Home Is Burning (15 page)

“Danny, you is up?” Stana yelled through my door as I lay in bed, still in my boxers, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, trying to figure out what to do with my morning wood.

“Yeah, I am now.”

“You is come with me. I is showin' you what son of a bitch kitties doing,” she said, pulling me out of bed.

“Did they piss again?” I said.

“I showin' you,” Stana said.

“I bet they pissed again,” I said, now awake.

Stana guided me to a corner of the living room where a fresh batch of cat piss had been pissed. “See, Danny. Son of a bitch kitties goin' pee all over here,” she said.

I shook my head in disbelief and asked if I could go check on my dying father. Stana continued to stare at the piss, shaking her head and muttering “son of a bitch” under her breath.

Her loathing of the cats grew so fervent that she eventually started describing ways in which she would brutally murder them.

“Danny, I is takin' kitty in backyard and hittin' with hammer on head.”

“Danny, I is takin' kitty and leavin' in middle of traffic.”

“Danny, I is takin' kitty and runnin' over with my car.”

“Danny, I is buyin' gun and shootin' kitty.”

“Danny, I is throwin' towel over kitty head and squeeze until no more kitty.”

She would have acted on any of these ideas had it not been for my mom's love of animals and unwillingness to take on any more death and tragedy. Mom had a particular love for Brighton. Brighton mainly hung out on my mom's bed, nestling up to her after brutal rounds of chemo. “She's my chemo kitty, and she's not going anywhere,” Mom said. When she had the energy to do so, she would plead with Stana to stop complaining.

“Stana, please. We're dealing with so much right now. We can't worry about getting rid of the cats,” my mom said.

“But Debi, kitty is ruinin' home. This is no home for kitty. Daddy is no healthy and kitty is makin' pee-pee all over bedroom,” Stana said.

“I know, Stana, but I can't stand losing anything else right now. Not even the cats,” said my mom.

“Stana take care of. I is takin' kitty in backyard and hittin' with hammer on head,” said Stana as she made a little hammering motion with her hands.

“Not today, Stana, please. I really need to lie down. I just had three hours of chemotherapy,” said my tired mom as she headed off to bed to get some postchemo rest.

Stana subtly announced her dedication to ridding our home of piss-easy cats when she showed up one morning with a large animal cage. She set it in the garage and woke me up.

“Danny, I is bringin' cage for kitty. You is catchin' and puttin' in cage and Stana is takin' kitty far, far away,” she said excitedly.

“It's six in the morning, Stana. Can I go back to bed?” I said, not able to match her enthusiasm.

“Okay, but when you is wakin', I is showin' you kitty pee in Mommy's room and we is catchin' son of a bitch kitty,” she said.

Though initially I had no problem with the cats, Stana slowly convinced me to hate them as much as she did. I found myself flipping them off anytime I saw one. I would occasionally catch one and shit-talk it for five to ten minutes. “You better watch yourself, you fucking cat. We're on to your pissing. Next time I catch you in the act I'm going to take you in the backyard and hit you over the head with a hammer, and then there is no more kitty.” The cat would usually mistake the aggression for affection and begin rubbing its head against my face with a solid purr.

When people brought dinner over, I found myself escorting them around the house, showing them all the places the son of a bitch cats had urinated. “And look at this corner. The cats pissed all over it. Those fucking sons of bitches,” I would exclaim.

“So, you're putting in an elevator?” they'd ask, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah. It's so my dad can get around the house. Don't know why he'd want to, though, since most of it is covered in cat piss,” I'd say as I was escorting them to another corner of the house. “Look at this area behind the couch. Those sons of bitches.”

“Um, okay. So where do you want me to put this lasagna?” they'd ask.

To me, the cats started to symbolize more than just a yellow marking on the carpet. They started to represent selfishness. Here my siblings and I were moving my dad's arms, wiping his ass, speaking for him, reading to him, showering him, and these lazy cats were running amuck in our house—pissing, sleeping, killing birds, playing with the curtain strings: everything we wanted to be doing ourselves, instead of the aforementioned Daddy Duties. Fuck those cats. Fuck those cats hard.

My siblings agreed with Stana and me. The cats were a big, disgusting problem. Chelsea was fixated on the fact that the cats were here because of BCB's allergy.

“It's just bullshit that Big Cock Brian can't be around cats, so we have to deal with them, ya know,” said Chelsea as she licked the salt off a pretzel.

Greg didn't like all the fur everywhere. “Living with this many animals is just sort of gross. We've got to get rid of them,” he said.

We asked Tiffany to take them back since Brian had moved to Maine, but she still refused. “Guys, Brian can't be around cats when he's in town. He's fucking allergic. Just fucking deal with it.”

Greg and I decided we needed my dad on our side if we were ever going to get rid of these cats, especially since my mom was no help. We convinced him that the cats were way worse than Lou Gehrig's disease. It got to the point where we would say, “What should we do with the cats?” and he would say, “Kill 'em.”

Stana had Greg and me so riled up one morning that we pledged that today would be the last day our house would be subject to cat piss. We were to wait for my Humane Society–loving, yogurt-eating, hippie-bitch mom to leave for chemo, and then we were going to catch those cats come hell or high water. Stana was going to lead the charge.

It was as though we were going to war. The only problem was that Greg and I were scared that the cats would catch on to our scheme and collectively decide to claw out our eyeballs. To curb our fears, I rounded up some old racquetball goggles for us. We teamed those with construction gloves I found among all the tools and gear, plus three layers of sweaters. We felt good and protected against the cats' piss-stained claws.

Stana didn't wear anything special. Just her regular cleaning uniform. She decided that all she needed was a large sheet to throw over the cats and then, “We is takin' son of a bitch kitty and puttin' in cage.”

My mom left for chemo and we started our hunt. We were able to chase Brighton into my parent's bedroom. Once she was cornered, Greg and I thought it best to focus on this son of a bitch kitty while Stana patrolled the halls for additional cats. Greg and I were terrified and having trouble seeing out of the foggy racquetball glasses, but we were determined to get this cat. Brighton had cleverly placed herself beneath my mom and dad's king-size bed, where she sat poised to claw the lord out of our eyeballs. Greg was on one side. I was on the other. Stana entered.

“Me is no findin' other kitty. We is focus on this son of a bitch,” she said as if she had been on the evil side of World War II instead of the tragic side.

Stana suggested that Greg and I lift the bed while she waited with her sheet. We lifted the entire bed. We couldn't see the action unfold and only heard Stana yell, “Son of a bitch, shithead kitty!” followed by the sound of a swooshing sheet and a struggling cat. We dropped the bed and looked over. She had Brighton wrapped up in the sheet. Poor Brighton struggled and made a meowing noise that sounded like “help.”

This is the part where we fucked it all up. Stana walked the cat over to me and said, “You is put son of a bitch kitty in cage.” As she tried to hand her over to me, Brighton squirmed loose and darted off. We didn't see her for another week, but eventually found her in our backyard storage shed. She was still shaking and clearly hadn't eaten. If cats could write, I'm sure she would have written a poetic, Anne Frank–like journal entry about hiding from her oppressors.

Before we could plan another attack that day, my mom came home. The game was over. “Why am I wearing these construction gloves and racquetball goggles? Well, Mom, because of all the construction dust, of course. I suggest you do the same, especially since you have cancer.”

Stana, Greg, and I were all disheartened. Stana said it best. “Son of a bitch kitty. Danny, we is be so close.”

*   *   *

The next week, Stana seemed to have lost her motivation. She didn't show me any cat piss. She focused on mopping the floors, washing the dishes, doing the laundry. I was tempted to grab her by the arm and guide her around to all the cat piss spots staining our carpet as she had done with me, but she seemed uninterested.

Wednesday rolled around and I realized that I hadn't seen two of the cats—Pongo and Pierre—for a few days. I asked other family members if they had seen them. “Not that I give a fuck, but have you seen Pongo or Pierre?” I inquired nonchalantly.

They realized that they hadn't seen them either. I figured that maybe they had had a powwow with Brighton and decided to take off to another house that wasn't ruled by terrifying dictators hell-bent on eliminating them.

Thursday came. No Pongo. No Pierre. I walked through the house inspecting the piss stains: none of them were fresh.

It was surprisingly depressing. If nothing else, the cats were a nice distraction from the dying parents. With no new piss sprouting up, I felt like I had to return my focus back to my dad. No more fun and games. No more trying to kill cats with Stana.

Later that night, Tiffany came bursting through the front door holding the two cats. “So some lady brought Pongo and Pierre over. She found them in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, by State Street,” Tiff explained.

Apparently pets are now required to have electronic ID chips implanted just below their fur so that, if lost, a vet or other local animal authority can identify them and return them to their rightful owners. Pongo and Pierre were both registered to my sister's address.

“What the fuck were they doing in the middle of Salt Lake?” asked my sister as she filled the cats' dishes full of water and food.

I knew. I knew it was Stana. I knew that she had decided to take the law into her own Holocaust-surviving, illiterate hands. I knew that she had gone behind our backs, rounded up the two cats in that cage she had brought over and left them for dead in the middle of Mormontown.

But I played it cool. “I have no idea. That's so strange. They must have run away or gotten lost.”

Tiff looked puzzled.

“Well, it sure is nice to have them back,” I concluded, petting one of them really hard.

We were all surprised to see the cats again, but no one was more surprised than Stana. On Monday morning, when my mom was too far away to hear, she approached me. “Danny, how is the kitty here?” she whispered.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Danny, I is catchin' kitty and takin' soooo far away,” Stana explained.

“They have these ID chips in their necks. Someone brought them back,” I said.

Stana shook her head and said, “Son of a bitch kitty. I is no believin',” as if the cats had thought up the whole ID chip idea themselves.

Later, my mom caught wind that Stana had taken the cats. She loved Stana but wasn't happy about this. My mom knew that I had been supportive of Stana's anti-cat ways, so she bitched me out to the point where I decided to love cats again, and then she decided to write Stana a long-winded note about how it is “my house” and that Stana “had no right to take those cats, even if they were peeing on our carpet.”

After my mom had delivered the letter directly to Stana's mailbox, I broke the bad news. “Mom, Stana can't read.”

 

MEET MIKE, MY DAD'S NEW VOICE

The loss of my dad's voice was the next step in the Lou Gehrig's grind. He could still talk, but his breathing was so weak it was really difficult to understand him. He was also about to go on a respirator, so there was a chance he would never talk again. We thus decided to buy him a fancy communication device, the ECO-14. The ECO would become his voice if it got to that.

My dad wasn't very excited about the thought of communicating through a computer. He was trying to hang on to the things he could do for as long as he could. He wasn't ready to give up his voice yet, so he saw the ECO as a tool to be used down the road, and only if completely necessary.

But I was pretty excited about it. Not because I wanted my dad to lose his voice, but because I viewed the ECO as a new toy. The second I heard that my dad was getting a computer that could talk for him, my face lit up. My palms got sweaty. I smiled for the first time in weeks. I couldn't wait to program phrases into the computer and hear it say them back in a Stephen Hawking–esque voice. I had always wanted to hear Stephen Hawking say, “Fuck my anus, you heavy-cocked whore,” and with the ECO, I finally could.

The ECO was a large, bulky device with a touch screen—though the touch screen proved to be almost useless since my dad could barely move his arms. He would eventually have to navigate the ECO using an infrared sensor and a silver dot placed on his forehead. The ECO Web site advertises this feature with the following cheerful description:

PRC's new ECO-14 ushers in a new generation of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices by combining advanced communicating and robust computing in a single device! This sleek, large-screened and versatile device is an AAC aid and Windows® XP-based computer rolled into one, allowing for powerful, independent AAC communication plus convenient, state-of-the-art computing on-the-go.

I liked the “computing on-the-go” part. As if my dad would be bouncing along on the subway, double espresso in his hand, needing to shoot an e-mail back to corporate before his racquetball match with his mistress.