The Rainbow Bridge

I said goodbye to my best friend.  I broke down and cried in a way I had never before.  My kids, each on either side of me while my knees buckled and I had no choice but to sit, held my hands clasped tightly in theirs.  It was as though they were now Dads, consoling a small child that couldn’t understand what was happening.  In truth, they were the ones who couldn’t truly understand, at least not the same way as me.  One week later, as I brought his ashes home for the last time, I pulled out the multi-coloured page that was nestled into the big white envelope that held his death certificate.  As I read about the Rainbow Bridge, I began to feel at peace.

Lou came into my life one warm, humid fall day in the heart of bayou country.  My wife had accepted a teaching position—her first—and so hastily we decided to pack up our life in New Brunswick to move to southern Louisiana.  That trip held many firsts for us.  It was her first full-time classroom.  It was the first time I had ever been offered a classroom.  Of course, had I finished my Bachelor of Arts on time before we had arrived, I would have also had my first classroom, but that wouldn’t come for more than a decade.  It was my first time traveling so far from home, let alone moving permanently.  The term was two years, but she had the option to opt out after the first year.  I was not legally allowed to work, but I was still able to earn cash under the table doing odd jobs.  I lived in constant fear that someone would blow the whistle on me, and the INS would come swooping in to ship me back home.  Fortunately, our adopted town was extremely supportive of us, and I was never in any real danger.  For the record, I legally applied for temporary work permits three times.  I was denied all three after waiting months.  The third and final rejection arrived via our forwarded mail, several weeks after we were back in Canada.  Had they accepted me, I might have gone back down to work for a few weeks, just in principle.

While my wife was working hard establishing her new career, I found myself in sporadic droughts of work.  It wasn’t uncommon to go weeks without any work, so when our friends asked us if we would like to adopt one of their new-born kittens, we jumped at the chance.  By ‘we’, I mean ‘she’.  My experiences previously with cats had been less than enjoyable.  As a child, our family cat was Ophie, a white half-siamese and all-evil spawn of Satan that delighted in ambushing you in the dark from behind appliances, corners, and shadows.  I still have some of her scars.  She was spiteful and mean.  As a child, I wanted to love her, but I grew to despise her, jaded from a life of rejection and sheer resentment.  I think she was about twelve or so when she died.  As I write, I can’t recall if my parents actually took the time to put her down or if she just disappeared.  All that mattered was that she didn’t have to live another miserable minute.

Our new kitten represented another first for us.  We were ‘pet parents’.  You know the types.  A couple may or may not want to have kids one day, but they get either a dog or a cat and then tell all their friends about their pet as though he or she was a real child.  Pictures abound in wallets and on cell phones.  Funny little tales reminiscent of ‘baby’s first ___’ stories are bantered about ad nauseum to the rest of us, who fall into one of two camps.  We are either childless, and fall into two sub-categories—those who want to have kids but have yet to have any, or those who want no children, and stories of children or pets are equally tedious.  The rest are people who actually have children, and know that raising kids and caring for a pet, while in some ways are understandably similar, are without a doubt very different experiences. 

Without question, we were pet-parents.  Picking out our special little fellow from his myriad siblings, all wandering about aimlessly in our friends’ kitchen, was like staring into the nursery through the big plexi-glass windows, cooing how much cuter our baby was than anyone else’s.  We didn’t choose him.  He was the only one that stumbled over to us, rubbing up against our legs.  He was already in charge of our household.  He was a mixture of white and orange, with unusually long hind legs that made him walk as though he were on stilts.  His ears each had a tuft of hair that made him resemble a tiny lynx.  The rest of his brothers and sisters were all really cute, but our kitten stood out from the rest.  We brought him home a few weeks later after he was strong enough to eat on his own, and was ready to use a litter box.  In his lifetime, I could count on one hand how often he didn’t make it to his litter.

We named him Lou for two reasons.  The most obvious was that we were in Louisiana, and knowing that we were inevitably moving back home, and expecting to still have him, he would be a link to our adopted land.  Indeed, he was.  The fact that he survived that first year was a remarkable feat in itself.  Most people down there kept their pets outside, and as we all know, there is an abundance of wildlife in the swamp that would welcome a Lou-sized meal.  We kept him inside mostly, but often he would sneak outside when we weren’t looking.  More on those adventures later.

The second reason, which I thought was rather clever, was because we brought him home on September 25, my youngest sister’s birthday.  My father always called her ‘Lou’, or various derivatives thereof, and still does.  So, it seemed a no-brainer that Lou was his name.  There was never a second option.  We often joked that we would officially spell his name ‘Loux’, since many surnames in the bayou end with an ‘x’.  Over the years, he developed a whole bunch of nicknames that derived from ‘Lou’ in some way or rather.  Everyone has silly nicknames for their pets, and I challenge anyone out there to disagree.  Lou became ‘Loo-bee’, which slurred into ‘Boo-bee’, and often, just ‘Boo’.  I even called him ‘Lubomir’ for a while (the Russian variation of Lou, of course!)  When he chewed my plants, I might have called him a less savoury name.  But most of the time, I greeted him with ‘Boo’.  I still do.

Young Lou was, like any kitten, fond of exploring and climbing.  I would let him play outside in our fairly rural subdivision in those early days.  He always startled easily, which is probably a good thing if you are potential alligator prey in Louisiana.  He would dart up the nearest tree at the slightest crackle of a twig.  Try opening a pop can within 100 meters, and you may as well have blown a fog horn in his ear.  One day, he ventured a little too close to the edge of the bayou.  My guess is that the soil gave way and he fell in, after which he bolted straight up the tree right there next to him.  Oblivious to all this, I had begun to panic that he hadn’t come to the door as he always did.  Great, I thought, I had had a kitten for a few months, and I had already lost him to the swamp creatures.  I was standing by the bayou, when suddenly a slow pattering of dripping water on the leaves by my feet.  As I looked up, there was Lou, well beyond my reach, his short hair matted to his skeletal frame and caked in mud, shivering, his little heart beating out of his chest and his eyes wide as quarters.  I had no means to get him down, so I went back into the house.  Minutes later, I heard a rushing sound as Lou dive-bombed down the tree, and my brave little Simba made it to the door, completely out of energy and wheezing slightly from the bruising in his chesthe no doubt had suffered from the descent.  After cleaning him up, he curled up beside me on the couch and slept.  He would continue to do this for almost sixteen more years, and I miss it.

I decided in the wake of his harrowing adventure in the swamp that it would be best that he stay inside as much as possible, hence his beginnings as an indoor cat.  One day, I was sitting in the big comfy chair in the living room, when suddenly Lou began to meow at the door to be let in.  Odd, I thought, since I hadn’t recalled letting him out in the first place.  He came trotting nonchalantly in, and I went back to my book.  About twenty minutes later, I heard the same meowing at the door once again.  This time, I knew I hadn’t let him out.  Sure enough, it was Lou, and he once again strolled in, as though he knew he was late for curfew but didn’t care.  This time, I decided to keep an eye on him.  He lied down for a bit, then decided to go for a walk.  I quietly got up and followed him.  He walked down the hallway until he reached the washer and dryer.  Thin as he was, he slid in between them, and didn’t come back out.  I waited a few minutes then decided to investigate.  Behind the washer, there was a gaping hole, nearly two feet square in behind that I had never noticed before.  I moved the appliances back, and realized that the hole led under the subfloor, and eventually under the mobile home itself.  Lou could come and go as he pleased, but preferred to come in via the door.  I was relieved that I hadn’t completely lost my mind, but was suddenly horrified about the prospects of other animals two feet by two feet or less in size that could visit me at will.  We soon ended our time at that particular house and moved up the street into a much more secure dwelling.

In that new house, which was little more than a cottage, Lou remained an indoor cat, but that didn’t prevent the outside from finding him.  Lizards are common down south, and while harmless, they could be quiet pesky if they got inside, which they did often enough.  Fortunately, I had my own fierce hunter to keep us safe from our little reptilian friends.  One day, Lou had a lizard cornered, and was zeroing in on the kill.  The lizard had other plans.  He leaped up and bit him on the nose, enough to send Lou leaping about four feet backwards, his hair all frayed on end in his least-intimidating defensive posture.  The lizard escaped, of course, but not before Lou, in his best Sylvester impersonation spun his legs trying to gain traction to run, slipping and sliding all the way.  Another day, one of us had forgotten to let the bath water out, only to be reminded when Lou, who loved playing in the empty basin, swan-dove straight into an unexpectedly full (and probably by then cold) tub full of water.  It sounded as though a whale was breaching in there.  Yet, the dummy would continue to jump into the tub from time to time expecting it to be empty, with water occasionally still waiting to snap him back to reality.  We all have those ‘what was I thinking’ moments, and Lou was no exception.

The longer I type, the more I realize that I could fill whole chapters in a memoir about Lou.  He truly had a personality like no one else.  I know, everyone says that about their pets, and they’re right.  But Lou was unique.  He genuinely thought of himself as a person, just like the rest of us.  He was insanely jealous when Kieran was born, and had barely forgiven us for allowing this interloper into our family when Colby came along.  To make things even worse, we even got a second cat, specifically for his benefit.  He was lonesome when we returned to Canada, as I was working full-time again, and he was by himself more than ever.  Ivy was a dear little thing, mottled grey and black and a fraction of Lou’s now sizable girth.  He hated her passionately.  He bullied her away from her food, hissed at her, and generally tried to make life miserable for her.  She loved him nonetheless, and found ways to get her revenge.  One day, Lou was wandering past the kitchen table, unaware of the ambush Ivy had set for him.  I watched her crouch low so he couldn’t see her, and after wiggling her rump in anticipation, leaped in the air, all four legs splayed like a flying fox as she smashed his face into the carpet.  Instantly, she bolted, and as he came to his senses, he bolted after her.  You could have heard him cursing her.  Literally—he used to try to talk.  I could swear that he had learned to say ‘hello’, because he would say it in context.  I have witnesses, he could actually talk.  I can still hear his voice sometimes.

I intended to tell about the last few days of his life, but I just can’t do it.  Not yet, anyway.  He died just a few weeks after his sixteenth birthday.  I knew he was getting sick, but he just seemed like he was going to hold out for a while longer.  The vet suspected that he suffered a stroke in the end, and I refused to let him live scared and confused.  Just like I had done with Ivy several years earlier, I brought him in to the vet so he could fall asleep peacefully for the last time.  Kieran was there.  He held his paw, and told me that he winked at him just before he fell asleep.  I believe him.  When we came home, all it took was one glance at his food dish before I completely broke down and cried.  Colby, too shaken to be present at the vet clinic, held me tightly before Kieran came in, himself already in tears yet trying to be strong for his dad.

Lou represented more to me than just being a beloved pet.  I’ve had other pets I’ve arguably loved as much.  But Lou was different.  He was indeed a link to a much more innocent time, living in the bayou far from family and friends back home.  He was my first real attempt at being a parent.  He was fiercely devoted to me.  He was also a symbol of a relationship that has ended in recent months.  Moving into my new house was a little easier knowing my co-pilot was there with me even on those days when my kids weren’t.  He had commandeered the best seat in the new living room for his own, and to this day, I don’t sit in the big chair, because its Lou’s chair.  Kieran sits there when we watch TV because he feels Lou close to him.  He is. 

We’ve decided to put a collage of Lou photos up on the wall above it, with a small shelf to hold the small box with his ashes.  Colby wants to make a wood-burn sign that says ‘Lou’s Corner’.  We will also frame the poem the vet gave us with his death certificate.  It is called ‘The Rainbow Bridge’, and it describes how pets are waiting for their owners at the edge of the legendary Norse rainbow bridge that leads to the afterlife.  When we die, we find our faithful friends, and cross over together.  I like to think that when Lou arrived at the bridge, he had forgiven Ivy, and that they will be there playing together when I make my own journey.  I hope he’s forgiven me for leaving water in the tub or calling him not-so-nice nicknames when he chewed my plants.  For now, I still hear him jump off the bed, walk down the stairs, and say ‘hello’ when I come home from work.  A day doesn’t go by that I don’t talk with him.  I should never say ‘never’ I suppose, but I don’t think I’ll ever get another cat.  I was lucky enough to have had the best. 

Miss you, Boo.