The Irony of Cats and My Life

I have, in my lifetime, owned nine cats. Ten if you count the stray Pete and I tried to adopt before our hateful, anti-people, anti-animal landlady kidnapped him (her?) and shipped him away.

I received the first of those nine cats while I was living in Fayetteville, NC, in 2003, I think, from my girlfriend at the time. She had caught Lancelot in her old neighborhood and brought him to me. He was a doll, I must say... big eyes, scared shitless of my dog, Jax, and loved to attack my toes and my eyelids while I slept (the latter of which is quite frightening when you think about it). I didn't have him long. A stupid fight led to Lancelot running away in the middle of a golf course. I found him a few weeks later, but by then he had been acclimated to running with the other feral cats... and besides, some old lady was taking care of him.

My next two cats were Galahad and Guinevere (noticing a pattern?). I was to pick up Galahad as part of my apology for scaring Lancelot away, but when I got to where I was to get him, I noticed Guinevere. She looked a lot like Lancelot, which was one of the reasons I picked her up. Little did I know that this decision would turn my household into a fucking zoo. Galahad ran away shortly after I moved to Wilmington, NC, in August or September of 2004. He just really wanted to go home to Fayetteville, I think. He ran out of the house while I was shooting a student film. One of my buddies offered to chase him down, but I assured him that Galahad would come back. I was wrong. At the time, Galahad was my favorite cat.

Guinevere ran away while I was stuck in Dayton, NV, this past June. I saw her out the window, walking by my dad's truck. Had I known that was the last time I'd have seen her, I'd have went outside to play with her one last time. At the time, she, like Galahad, was my favorite.

While still in Fayetteville, Galahad and Guinevere had a litter of four cats. We named them Gawain, Tristan, Merlin, and Vivianne. Merlin and Vivianne were given to my roommate at the time, Joe, while my then-girlfriend convinced me to keep Gawain and Tristan.

Gawain died while in Wilmington. He had been sick, came home with some cuts from a fight... my girlfriend let him outside on accident. I never saw him again. When he had disappeared, Guinevere had been gone on a "vacation" (she came back later), so, as before, he had been my favorite.

Tristan disappeared last week. He wasn't my favorite, but he had been my girlfriend's favorite, and I feel a deep and quite strange sense of guilt for having lost him. What makes it worse is that the day he disappeared, I could've sworn I heard a stuck cat meowing from underneath my truck as I drove to work... my dumb ass chalked it up to the radio, but I'll never know for sure, and it makes me ill.

While in Wilmington, Guinevere had given birth to another litter of Galahad's children (he had run away by this time). This litter was named Arthur, Kay, Sagremor, and Isolde. For some odd reason, I kept all of them.

Isolde ran away the day after Guinevere did. I don't know why. Maybe because she was mad that I just spayed her two days prior. I've seen her and Guinevere together once since then, but it was in the middle of the night in an open field a couple of miles from me. They looked healthy, and none of my traps were working, so I forced myself to let them go.

Arthur died early in August of this year. He was sick, and one day decided just to go somewhere and die. I'm still sick to my stomach about it. Guess what? He had been my favorite, too.

Kay and Sagremor are all that are left of my nine cats. The irony here is that, prior to leaving Wilmington, I had decided to get rid of two cats in order to alleviate myself of some of the burden of taking care of so many animals. Guess which two?

I sure am glad that I'm stubborn when it comes to pets.

I was going to tie this story into something relevant, but I've just depressed myself... have a nice day.