May 10, 2010; Weather and Heights

Saturday it was raining—cold, shit-rain—all day so there was little or no chance of meeting up with Cleo. Sunday it snowed! Do you mother-fucking believe it! It fucking snowed! I mean, at the beginning of the April it was fucking 80 degrees and yesterday it fucking snowed! I blame humans for this.

But that, sadly, is not the point.

Last night I was out with Skeeter for my last walk of the day and who should I see zipping behind a building (during the wet snow) but Cleo! I called her over and she tried to pretend I hadn't seen her and then tried to pretend that she hadn't heard me and so I kept on yelling. But it was Skeeter's very gentle, "Cleo, come here sweetheart," which stopped her dead in her tracks and slowly, so very slowly, she came over to us both.

I was not my usual hysterical self because she looked woebegone from the wet snow and the cold. Then I noticed something. I mumbled up to Skeet, "Do you see that?" He sighed deeply and, it seemed, very sadly and said yes and he squatted down as Cleo approached us both very cautiously. "Where's your collar, honey?" I said to her.

"I don't have one."

"But you did have one," I said. And she mewed quietly. "I don't understand."

"She's been turned out," said Skeeter. "Sometimes when people move away, they go to an apartment that doesn't accept animals so they just take the collars off their cats and dogs and let them loose in the alleys and then move away, leaving them to fend for themselves."

"Wha...?" I didn't get it at all.

Then Cleo said, "Yes, he's right."

"BUT THAT'S FUCKING BARBARIC!" I shrieked in Dog-Speak.

Skeeter said, very, very quietly, "Ask her if that's what's happened."

She understood and mewed a yes to me. She was so weak and wet and hungry that I didn't know what to say.

My whole life was exploding right here and now. Nothing was making sense. I wasn't supposed to be a cute dog—something out of those wretched Family Circus cartoons (that idiot Barfy, I think he's called)—and I wasn't supposed to me a nice, movie dog like Tramp. But here I was living something straight out of a fucking Brontë novel or, worse, one of those winter scenes in Dickens that everyone cries at but which are just gross and human and downright bathetic.

"Come home with us," I said to her.

"I can't! No! I'm an alley cat now! I've been one for ten days! Since my family moved away! And I've been eating all sorts of crap in the alley and drinking puddle water and I'm not fit for anyone's home. No!"

"But this can't be. You're too...good for this."

"Yeah, well, they didn't think so," she said. "I hate humans. I hate all of them. I hope I get hit by a fucking car and this will all be over."

"Don't talk like that! It's stupid! Now just come with us!"

Suddenly she was gone. She just tore off and I tried to go after her and was shrieking her name and yelling, "Come back! Come back!" But Skeeter was pulling back on the leash. "LET GO OF ME, YOU FUCKER! LET ME GO AFTER HER!"

But he didn't. He slowly pulled me back to him and then kneeled down on the wet pavement near me and petted me gently. "There's nothing we can do. We can try. But I don't think she wants our help."

"But...but...but..."

And then there was quiet. "Her heart is broken, I think," he said finally. "I can't imagine how a cat feels when its been getting food and shelter and heat and affection and suddenly its just turned out like that. But it happens all the time, Leo, and there's nothing we can do about it."

We slowly walked back to the apartment. "She's right. I hate humans."

He sighed deeply and said, "I hate them too, sometimes. I don't understand anyone who can do that. But it happens all the time," he said again except this time it was just a sad, soft echo of what it had been before. "We'll do what we can for her," he said, "if we see her again—"

"—if?—" I said in a panic.

"—when..."

This morning, with the warmer temperature, I looked for her all over the place. I think Skeeter did too. But we didn't see her. Instead we saw garbage bags ripped open in the alleys and trash strewn everywhere.

Skeeter and I said not a thing as we went back, walking in the sun, to the warmth of our home.