davydog

Waking spontaneously in the wee hours, about 3:30 or so on Tuesday morning, February 17th after a short and fitful sleep, I slowly pulled myself up off the mat on the floor. When I got to my feet I quickly pulled on the rumpled pants, socks and shirt I’d thrown into the corner of the room only a few hours earlier, then pulled on my black leather boots. I had a job to do, one that I’d put off for two and a half years, and I had finally just figured out how I would pull it off. My job was to bury my cat Buddy, also known as “Little Buddy,” “Little Bastard,” “Boojual” and an assortment of other nicknames he’d earned over the years. Buddy died shortly after friends helped me move him, Nala and Nyra (his two “sisters”) and my daughter’s belongings out of our old dilapidated Victorian home in Northwest Portland and into a two bedroom flat in Portland’s so-called “Pearl District.” Actually “died” is not entirely accurate. Buddy’s life came to an end at the DoveLewis animal hospital, which had just reopened after undergoing a total makeover. There is where I took Buddy to ask the veterinarian to euthanize him.

Buddy arrived as a consolation prize in the form of a cute little kitten, a parting gift presented to me by Mary Elizabeth, the woman I sometimes refer to as “my first wife” (although we never actually married). After a stormy seven year relationship, Mary finally dumped me the year after we moved into an old Victorian house on NW 24th Place, just off Vaughn. A cat fancier her whole life, Mary’s gift brilliantly marked the end of one relationship with the beginning of a completely different one. For eighteen years, Buddy’s home was that Victorian house and the surrounding neighborhood. But eighteen years is a long time in cat years. Already in frail health, Buddy deteriorated rapidly after our move into the little downtown apartment. After a few weeks I clearly saw that he wouldn’t make it and decided to have him “put to sleep.” The veterinarian was thoughtful enough to allow me to cuddle him as she injected him with the lethal dose. Buddy fell completely limp, quickly and peacefully.

My initial plan was to take Buddy back to the old neighborhood and bury him there. But I’d already given away all my garden tools, so I put his little kitty casket “on ice” until I could figure out how I was going to pull that off. Of course “on ice” meant my refrigerator’s freezer compartment. I couldn’t help but note the irony of me stuffing a dead cat there. A quarter century ago Mary and I would occasionally chuckle over one of her best friend’s eccentricities. Lisa Marie, whom Mary befriended while still in grade school, kept the remains of a favorite cat who’d already journeyed to the great-litter-box-in-the-sky in her freezer. I can’t recall what Lisa’s reasoning was for putting her cat on ice back then. On the other hand, I had only planned for Buddy to occupy my freezer for only a few days or, at most, perhaps a week. Yet two and a half years later there he was, next to the Trader Joe’s salmon fillet and the partially-eaten bag of a “seafood medley” I picked up at Cash & Carry. Both had occupied that freezer for almost as long as Buddy did.

I kept Buddy in cold storage for so long because I couldn’t figure out how or where to bury him. Although I’d planned to take him back to the neighborhood he knew his whole life, I ultimately cooled to that idea. Next I asked Deanna, my daughter’s mother, if she’d mind if Sofia (our daughter) buried Buddy’s remains somewhere near their house on SW Broadway Drive. She said this would be fine, but I never followed up on that plan. But on this Tuesday morning I knew I would have to find a way to give Buddy a proper burial. I was already a week past the deadline the property manager gave me to vacate my apartment. Any further procrastination might result in some unfortunate apartment cleaner finding an abandoned dead cat in the freezer. Buddy’s ignoble “burial” into the nearest dumpster would almost surely follow. So luckily I woke up early with the answer: “burial at sea.”

After pulling on my clothes I pulled Buddy’s little kitty casket out of the freezer and placed it to the wire basket strapped to the rear fender of my bicycle. A short elevator ride took us to the ground floor where I pushed my bike, dead Buddy and all, outside through the building’s front door. Still dark, I pedaled a quarter mile or so to the bank of the Willamette River, near the northwest end of the Broadway Bridge. A row of trees and bushes hid the little walkway along the bank from the adjacent Albers Mill parking lot. The water line was relatively low for mid-winter, so I heaved Buddy’s casket the 30 feet or so it took to clear the tangle of brambles and concrete chunks that formed the river’s embankment and hit the water near the water’s edge. I barely made it, but the noisy splash scared off a gaggle of slumbering ducks, who immediately flew off in noisy indignation. Buddy’s little casket sank into the black water, where he freely drifted into the hereafter.