LMNOPee
When my niece was a toddler, she would sing the ABCs. When she got to LMNOP, she would just hold a note and flip her upper lip with her tongue twice for “LMNO,” then land the “P” like a champ. I have loved the toddler muddle of LMNOP ever since. Somehow it came back to me when my step-daughter handed me a little gray and white ball of fur and said, “We brought you a kitten. It’s the runt.” We had a house full of kids and grandchildren that weekend, and everybody was offering up name ideas, including my partner, Bull, who thought “Ebola” pretty well expressed his opinion about cats. Never mind that he was the one who had engineered the whole thing, causing his children to drive all the way from New Hampshire to Western New York with the little critter meowing all the way.
Finally, I announced that the kitty already had a name. I spoke from the stairway, holding her in the air. They were looking up at me from the living room, their faces full of expectation. “Her name is LMNOP,” I said. “But we can call her “Pee.” Oh, the groaning! Of course, these were Bull’s kids, and they were all pulling for Ebola. No, she’s Pee.
Pee slept with me that night, in a niche between my left arm and side. That was 16 years ago, and she still sleeps in the same place every night. In fact, whenever I am in the house, Pee is attached to my body. Right now, her head is resting on my left thumb, bouncing along as I type. She is asleep, and she is dying. Of kidney failure.
The vet and I are keeping her alive for at least one more day so that Bull can return from a trip and be here when it happens. We will bury Pee in the flower bed outside our bedroom, and we will plant something wonderful to mark her grave. I am very calm today, so I can write these things. Yesterday I ate a picnic-size bag of potato chips and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s.
I am going to have to make a run for more Kleenex. But today I am calm.
Pee was always an athlete. She started retrieving balls at an early age, and we soon developed a wonderful game. If I opened the bedroom door to just the right angle, I could lie on my bed and bounce the ball off the door, causing it to ricochet off the wall of the stairway, and then bounce all the way to the living room. Pee would fly down the stairs, then back up, leap on the bed, drop the ball on my stomach, and wait breathlessly for my next toss. She could do this much longer than I could. And she soon learned the word “ball.”
Pee developed quite a vocabulary over the years, including “Dads,” “Bully,” “Mommy,” “Pee,” and of course, “Ball.” In quiet moments, she would rate these faves with her tail, kind of like the applause needle on some old TV show. You love “Mommy?” She would lift the tip of her tail. “You love Bully?” He usually rated about the same. “You love Dads?” This referred to any kind of food and got a pretty substantial, mid-air wag. “You love balls?” Balls got the full, flag-waving treatment, a regular 21-gun salute. A few years later we added, “You love Sluggo?” Cat number two got just the tiniest perceptible dotch at the tip of the tail, if that. Nuff said.
Well, I love Sluggo, and so does Bull. But there’s something about Pee. Something she captured in us, maybe. Something little on the outside, like her, and tender and vulnerable but big on the inside, capable and quick and funny and stubborn. Maybe that’s why her impending death feels like an amputation, at least to me. She’s taking part of me with her, and it feels huge. Will I still be able to walk? Sing? Smile?
I once lived for 10 years with a man who was blind. When we walked anywhere, he would hold onto my right elbow. After we broke up, I still felt his hand on my elbow for many months when I walked around the city. More than once while crossing a street, I accidentally told a complete stranger to “step up” as we approached the opposite curb.
I think it’s going to be that way when Pee is gone. I’m going to feel a furry head on my left hand when I’m typing. It’s going to feel awkward holding a book on my lap after 16 years of having to accommodate a kitty right where the book should be. I’ll still be extra careful rising in the night to go to the bathroom so as not to disturb the little darling next to me. And then I’ll realize she’s not there.
So many hours and days and years of pure joy, a relationship so singular, it is almost impossible to explain. Dependable to a fault. And she’s only a little cat. What do you think of that?
Finally, I announced that the kitty already had a name. I spoke from the stairway, holding her in the air. They were looking up at me from the living room, their faces full of expectation. “Her name is LMNOP,” I said. “But we can call her “Pee.” Oh, the groaning! Of course, these were Bull’s kids, and they were all pulling for Ebola. No, she’s Pee.
Pee slept with me that night, in a niche between my left arm and side. That was 16 years ago, and she still sleeps in the same place every night. In fact, whenever I am in the house, Pee is attached to my body. Right now, her head is resting on my left thumb, bouncing along as I type. She is asleep, and she is dying. Of kidney failure.
The vet and I are keeping her alive for at least one more day so that Bull can return from a trip and be here when it happens. We will bury Pee in the flower bed outside our bedroom, and we will plant something wonderful to mark her grave. I am very calm today, so I can write these things. Yesterday I ate a picnic-size bag of potato chips and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s.
I am going to have to make a run for more Kleenex. But today I am calm.
Pee was always an athlete. She started retrieving balls at an early age, and we soon developed a wonderful game. If I opened the bedroom door to just the right angle, I could lie on my bed and bounce the ball off the door, causing it to ricochet off the wall of the stairway, and then bounce all the way to the living room. Pee would fly down the stairs, then back up, leap on the bed, drop the ball on my stomach, and wait breathlessly for my next toss. She could do this much longer than I could. And she soon learned the word “ball.”
Pee developed quite a vocabulary over the years, including “Dads,” “Bully,” “Mommy,” “Pee,” and of course, “Ball.” In quiet moments, she would rate these faves with her tail, kind of like the applause needle on some old TV show. You love “Mommy?” She would lift the tip of her tail. “You love Bully?” He usually rated about the same. “You love Dads?” This referred to any kind of food and got a pretty substantial, mid-air wag. “You love balls?” Balls got the full, flag-waving treatment, a regular 21-gun salute. A few years later we added, “You love Sluggo?” Cat number two got just the tiniest perceptible dotch at the tip of the tail, if that. Nuff said.
Well, I love Sluggo, and so does Bull. But there’s something about Pee. Something she captured in us, maybe. Something little on the outside, like her, and tender and vulnerable but big on the inside, capable and quick and funny and stubborn. Maybe that’s why her impending death feels like an amputation, at least to me. She’s taking part of me with her, and it feels huge. Will I still be able to walk? Sing? Smile?
I once lived for 10 years with a man who was blind. When we walked anywhere, he would hold onto my right elbow. After we broke up, I still felt his hand on my elbow for many months when I walked around the city. More than once while crossing a street, I accidentally told a complete stranger to “step up” as we approached the opposite curb.
I think it’s going to be that way when Pee is gone. I’m going to feel a furry head on my left hand when I’m typing. It’s going to feel awkward holding a book on my lap after 16 years of having to accommodate a kitty right where the book should be. I’ll still be extra careful rising in the night to go to the bathroom so as not to disturb the little darling next to me. And then I’ll realize she’s not there.
So many hours and days and years of pure joy, a relationship so singular, it is almost impossible to explain. Dependable to a fault. And she’s only a little cat. What do you think of that?
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