparent reason, but then at this particular moment I was lying on my back, which made a significant difference in my point of view. The cold, damp concrete was leeching any semblance of warmth from me, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to move. At least, not until I figured out what had just happened. So, until that answer was no longer eluding me,  I decided staring at the ceiling was the appropriate thing to do.

An inventory of my senses was enough to tell me that I wasn’t severely injured. Either that, or I was dealing with a concussion and was misinterpreting the various simple aches and pains.

Just for the hell of it, I groaned.

I heard myself groan. In fact, I even heard it echo off the cinder block walls.

Apparently my ears were still working. That was a good sign.

I continued to stare at the hazy light fixture above me as it winked through its death throes, and wondered if I maybe was doing the same. Life imitating machinery and all that jazz. I decided I probably wasn’t, because I simply didn’t have time for it right now. Besides, my  pajama britches were down around my ankles, and while I don’t have a very big shoe size, what endowment I did have was pretty much on display. I really wasn’t good with dying in such a state.

I muttered, “Fuck me…” in a long, drawn out breath. Then I said it again, just for good measure. Then it dawned on me that I could be inviting disaster if I wasn’t alone in here.

Fortunately, it turned out that I was. Alone, that is.

Closing my eyes I tried to remember just how it was I came to be sprawled out on the wet, concrete floor of a combination bathroom – shower house in rural, coastal Virginia.

The sharp smell of pine cleaner was carving its initials inside my nasal passages, and in a very real sense I was grateful for that. The odor combined with the dampness of the floor told me it had been mopped very recently. Given that this was a bathroom there were much worse things I could be laying in. I also happened to know from experience that the lady who cleaned the shower house was unbelievably thorough. In fact, everyone called her the Bathroom Nazi.

What seemed like a good quarter of an hour had passed by now. In reality it had been more like a quarter of a minute. Seriously. It’s utterly amazing how time slows down when you are in a bizarre situation.

I decided to go ahead and carefully push myself up, then rise to my feet.  My glasses were around here somewhere, and the last thing I needed to do was crush them. The rolling about and finding footing was quite a task with my britches around my ankles, but I managed to do it without hearing the sickly crunch of $600 no-line bi-focals turning into $600 trash. I straightened and then untangled my pajamas and pulled them up. At least now that particular issue was addressed. Or, should I simply say dressed? Either way, Wee Willy Winkie and the twins were back where they belonged.

With a sigh, I turned, then reached out and pulled open the spring loaded door to the toilet stall in front of me. A familiar looking blur on the floor  immediately in front of me caught my eye, so I stooped and picked up my glasses. They didn’t appear to be any worse for wear, so I slid them onto my face. Now the world came into focus.

Before me was a gleaming white porcelain throne. It had been scrubbed within an inch of its life, as had the floor. The ultra-sanitary condition of the stool was a good thing, because floating in it were my shaving kit, and a rolled wad of fabric that constituted my fresh change of clothes. My towel was dangling precipitously from the tank.

I stepped in and rescued the towel, then fished my clothing and shaving kit out. Fortunately, I had more clothing back in my camper, and the shaving kit was safely ensconced in a sealed Ziploc bag – all part of my anal retentive packing routine after having a bottle of shampoo leak all over the inside of my suitcase.

It was as I steadied myself against the tank while retrieving my soaked belongings that all of the pieces fell into place. You see, the moment I put even the slightest amount of weight against the toilet tank, it rocked backwards. Now, when I say it rocked backwards, I mean it rocked several inches backwards. The proverbial light went off over my head – no, not the actual fluorescent one, I’m talking about the figurative one. I finished pulling my things from the bowl, then pressed lightly on the seat. As it had done when I touched the tank, it rocked, but this time it rocked forward. In fact, it rocked forward twice as many inches as it had rocked backward. A second or two later it began to right itself, seeking some sort of center.

I turned in place and looked at the gap beneath the door.

Mathematical calculations rushed through my sluggish brain, trajectories drew themselves against imagined graphs, and I had my elusive answer. Upon entering I had headed for a stall to execute my daily business prior to my shower. It just happened to be stall number 2. I don’t know why… Maybe it was because I had to do number 2. But maybe not. Because I also had to do number 1, so I probably should have gone to stall number 3. But, if I had, I probably wouldn’t have this story to tell.

Anyway, upon entering the stall I had placed my folded towel, then my rolled up clothing, and then my shower kit securely and solidly upon the top of the large tank. I noticed when I did so that the toilet had a bit of a slant toward the back wall, but it wasn’t like I was going to spend much time there, so I thought nothing of it. Besides, with a backward slant, all of my stuff would be sliding AWAY from danger, not toward it, if you know what I mean.

In keeping with standard convention, I dropped my drawers, what with that being the easiest way to go about doing one’s business. I lowered myself onto the stool and felt it pitch rapidly forward like a mechanical bull in a roadhouse. Seriously.

The next thing I knew I saw the bottom of the stall door flash past my eyes as it headed in a northerly direction, or so I thought.  As it turns out, it was me doing the traveling, and I was heading south. After that, the world was pretty much a blur. Well, all except for the burned out light fixture on the ceiling, and as I said, it was pretty fuzzy too.

That wasn’t the last time I appeared as an author/guest speaker at that event. It was, however, the last time I used the second stall in the men’s shower room.

More to come…

Murv

It was the worst of times…

Those of you who have read a book or two in the Rowan Gant Investigations series are well aware that the main characters, Rowan and Felicity, have a pair of boisterous canines and a trio of curious felines sharing their home. The cats, as a nod to some of my favorites, were named after particular members of the literary world – those being Salinger (J. D., of course), Emily (Dickinson), and Dickens (Charles).

While the names assigned to these fictional pets are taken from the world of literature and poetry, their personalities and habits were gleaned from right here at home. The dogs are based on our own two, Benjamin (English Setter) and Quigley (Australian Cattle Dog), both of whom have long since left us for the great fire hydrant in the sky. The cats are a bit more complicated. Since we have rescued felines for years, the three in the books were each amalgams of other cats who have shared our home. Still, each had a “base feline” upon which the “character” was built.

Over the years, as will happen, many of these cats have left us. First was Sinbad, the Siamese upon which Salinger was based. Then “Data” the Calico who breathed life into Emily. And, most recently, Prince Valiant, whom we affectionately called PeeVee, who was the inspiration for Dickens.

PeeVee arrived in our home only a year or so after we were married. We had rapidly become known as the “cat rescue house” on our block. In fact, it was – and still is – a running joke that after I die E K will probably turn into a crazy cat lady. I even bought her a “Crazy Cat Lady” action figure as a gift and she keeps it tacked to the wall above her desk at work.

PeeVee, or sometimes “Peeved” was the equivalent of a tween when he showed up. Not quite a kitten, but definitely far from being adult. He was being wagged around from door to door by some of the neighborhood children as they searched for his owner. We took him in with the plan to continue that quest, which we did. However, as the weeks passed by no one came forward. By then, we had given him his name, and he had become a part of the family.

Speaking of his name – We have always tended toward naming the rescues from whence they arrive. Baley – survivor of a cotton baler incident which took her mother and siblings. Asphalt – rescued from the middle of an I-170 on ramp. “Prince Valiant” came about because of how quickly and immediately he made friends with all of the other cats in the house. There were no territorial skirmishes or fights of any kind. He was an immediate member of the “pride” and taken in without a complaint. E K felt that fit the personality of the comic strip hero and the rest is history.

PeeVee could be the typical cat at times. He thoroughly enjoyed going out into the back yard and gnawing on blades of grass.

Of course, with grass consumption for a cat also comes grass regurgitation. He was definitely good for that too. But, he wasn’t alone in that activity. We had a handful who were adventurous enough to explore, have a salad, and of course, barf.

Unlike the typical cat, however, PeeVee was not a “one person feline”. He was incredibly social and all about his “humans”. He was usually the first to greet people when they arrived, and would even see them to the door on the way out. Laps were good, no matter to whom they belonged. He even got along great with kids, which for an adult cat isn’t always the case.

If that isn’t enough, he was the first cat in the house to make friends with the dogs when we adopted them. He even had a game he would play with the English Setter. Benjamin would snuffle him, for lack of a better description, in the belly and PeeVee would purr. We called the game, “Eat the Kitty”… (Get your minds out of the gutter… We’re talking about an actual cat here…)

As he aged, PeeVee remained even-tempered and very social, even if he did tend to look annoyed when E K and the O-spring would dress him up.

He took it all in stride and even seemed to like the extra attention.

By the time PeeVee had been with us 17 years, he was still going strong. He had seen the demise of Banzai, Data, Genghis, and several others, as well as both of the dogs. He had risen through the ranks via attrition, and was the “King of the Pride.” He took his position seriously and would often let the rest of the house know about it with very vocal “calls of the wild” at all hours of the day and night.

It was around this time he was diagnosed with Diabetes. He and another of the cats, Takhoma were placed on Insulin injections. (Takhoma – short for take-home-a-sack, an ad campaign from the restaurant chain Steak -n- Shake as she was rescued from one location’s dumpster).

In all honesty, I started figuring that PeeVee would be leaving us soon. After all, at 17 he had pushed the normal limits of feline longevity, and he was now battling Diabetes and its complications such as Neuropathy. Still, except for a couple of blood sugar spikes and crashes, he continued on remarkably well.

As the last few years wore on, PeeVee seemed to develop an overactive libido – either that or senility. Maybe even both.

At any rate, he became enamored of a stuffed panda the O-spring had in her collection, and would pine for it if the door to her bedroom was closed. In order to keep him happy, O-spring gave him the panda, which he would drag around with him and at various inopportune times – such as having company present – would begin to yowl and “get busy” with it right in the middle of the living room.

One of his other major fascinations was the humidifier we used in the O-spring’s room during the winter months. Whenever we would fill the clear plastic tank and place it back on the base, it would “burp” and a large bubble would rise. PeeVee would race as fast as his old body could carry him whenever he suspected we would be even turning on the humidifier.

But, like I said above, his old body…

Neuropathy and arthritis began to take hold and he became less and less active in his declining years. He and panda would lay in his box most of the time, although he would get up to eat, use the litter box, or occupy a warm lap – whether offered or not.

Earlier this month, when PeeVee was pushing 21, he very suddenly became exceptionally lethargic. He had no interest in eating and only a little in drinking. Even panda was forgotten. A quick trip to the vet confirmed our worried suspicions. His watch spring was finally running out. He had started into renal failure, and at his advanced age there was no turning back.

The prognosis was that he only had a few days left. Unfortunately, with E K working and me spending time on Hell House, that would leave a very real possibility that he might expire alone. While many animals seem to go for that, PeeVee still acted as if he wanted human companionship, so to make sure he had it, he came with me to hell house and hung out with us while we worked.

The picture above was taken on a Friday, the day before PeeVee left us. At this point he was in no pain. He simply slept almost constantly. Since he could no longer move the lower half of his body, save for the tip of his tail, he would occasionally awaken and complain. I would pick him up, carry him around for a while as he rumbled a weak purr, then would re-position him in his box, whereupon he would drift off once again.

By mid afternoon on Saturday, he was starting to complain regularly. He couldn’t move, he was becoming dehydrated, and spiraling very quickly. While I was across the river in Collinsville, IL, doing an appearance at Archon 33, E K made the hard decision to take PeeVee to the vet and help him along this last leg of his journey.

I was sitting in the VIP hospitality suite right after finishing a book signing when I received the simple text message, “PV is gone.”

So, there you have it… The life and times of the real, honest to goodness black cat behind Dickens the cat from the Rowan Gant Investigations. Like Emily, Salinger, and the two canines, he will live on in the pages, though as Felicity and Rowan age along the timeline, so have the pets, and fictional or not, the two reluctant sleuths will soon have no choice but to face the sadness of loss.

More to come…

Murv