Winston and Louis

[I posted this originally in January of 2018, but took it down when it became part of a book. Since the book has been out a while, I’m putting it back up.]

Today we lost a 14 year old cat and a 2 year old dog.

We got Winston Churchill and Emma Goldman on the same day around 14 or 15 years ago because someone in the Cedar Park neighborhood we were then living in (big mistake) was influenced by the “Secret Life of Dogs” (I assume) and so let his dogs out at night. They killed little dogs and cats, among them a neighbor’s dog two cats of ours. One of many reasons I’m glad we moved out of Cedar Park.

We got the two kittens from different rescue groups, and they bonded instantly. Winston was (we found out quickly) ill, but before we figured that out, he was waking us up around 4 am to harangue us, so we named him Winston Churchill (who was famous for the same behavior). It turns out Winston had a virus, which he passed to Emma Goldman (named that because she was clearly a total anarchist), and so I had to pill him multiple times a day. One of my secret superpowers is pilling animals (I also include fixing wonky toilets, getting total strangers to tell me their life stories, and losing things), so I was pilling this poor kitten all the effing time. I can do it, but I can’t do it in a way that animals like.

Yet, he forgave me.

We took to calling him Winston, and not Winston Churchill, because in many ways he was closer to Winston Smith. He disappeared whenever strangers appeared (there are people who’ve been over to our house many times who’ve never seen him), and we had to start working with an in-home vet because if we got out the cat carrier, he simply evaporated.

On the other hand, he could be incredibly brave. When we got him, we had a Great Dane and two mutts. Winston loved Emma, but he loved the dogs more. He spent his whole life sincerely believing he was a dog. He had complicated medical issues—he couldn’t eat fish, or eat anything from plastic. Because the Marquis de Lafayette was his best bud, he ate from the Marquis dish, and so the Marquis had to eat out of non-plastic containers and we couldn’t add fish to Marquis’ bowl. And Winston, at all of 12 pounds at most, snuggled with Hubert (120 lbs) and Duke (100 lbs).

For cats, head-rubbing is submission. Cats are not pack animals, and so normally the whole pack configuration isn’t really something to which it’s worth paying attention when you’re talking about cats. But it was interesting with Winston. Winston, after a while, took to beating up on Emma, so she dumped him, but he was entirely submissive to the dogs—to all the dogs. Most of the dogs tolerated him, but Hubert, George, Marquis, and Louis were actively sweet with him and allowed him to rub heads (which doesn’t mean the same thing in dog language).

After a while, the three cats each claimed domains, and Winston claimed the bedroom. He always slept with us on the bed, exerting the cat gravity power so that a 12 pound cat is actually an immovable force. He was probably the single most affection-loving cat I’ve ever had. For a while, he allowed Emma to sleep in the bedroom, but at some point that ended, and he allowed Sapphira to come in and get morning snuggles (Louis put an end to that, oddly enough). So, morning snuggles was Winston and the dogs. When we fed the dogs, he would head into the study, and eat out of Marquis’ bowl. Winston LOVED dogs. He especially loved licking their faces and ears. Hubert and Duke kind of liked it, and Ella and Clarence barely tolerated it, but Louis loved Winston. When we knew we were putting Winston down, I worried about how Louis would react.

Winston was always an indoor cat (with the exception of the catio), and he was until recently a beefy guy (and ended up being kind of a bully with Emma). The last year has been vexed in that we knew he was losing weight and something was going on, but he remained his dog-loving cuddle all night self. When definitive tests were done, he had major intestinal tumors and cancer that had metastasized to his paws. And so, today, we had an appointment with a vet to come and put him down. He was still, even with the damn cone on his head, cuddling with the dogs, and sleeping with us at night, but he was clearly unhappy. And he died, in the lap of someone who loves him, purring. He died about 90 minutes after Louis.

Louis was really sweet with Winston. Winston had a cancer that metastasized quickly, and gave him bloody tumors in his paws. He continued to sleep on the bed, and Louis (who always slept on the bed) accommodated him endlessly.

When Duke (a 100 lb Great Dane) died, we put in for rescuing a Mastiff. We’re good with big dogs, and they’re often hard to place. That mastiff rescue process wasn’t working well, and Jim knew I was a wreck about having lost Duke, and one day he said we should look at dogs. I assumed Jim was being sweet with me. We went to where APA was showing a few dogs, including what they said was a rottie mix (they marked him as large or extra large). I thought he was adorable, but I also thought Jim was looking at dogs for my sake, and so I took his enthusiasm for that dog as being supportive of my grief. I said we needed to look other places, and we did. And he kept saying, what about that rottie-mix, and I kept thinking he was just being kind to me, and so, when, after having looked at dogs at various other places, I said, “Yeah, I think that rottie mix is the best choice,” he rushed me to the car and drove like a maniac back to the place we’d seen him. He actually jumped a curb. That was the dog that would be named Louis.

We had had a dog, Duke Ellington, who was a wonderful dog, but a little bit staid. And then we got a puppy who adored him (and whom he adored) and who made him a little bit more playful, so we named her Ella Fitzgerald. And Duke died.

And then this rottie mix (he wasn’t) came home and bonded so thoroughly with Ella Fitzgerald that he was obviously Louis Armstrong.

And he was the most hilarious dog we have ever had. Austin is so good at getting dogs adopted that Austin now takes dogs from the shelters of other cities (and even counties), and Louis came from Bastrop. He had abrasions on his leg and neck suggesting he’d been thrown from a car (which is what people around here do to get rid of unwanted puppies—don’t get me started), and they thought he was going to get to be a large or extra-large dog. He thought he did. He got to be fifty pounds.

He was hilarious.

He hated mornings. He loved morning walks, but he never wanted to get up. He was the most talkative dog I’ve ever had. We’ve had dogs with strong opinions (Marquis is very clear that he thinks we should build a fire, nap, give him Dasequin, rearrange the dog beds), but Louis gave six-part Greek orations. We’ve had dogs with whom you could have conversations, but never a dog, but he had a lot to say. You could have a long conversation with him. Even I thought he could out-argue me.

We took him through all the Petsmart training, and he was a gem. My plan was, when I retired, that he and Ella would be our nursing home dogs.

He would have been great. He worried about other beings. If I sneezed, he would put his paws on me. He worried about Winston (especially once Winston got sick), and he worried about whether Clarence was going to get upset at seeing another dog (he sometimes does), and he worried about whether Ella was going to jump on me (she shouldn’t, and she does).

And he ate everything. He was the “can dogs eat…” dog. He ate the bark off our firewood, and he once ate a large part of an organic firestarting log. He ate arugula, watercress, lettuce, and all the things no other dog (even Clarence, who wouldn’t eat arugula) would eat.

And he cuddled. I have a high tolerance for sleeping surfaces, so our practice is that, when we get a new dog or cat, I sleep on some dog beds on the floor with them, and then we transition into the bedroom, and then into their finding their own space. The first night with Louis, he slept across my neck. Literally. The next night he slept across my chest, then legs, and then we were in the bedroom. And every night after that he slept cuddled in either my arms or Jim’s. And the night before he died, he crawled under the blankets, and had to be rescued because he got so hot he was panting. He was, without a doubt, the single most affection-loving dog I’ve ever had.

He and Ella were terrors—they were total siblings (although not littermates), with a hilarious game. Louis would dig a little bit in the ground, and this his job was to keep Ella from taking that little spot, and the two of them were tear around the yard with him keeping her from home. They jumped on each other at certain marked point on the morning walk (why those points, neither Jim nor I ever figured out).

We really worried about Louis because, although he was terrified of tires, he had NO sense about traffic. And he had a tendency to slip out behind someone who opened the front door. And we live somewhere that, if it’s raining or not, the front door might or might not entirely close. More than once we realized he had slipped out and we had to chase him down. It was our nightmare that he would get out and get into traffic. And our nightmare came true. He ran half a mile in order to get on a fucking freeway.
We had come to the difficult decision that we would put down Winston today, and therefore would spending all our time cuddling with him, and thinking about him. Louis slipped out, and we didn’t notice. This breaks my heart.

And, for reasons we don’t understand, he ended up half a mile away on a major freeway. A vet saw him just after he’d gotten hit, and tried to save him. And that vet (whose name we never got) took him to an emergency vet, but Louis was DOA. And someone called Jim, and he called me, and so the vet, Jim, and I all stood in a room and sobbed together over this hilarious dog who was now dead.

And so, today, we sent along their way a hilarious and young dog and the old cat he loved. I don’t believe in Hell (the scriptural basis for it is weak), but I believe in heaven, and I believe that these two are frolicking together. And the grief is for those of us who are left to mourn for them.