January 1-7, 2012: The Prince of Tides

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides contains a wonderfully poignant passage about whales that have washed onto a beach:

For hours we walked from back to back of the dying mammals, speaking out to them in the cries of children, urging them to try to return to the sea. We were so small, and they were so beautiful. From far off, they looked like the black shoes of giants. We whispered to them, cleared sand from their blowholes, splashed them with seawater, and exhorted them to survive for our sake. They had come from the sea mysteriously, gloriously, and we three children spoke to them, mammals to mammals, in the stunned, grieving canticles of children unfamiliar with willful death. We stayed with them all that day, tried to move them back to the water by pulling at their great fins, until exhaustion and silence crept in with the dark. We stayed with them as they began to die one by one. We stroked their great heads and prayed as the souls of whales lifted out of the great black bodies and moved like frigates through the night and out to sea where they dove toward the light of the world.

And so it is with Fluffy. Mysteriously, tragically, he has washed onto the bathmat in our main bathroom.

By 9 a.m., he has been on the bathmat for an hour—motionless, save for the heaving of his great black-and-white chest.

It’s now 10 a.m.: still no movement.

By 11 a.m., Cassie and I are worried. Fluffy is obviously ill, and we don’t know why.

“Should we call the vet?” Cassie asks.

“Not yet,” I answer. “He’ll snap out of it—this is Fluffy after all.” I exhort Fluffy to stand up for our sake, and for the sake of my wallet: “C’mon, Fluff. Fight it off. There’s no need to go to the vet.”

Sometime around noon, Fluffy rises. At first I’m encouraged, and then I’m not. Like an apparition—like a frigate moving through the night toward the light of the world—Fluffy waddles onward. He enters Cole’s bedroom. He stops at Cole’s desk. He throws up on it. He waddles back to the bathmat.

The mystery begins to reveal itself. Must be something he ate, I think. He’ll be fine.

By 3 p.m., I’m starting to have my doubts. Fluffy is still inert on the bathmat, his eyes expressionless. “If he’s not better by tomorrow, we’ll call the vet,” I say to Cassie.

Fluffy beached on the bathmat.

We have four other cats (yes, we’re batshit crazy), and they are all subservient to the mighty Fluff. His most ardent admirer is Charlie. She follows Fluffy wherever his travels take him, be it a windowsill, the corner of a bed or the top of my basement bar. Surely she has never seen her beloved Fluffy in a position of such weakness. Her face fraught with worry, she periodically checks on him in the bathroom.

At 4:30 p.m., Cassie and I place a paper plate of Fancy Feast and a bowl of water next to the bathmat. Normally the Fancy Feast—and perhaps the plate, too—would be gone within 20 seconds; today everything goes untouched.

At around 4:45 p.m., another of our cats, Penny, enters the bathroom. Penny is our wimpiest feline. If Fluffy so much as looks at her, she’ll spin around and run away. On this day, however, the world order has unexpectedly changed. Sensing that Fluffy the Tyrant is powerless, she saunters right up to the bathmat and eats his Fancy Feast.

At 5:30 p.m., Liv is back from her after-school activities, and she goes into the bathroom to make sure the Fluffster is still breathing. He is, but the situation seems dire nonetheless. Liv speaks to him, mammal to mammal, in the stunned, grieving canticles of a child unfamiliar with such unspeakable horror: “You poor thing, Fluffy.” After a remarkably long sigh, Liv pauses. A giggle then escapes—she just can’t help it. “He’s so fat, he looks kind of funny,” she says.

At 9 p.m., Cole works around the beached Fluffy while drying himself following his shower.

At 9:15 p.m., Liv is careful not to jostle him as she brushes her teeth at the sink.

At 9:30 p.m., I step over him en route to the toilet, as I’ve done throughout the day.

At 10:15 p.m., I’m lying in my bed, looking at a picture of Cole’s swim team on our new iPad. Suddenly, I feel something akin to a potato sack land on my stomach.

“Ouch,” I yelp.

I gaze up from the iPad and see Fluffy. For dramatic effect, he has jumped on me with all the force he can muster. After a few unsteady moments, Fluffy gets his footing on my stomach. His pupils dilated, almost psychotically so, he looks at me as if to say, “I’m back.” I reach over to pet him, and he bites my hand—though, as is his custom, not hard enough to break the skin. Indeed, Fluffy is back.

Somewhere in this tale is a lesson for the new year. I’m just not sure what it is yet.