Snowball

On the day she died, Snowball was quiet.
"She's been sleeping a lot," Kevin told me.
After she sits in the sun she feels much better, so we put her outside.
In the courtyard, she prunes the neighbors catnip.
The last we talked, I was telling her something unmemorable as she sat under the little barbecue on the deck. She listened with a tired expression and said nothing.
We talked a lot about death this last year.
I 'd reached out to stroke her bony white body.
"I'm going to miss you a lot," I always said.
She pretends to ignore me, but then says,
"all things must pass."
Snowball told me once she was going to die outside and that I was going to have to find her.
"You don't have the courage to put me down, but don't worry, I'll take care of it."
We found her under the deck the afternoon following the night we discovered the tossed away tomatoes seedlings had endured and grown several tiny green tomatoes among their branches.
"Kevin, there are tomatoes here." I had said.

Did I ever tell you? Snowball convinced me to drop out of school.
I was 18 and studying late late night on my bed when I lived with my parents. Snowball woke and looked at me through irritated slits from the end of the bed.
"What are you doing." she said flatly, but what she meant was, why are you still awake?
"I need to finish this class so I can get a degree, get a good job and do something with my life," I replied absentmindedly.
"You're tired and unhappy. You don't even know what you want to do with your life. Go to sleep."

After little thought I went to sleep. 

This moment foreshadowed a future of Snowball and I in our own place where I am reading her a poem from Marge Piercy's, "Sleeping with Cats." A destiny of a college dropout fulfilled; spending the years between then and now a malarky of reading my own books, writing zines and sleeping well. 

I said goodbye to Snowball in the parking lot at the Humane Society.
Setting her on the curb I opened the towel she was wrapped in,
"Hey there, little friend."
My Mom predicted that when Snowball died I would quietly stroke her, letting myself slowly come to the reality of what was happening. I want to say this moment happened and that I took a lot of time holding her, but I didn't. I still don't know how to process the feelings I am having. Where to put them. It's not real.
An hour before I was in the business of death.
Find body, cry a little, wrap body in towel, place body in dresser drawer, lay on couch with no thoughts, call animal cremation services, get in car, drive.
In the parking lot I kneel beside the box and stroke the white fur
"I miss you," and suddenly I don't want to give her away. I don't want her to be burned, all that cat disintegrated.
Everything that was home and love was right there and I didn't want to give her away.

Why can't I be one of those emotionally saucy latinas? The last in a throng of mourners, the men of my family holding a tiny casket above their head as I clutch a wet hankerchief, beat my chest and wail, "MIA! MIA!" before collapsing in the street.

Reason returned and I gave her up.

My family got Snowball when I was five or six or seven. I only know this because my brother remembers it which meant he was at least two.
"They have this white kitty," my friend said, so we went. Snowball cost us nothing.
She was not a cat for children. She hated me and spent her days and nights in the sanctuary only thorny blackberry bushes assured. When our house flooded in '94 we heard Snowball crying in the crawl space and when the waters soaked our couches and beds we thought she was goners. But she wasn't.

Monday I got a call from Johnny, the cremator at the the Humane Society. Snowball's ashes were ready to be picked up and he hoped I was doing alright.
The cedar chest housing the physical remains of Snowball is screwed shut and sealed. It doesn't feel real.

Lucas, my neighbor Richs' son, who's three, came over and asked about my white cat.
"She died a few weeks ago," I said gently.
"Is she in heaven?" he asked me.
"Depends on what you believe," I responded.
"She's in heaven. That's where my dog is."
"I think she's in heaven, too."
I visited Jay Rowan grave and told him Snowball was a very nice cat. I asked him to let her sit on his lap for awhile.
My parents, Kevin and I had a memorial for her a month after her passing. A white cake with vanilla frosting - snowflake sprinkles. My Dad had wanted seventeen candles, each for every year we estimated she was alive, but we lit one and as it burned we talked to her. We missed her. She was a beautiful cat. We appreciated her staying with us for so long.
"Thank you ..." I said.
"Thank you, for being there and telling me to calm down. Thank you for sitting with me. Thank you for talking to me."
I blew out the candle, ate cake and read Cat Heaven. A litany of small gestures of love and memory for my old white colored cat.