The Final Countdown (1): The Year of the Cat

Long after this year began its turn into shit, but long before the events of the past few months, I was reminded of that longago Al Stewart song when our 2020-"met" friend Maria Sebastian covered it:
 

Watch on YouTube

(Those of you I've gotten to know, or know better, through all of this bring most of the best memories we will have of this year.) 

Back in April, I linked to that video, and to the story behind the song in an Al Stewart link where he recounted the full tale of its creation a few years ago during a UK performance:

This one came about in a really strange way. Tim Renwick previously played in a band called The Sutherland Brothers, and they had a keyboard player called Peter Wood. I was touring in America in 1975 and Peter Wood continually, at every soundcheck I ever went to, he played this riff on the piano. After I heard it about 14 times I said, 'You know, there's something about that. It sounds kind of haunting and nice. Can I write some lyrics to it?" And he said: "Sure, go and write some lyrics."

But that was the easy bit. The difficult bit was writing the lyrics. Eventually, I came up with a set of lyrics about an English comedian called Tony Hancock and the song was called "Foot of the Stage." He committed suicide in Australia and I saw him right before he went there and I knew there was something terribly wrong. And so, I wrote this song about him and the chorus was:

Your tears fell down like rain
At the foot of the stage

The American record company said, "We've never heard of Tony Hancock. We don't know who he is." So, then I thought, "Well, that's annoying so I'll take the piss out of them.'"So, I wrote a song about Princess Anne called "Horse of the Year"

Princess Anne rode off
On the horse of the year

They didn't like that either.

I was beginning to lose my mind because I had this piece of music forever and I couldn't think of any words. I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a book on Vietnamese astrology, which was kind of obscure, and it was open at a chapter called "The Year Of The Cat." Now that's, I think, the year of the rabbit in Chinese astrology. I'm not too sure. I don't know a whole lot about a whole lot of things but I recognize a song title when I see one and that was a song title.

But then another problem: what do you do? "The Year Of The Cat.'"OK, well:

I used to have a ginger Tabby
And now I have a ginger Tom
The first one made me crabby
The new one...

I thought, "You can't write about cats, it's ridiculous." And I was absolutely lost and then the Casablanca movie came on television and I thought, '"Ill grab Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre and see where it goes."

Somehow or other, in between all of that and Vietnamese astrology, we came up with this. Thank you, Peter Wood, for writing the music. He's no longer with us but thank you, Peter.

(And this was years before Andrew Lloyd Webber proved you CAN write a song about cats;)

We never bought any new ALW music this year, other than the couple of new songs of his and/or Taylor Swift's that appeared in the film adaptation of Cats- a movie that was about as 2020 as anything (and which several movie critics, including this one, were briefly reminded of near the end of the new Wonder Woman film).  But Cats, and the continuing Dog, accompanied the story of 2020 for us as much as anything or anyone.

Our year began with sadness over Zoey's cancer diagnosis.  Yet she showed no signs of failing. There were still purrs, and play, and nighttime nuzzles.  By spring, we questioned the veterinary advice about not bothering with her annual shots, but by then, our vet was emergency-only and she got her shots at a Petsmart clinic.  Her tumor has receded and slightly rebounded, but damn if that cat isn't as bright and determined as ever:)



That thing with the tongue is called blepping. It's a good thing- a sign of comfort and trust. Our first beloved cat was a blepper.

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Evil Cat is unchanged. We caught her in a rare cuddly moment with her sister last January:



- but she's more likely to be hissing at her, avoiding her, or getting in our faces with MEOOOOWWWWWs and swiveling tail. 

Pepper remains scared to death of both of them. I've taken enough parp pictures of her throughout the year to not need to go looking for more; she was the first of our companions to get in for a vet visit after things slightly reopened, and we discovered that she had put on about as many pandemic pounds as I had. That resulted in cutting wet food out of her diet and reducing her kibble portions, adding a daily snack of carrots and celery to her routine, and making sure we took longer daily walks and she got at least some off-leash running chances even if not officially allowed to.

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But the big change was the decision, in the fall, to add lives here for the first time since Pepper came three years ago, and the first kittens since Zoey arrived in 2009.  We wound up with a pair of boykitties from the same litter, though not necessarily of the same daddy, so they'd have each other to bond with and fend off the other tenants.  After a day or so of cat hissing and canine confusion, everyone settled into the new routine: Zoey started playing and occasionally mother-henning them, Michelle mostly stayed out of their way, and Pepper was, for all intents and purposes, a piece of furniture with feet:



And all was well until it wasn't. This month began with the first vet clue of Boz being underweight. We changed feeding routines.  Then he seemed much more interested in seeking out warm, quiet places than in interacting with the humans or playing with his bro.  That led to the Two Tuesdays before this past one, which ended things for him.

We did poetry last night; Eleanor read for the first time, two poems about his loss that were beautiful and heartfelt. I didn't have anything prepared, but asked for them to give me a random "prompt" for the second half:

We couldn’t go inside.
There was too much sadness in there.

I had half an hour to write. I needed barely half, because I knew I would be going back to the place I couldn't go in two Tuesdays ago, to the Green Acres Animal Hospital and Emergency Veterinary Hospital, site of our vigil.

2020 shows itself out
Slamming the remote where the sun don’t shine
On Nick at Nite and MeTV
Where my childhood never ends
But life does.

 

Mary Ann died of COVID today.
The ordinary one on the island where the movie star wasn’t the most beautiful
And the professor couldn’t fix a hole in the fucking boat.
♫Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful bug
That wasn’t contained and called a hoax
By hideous Repugs. ♫

And up next on Retro Ray:
♫GREEEEEEEEN Acres is the place to be
If you’ve got a vet emergency! ♫
We sat on the Boulevard on a cold December night
With a life born in August and entrusted to us in October

It was a virus, probably a coronavirus, but not THAT coronavirus.
Hindsight’s not THAT 2020.
But because of THAT coronavirus, there we were.
No touch, no disinfectant smell, no talking with our fellow furmamas and dads.
Confined to our pods in a parking lot just north of the 290
And just 30 kilometers from the Rainbow Bridge.
Literally.

In another time, we’d have met our fellow mourners.
Shared tales of the good moments, given each other hope and support.
This was not to be. And a week later, neither was he.

We decided before we heard about dollars.  There would have been a lot,
But there also would have been isolation,
Intrusion,
Infusion and injections.
Away and apart from the two bipeds who’d come to love him
And the four quadripeds who were already missing him.*

He came home. Rebounded. Returned.
GREEEEEEEEEEEN Acres wasn’t the place for him.
He left us surrounded by souls, not stitches.
I love yous, not IVs.
Quietly. But together. 

We couldn’t go inside.
There was too much sadness in there.
Out there, and in here, it will always be there.
But so will his memory, and the buzzsaw of his purr, and his spirit.

* At this very moment on the Zoom meeting, Evil Cat jumped into my lap, looked right into the camera and gave everybody a death stare.

A week later, Boz passed in the night. Quietly and warmly.  His ashes will soon come home and join many others once the ground in the front garden is diggable.

We've taken to calling his brother by his full name, Bronzini, because at the end, we mostly used its shortened Z-version when yelling at the poor guy to stop fighting with Boz.  That's the full name on his tag, which we ordered and put on him yesterday:



He of course thinks it's a toy and has tried wrestling it off. Tough luck, Toots. You're ours. (He's also chipped, just in case.)

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Will 2021 bring a new fren closer to his age? Will Zoey make it another year? Will Evil Cat burn down the house? Will Pepper ever scratch to go out in the back yard and actually leave the top step?

Come back tomorrow.