Just transcribing the following is an emotional experience for ash.
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On late Saturday, July 22, or early Sunday, my beloved cat disappeared, never to return. Several other cats were outside that night, which they shouldn’t have been when no one was home. But it happens. They get out and may not feel like heeding your calls just because you happen to be leaving. You return and they’re on the porch, all present and accounted for, telegraphing the message, “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting forever.” Only on this occasion, one of them was missing. I yelled for him. He didn’t come. The next morning I resumed yelling, searched the block, searched it again, searched beyond the block, and began the grieving process. Now I read in the paper that some guy named Jeffrey M. Giller has finally been busted. It seems that over a period of years he amused – and, no doubt, enriched – himself by choreographing dog fights, often using smaller dogs and cats as enticement. Giller and those of similar proclivities have been described in these news accounts as “animals,” an affront to animals and the humans who love them. Is it semantics or should there be another term, demented beast, for instance? No, that’s too poetic. Giller and others of his ilk are sick, warped, twisted, and soulless. They’re subhuman. But they’re not animals. “Animal” is insulting to my cats, to everyone else’s cats, to everyone’s dogs, to everyone’s pets, to animals in the wild and to all God’s creatures everywhere.
I’m not eccentric and isolated. I don’t live alone. I do have (grown) children. I have a social life. I also do not hesitate to declare my cats family members. They are the children who never grow up and always need me. I depend on them just as much. They are a beautiful, loyal, innocent, fascinating, dignified, low-maintenance, endless source of comfort, entertainment, devotion, and wonder. And, as with children, when one is lost, particularly under mysterious circumstances, the others don’t replace him.
My cat trotted outside one night, for the last time. Then he was gone, literally without a trace. There were no signs of struggle with another animal, who wouldn’t have bothered to cover evidence. There were no remains in the street (how I cringe to say it), nor in the alley. There was no reason to run away and any decent person looking to adopt a pet wouldn’t take mine. What could I conclude but that someone snatched him? It made too much sense. My other cats were safe but he was the gentle, friendly, trusting one. Slightly overweight, slightly slow, getting older, he was the one who didn’t flee from strangers. He was the one most likely to be nabbed for nefarious purposes, and now I can only speculate whether this warped, twisted, soulless Giller was responsible, or some other equally demented individual who perceived my cat as nothing more than bait in his inhumane enterprise.
Now Giller faces prosecution for his crimes. Whether or not he is convicted, whether he spends time in jail, wherever he winds up, he will rot. So will the other subhumans who cruelly exploit animals by training them to be vicious or by taking them for the soul purpose of provoking other animals. The law defined pet as property, an inadequate category at best, which at least allows characters like Giller to be prosecuted for atrocities against them, for the demise of our loved ones. Whether my cat met this fate or something else entirely, Giller and others deserve whatever penalty the law accords. As for my cat, he was a most undeserving victim. He was intelligent, sweet, special, unique. He loved people food and used his wiles to attempt to procure it. Once, as a group of us sat around a coffee table over dinner, he slipped in at the corner, trying to look inconspicuous, assuming a human expression, hoping, if he got it just right, someone would pass him the chicken and mashed potatoes. It was so endearing I almost did. Now, of course, I wish I had.
I called him Marmalade, for his color; Marmie, for short. I keep a picture of Marmie by me bedside and gaze at it often. He was magnificent.
