Enter the black man

I adopted Oscar knowing that he had FIV. He was 8 or 9, all black, and I fell in love with those pleading eyes looking back at me in the Craigslist ad. Sure, he had his setbacks, but that made me love him even more. After all, I know all about having illnesses that render you far from an ideal creature and somewhat challenged in finding someone to love you. I took home by black baby and we've been best friends ever since.

Nine years ago I had the hardest two weeks of my life. My estranged father was dying of lung cancer and I flew a couple hours to see him and say my goodbyes. What I found was a man on the verge of death, far worse than he was during our phone conversation, and it was up to me to take care of him at home until he died. I slept an hour or two every night and spent every other waking moment helping my father pee, cleaning soiled linens and his soiled behind, giving him five different medications and various intervals, fixing his oxygen tank that always seemed to have some problem, and sitting by him waiting for his last breaths. His death was less than alarming. He'd been in poor health for as long as I can remember, and until he died at 71, he always warned me that he didn't have long to live.

Perhaps that's what drew me to Oscar. I knew that his days were numbered and I wanted to take him into my care. That care has turned out to be of a little bit different nature than what I was expecting to give. Contrary to humans with HIV, cats with FIV can live normal lives, and when death comes, it comes quickly. Oscar was on no medications when I adopted him and I took him on knowing that I would love him until his body stopped working and I had to say goodbye.

Instead of an instant insurgence of FIV, what he's had instead is a series of health conditions due to old age. The first was prediabetes, the second chronic constipation, and the third high blood pressure, not to mention that he had been hit by a car sometime in his youth, needed six teeth pulled, and recently developed a heart murmur. The cost of these ailments increased by sly percentages: more expensive food here, a medication prescription there, until finally he vomited three times in one day and I had to pay $1000 at the emergency vet to get him cleaned out from his newly diagnosed megacolon condition.

I made these purchases without blinking an eye. Even though, because of my own illness, I am very short on funds, I don't think twice before taking care of my cat. I take care of him the way others take care of me, the way others believe in me and my worth despite my ill health. When I'm in flareups (which we've now discovered are probably seizures), Oscar is at my bedside purring and keeping me company. When I can't leave the house for days for the same reason, Oscar doesn't leave my side. While I have to depend on others to drive me to doctor's appointments, I can strap Oscar to my side and walk him to the neighborhood vet. In a nutshell, Oscar is an extension of myself -- an underdog who needs someone to vouch for his worth. He is also like me in the sense that no matter how hard things get, he never stops purring.

Because of Oscar's megacolon he is on even newer food, takes a pill twice a day, and may need costly surgery in the future to remove the colon. When this day comes I don't know what I'll do. Two weeks ago, when he wouldn't stop vomiting, and a week ago when he wouldn't poop, I was sure that that decision was eminent. I went through all the stages of grief: denial (I'll put thousands of dollars on my credit card, no problem), anger (why does Oscar have to be so sick at a time I can't provide for him?), bargaining (maybe I can get the money somehow), depression (I don't know how I'm going to live without him), and finally acceptance--knowing that if I did have to put him down that I wouldn't have failed at taking care of him and wouldn't be forcing him to die unnecessarily.

Fortunately his vomiting has stopped and his pooping has resumed. He is in no way out of danger, but for the time being his body is working. Oscar has been my companion during some of the hardest times of my life, and I can't bear the thought of me getting better and him having to die. One morning as I started to wake up, I thought of the similarities between Oscar and my father. Both lived a hard knock life, both faced years of poor health but rallied against it for as long as possible, both possess a certain charm that not many other men or cats possess (everyone is enamored with Oscar and my dad had women falling in love with him until the day he died). Both Oscar and my father are men that have come in and out of my life. Both have lived for a period of time under my care and both have received that care with everything I have to give. I have wiped their poopy bottoms, given them countless medications, taken them to doctors, and have had to deal with their potential losses of life. When Oscar dies I will be putting another black creature into the ground. I'll be the one who decides when it's Oscar's turn to go just as I decided when my dad needed to enter a nursing home. I will have another hole in my heart caused by the love and loss of a male who touched my life briefly and whose life before I entered it remains a mystery.

I came to my dad when he had no one, after he had made himself no one to me. Though he remains even more with me in death than he was in life, I've had to exist without him and wrestle through my own health battles, advocating for a diagnosis and recovery in the face of doctors who believed nothing was wrong. I've carried this skill on with my care of Oscar. I discovered he was drinking too much water which lead to the diagnosis of pre-diabetes. I made myself "intimately aware" with his poop cycles which finally convinced the vets that he needed treatment for constipation. If Oscar dies because of megacolon, I at least have the satisfaction of knowing I did everything I could to get him the correct diagnosis and receive the best possible treatment to make his life a better one than it would be otherwise. Every day that I wake up with him purring next to me is a day I've done something for him, for my dad, and for me.