IN MEMORY OF MY PETS

My Cat Apollo Died This Week. He Was My Last Remaining Childhood Pet, And A Very Special One At That.
By Gregory Jacobs-Roseman (Composer-Lyricist)

Apollo as a kitten.

On this past Monday my cat Apollo died. He was 21 years old (in human years) and the last of my childhood pets to go. The cause was kidney failure due to complications during surgery. He lived a wonderful, long life, but he didn’t have to go just yet – I thought I’d get to see him when I go back home in June. Luckily, I’m grateful that I saw him just a month ago in March – and he was just as obnoxious and loud as ever. He was a very, very special guy to my family, and I don’t think I’ll fully process the loss until I’m home again and he’s not there to greet me at the door, yelling at me for attention as he follows me though the hall and up the stairs to my room to drop off my luggage.

I never thought I’d openly weep over the death of an animal. I had many growing up, as my brother was somewhat obsessed with animals of all kinds. At one point or another we always had some exotic pet: an iguana, a hedgehog, a chinchilla (I think…or was it a ferret? Anyway, there were many). We had rabbits. We had gerbils. We had fish. There was a frog at one point. We even had a chicken coop that housed chickens and ducks my brother had hatched from eggs and raised – until a wild fox got in there and ate them, and that ended that experiment. But our cats were always my favorite – and Apollo was different. He was special. He was the one who stuck around.

Apollo again. Sometime in the late 1990's.

When he died, I went though an old box of photos and found many of him as a kitten and my other cats back in the mid-to-late 1990’s. They’ll be dispersed throughout this post. This is going to be less of a eulogy and more of a remembrance through photos old and new. Get ready for a cuteness overload.

Zachary, who apparently needed a bath at the time.

The first pet that I ever had was a dog named Zachary – named so for the white stripe on the back of his neck in the shape of a “Z”. He was a beautiful purebred Siberian Husky with the most piercing blue eyes. We got him as a puppy and he was a gift for my 3rd birthday. He grew to be massive – usually overpowering me when I’d try to walk him (Huskies are bred for pulling sleds, after all). He loved being outside and rolling in the dirt. He passed when I was about 15, and at 12 years that is a perfectly normal lifespan for a dog. I was sad to see him go but though he was my earliest pet, we never really formed a strong emotional connection. Perhaps I was too young.

Gizmo, who with this photo you can tell was around before I took up an interest in photography.

Many years after we got Zachary (I can’t remember when – for the record, I called my parents to fact-check this post but they were unavailable by the time this had to go to post) we got our first cat Gizmo. I can’t remember much about Gizmo except that she was a cat and she was our first. The sort of grand dame of the four cats we had over the years. She was perfectly pleasant, but not someone whom I cried over when she had to be put down – by then we had two other cats in our midst as well.

 Skittles.

Concurrently we acquired our second cat, Skittles. Skittles was awful – most of the time. I don’t know what happened to her during her upbringing – I don’t know if some traumatic event took place that I was never privy to, but she spent all day hiding under the kitchen stove for most of her life. That is, except in the middle of the night, when she would quietly creep up into my room while I was still awake, crawl under the sheets, and snuggle with me. It was a special little time the two of us shared. But any other time of day she was either under the stove, or hissing at me. If I remember correctly she was put down after she started peeing on all our furniture and refused to stop. My parents aren’t mean to animals, but fuck with the furniture and you’ve crossed a line.

Metro.

Next, because my brother’s love of animals couldn’t be satiated, came Metro. We had previously only purchased female cats because someone had told us that they had a better temperament – we found out that was dead wrong. Metro was purchased with us thinking he was a female, but when we took him to the vet for the first time and the doctor called him a “he,” I corrected him, saying “you mean ‘she.’” The vet’s response was – I’ll never forget this: “not if she has a penis!” And that’s when the phrase ‘cat penis’ entered my life. Metro was a doll. A rambunctious little kitten who grew into a truly loveable cat. And thus it was these three cats for a few years.

The only photo of our first three cats together. Gizmo (foreground), Metro (middle), Skittles and the stove she loved to hide under (background).

Then Gizmo died – and we were left with two cats. One of whom never showed herself because she was always in hiding.

Metro & Gizmo. Playing? Fighting? 

Enter Apollo. Dear, sweet, beautiful Apollo. I don’t think you can know what an animal – especially a cat or dog – will grow into when you get them as infants. I think we selected Apollo because of his beautiful stripes and spots. The one physical aspect of him that I always noticed and admired was his snout – longer and more pronounced than most cats, which made him look to me like a lion – or as someone commented when I mentioned his passing on Facebook – a panther.

We knew there was something special about this kitten from the beginning – for one thing he was the most playful of any cat we’d encountered, as well as a total attention whore. As a kitten he ran about the house – often headfirst into glass doors – chasing anything that moved. And his voice – my god, you’ve never met a more talkative cat. He would never shut the fuck up throughout his entire life. Speaking at you was a way to get treats and attention. He rubbed his body against any right angle that existed in the house while staring you down and asking for your love – even if that right angle happened to be a knife block on the kitchen counter. If Apollo had been born a human, he would’ve been a musical theatre actor. But I mean like, a super-gay musical theatre actor running down Christopher Street at 4am belting out “Rose’s Turn” at the top of his lungs, not giving any fucks about how many people are sleeping in the apartments above him.

Kitten Apollo and Metro.

He became fast friends with Metro – something I didn’t remember until I went looking through these old photos – but Metro wasn’t around for long. He had to be put down at a young age. I don’t remember exactly why, but I’m pretty sure the reason was medical. By this time Skittles was also gone, so Apollo now had the house to himself.

Apollo and Metro again. You can tell it's the 1990's from the sofa upholstery pattern.

That didn’t mean he was lonely. He had plenty of humans to play with – and he loved playing with us. It wasn’t just to get food out of you, though he loved human food – the sound of a slice of Kraft American cheese being unwrapped would send him running, which I why I could never get a midnight snack when I was home from Boston or New York – it was just that he knew he was loved and he loved us back. As he grew over the years, his need for attention never subsided. When I saw him a month ago, he still wouldn’t be quiet or leave me alone, no matter what time of day it was.

 Kitten Apollo. I know it's out of focus BUT LOOK AT THAT FACE.

Apollo was the constant in my life for over two decades. When I packed my bags and moved to Boston for college (the first time I lived outside of Delaware since I was 1) I knew Apollo was still there. When I packed my bags again and finally moved to my dream city of New York, I knew Apollo was still there. And every time I’d make a trip home – be it under happy or sad circumstances – a weekend getaway, a high school reunion event, the passing of my grandfather, my uncle – I knew Apollo would still be there. He was the last connection to when I was 10 or 11. The last connection to when I was going through high school and my awkward teenage years and he was the only one I could “talk” to. Sure, he was getting old, but he was always there.

 Older Apollo. July 2011. He had a procedure done on his right ear before this so it always drooped a bit after.

I should have known something was up a month ago. I was home to bury my uncle who had just passed away from cancer – I wrote about that on here previously, and on the surface Apollo was his old self – meowing loudly every 6 seconds, begging to be pet, but he was more emaciated than I had seem him in recent years – all skin and bone. One night I was up late and he was howling at the top of his lungs at the bottom of the stairs. Not his normal meows, which had gotten deeper over time, but this was a low, guttural, body-consuming sound that was held much longer and seemed to shake the whole house. I asked my mom about it the next day and she said that he does that all the time in the middle of the night, but I could sense something was up. As I prepared to go back home to New York, Apollo was politely meowing as before, but somehow it seemed more desperate. I turned to my mom and said: “I think he’s trying to tell us something. I don’t know how much time he has left.”

Apollo, March 2015.

They took him in for surgery on April 16th. The next day I got a call from the vet, who had dialed my number by mistake (my phone number is one digit off of my parents’ – yes, I’m a 31-year-old man who still has a cell on his family’s plan, we’ll unpack that in another post):

“…calling with an update on Apollo. After we spoke we started him on IV fluids containing Calcium, also started him on [drug name I can’t decipher] for nausea. He definitely perked up with that where he was picking up his head more and moving around a little bit more…”

At this point I’m going to stop transcribing the voicemail because I’ll break down crying and never finish this post. Basically his heart and kidneys were totally fucked. My father – who truly loved Apollo more than I thought was possible – said they were keeping him alive through the weekend to see if they could get his kidneys working. They couldn’t. He died this past Monday, April 20th.

There has been too much death in my life recently. To lose an animal is far better than losing a human relative. I know that. But there’s still something about comprehending the fact that a presence that has been with you for so long is suddenly no more that cuts deep into our human psyche. Often, you just feel helpless, wishing there was some action you could take, but knowing there isn’t.

I want to say goodbye to my old pal who stuck around for 21 years. My old buddy who was there as I transitioned from the boy I was in middle school to the man I am today. My little asshole who always made way too much noise, but gave us so much love that you couldn’t get mad at him for it. I’m truly sad to see you go, old pal. I thought we had a little more time together. But I love you, so very much. 

 
March 2015.

Now that all my childhood pets are gone it feels like there’s a void back in Hockessin, Delaware. The silver lining is that my co-op building here in New York, where I have owned an apartment for almost 10 years, and has had a ban on pets all that time, has just voted to allow residents to own small dogs and cats starting this month. Apollo is irreplaceable. He was one of a kind, but I may just have to see if I can find the kind of love he gave us again.

 

GREGORY JACOBS-ROSEMAN is a composer/lyricist and theatrical sound designer. His musical Save The Date: A Wedding Road-Trip Musical won the Overall Excellence Award for a Musical in the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival. gregjr.com
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Comments

[Laurie jacobs]

Thank you Gregory. I miss them all. Mom