Amanita.net

It’s time to make this post. It’s a post I’ve been avoiding for a couple of weeks, but it has to be done. It belongs behind a cut, because it’s sad and unappetizing. For those of you who visit via an RSS reader, and don’t care to read sad things about animals, let this opening and picture be your warning to skip to the next unread post. There’s no judgment – I am very bad at handling sad stories about animals myself, and if this were not my own story, I would rather not know it.

We adopted Boo in 1998 from a lesbian couple down the street from my mom. They had several children, several pet rats, and their cat had just given birth so they were seeking to adopt out the kittens. One of them was called Turbo, and we chose him. Because our cats have been named for mushrooms, we gave him the name Agaricus, but we never called him that…as I recall he was Boo or Boo Boo from very early on. Here is what he looked like as a kitten:

He was always a wild boy. I’d say he spent 85% of his time outside, and he was always skittish inside. He didn’t like anybody who wore shoes – if you had bare feet, it was fine, but he didn’t like shoes clomping around. He was most often seen exiting the cat door – you’d come in the front door, wearing shoes of course, and he’d take off and all you’d see was his tail.

He loved the drain systems all around our neighborhood. I’d sometimes see him disappear up the culvert that runs alongside our house; we later heard that he would disappear into other drains elsewhere around. Come to think of it, I suspect he didn’t do a lot of street-crossing – he’d just go under!

Inside, he was always talkative. His natural meow, the regular greeting “hey I’m here pay attention to me” meow, was a whine. It always sounded like he was complaining! And sometimes he was – if he had to be kept inside for some reason – like the time recently when he was in an E-collar – he would whine his head off until you let him out. Even when he was inside, he enjoyed looking out the window. Here he is enjoying the outdoors.

He got along pretty well with the other cats. Here he is with Amanita and Toadstool (that’s Wu in the picture in the back), sleeping in a basket. All the cats in that picture have now passed on, actually. He only didn’t like Mischa, and it was because Mischa didn’t like him – he’s what they call “cat-aggressive,” meaning he’s sweet with people but an asshole to other cats. We later heard that even when Boo was visiting others, Mischa would come and try to pick fights.

So this was Boo’s life, for 13 years. On July 10, 2011, he was seen at home. That was the last time any of us saw him alive. I didn’t see him – I saw him maybe a day or two before. In fact I didn’t even know he was missing until the 14th. But he was always a wanderer, and in summer he’d sometimes disappear for a couple of days. But he always came home, especially if it rained. Except…it had rained already that week, and he hadn’t come home. The middle of the following week, I put up signs. They were from PetLink, the registry his microchip was under. See, I’d gotten him a microchip a year or two ago, because I always figured he’d wander off someday. I’d collected some of his fur after a grooming, too, but that batch seems to be lost now. A housemate found me a bit of orange fluff, though, so I have that. But anyway, I put up six signs, with our number added and pull-tabs with the PetLink info and our info.

We looked for him, mostly behind our house, along a stream that runs back there. We called out to him. I didn’t know what we were looking for. But we had to look.

At 11pm on July 23rd, a neighbor called. She said she thought our cat sleeping was on her back porch. We weren’t home, though, we were visiting a friend in Pasadena, MD – about an hour away. We were already asleep in a guest room, and my wife heard the phone ring, but didn’t recognize the number and didn’t wake up enough to connect it to the cat. The next morning, she listened to the voicemail, and we immediately packed up and drove home to call around her house. We didn’t find him, but it gave us tremendous hope that he was still alive nearly two weeks after he was last seen at home.

We thought it strange, though, that she was so close to us. Our neighborhood is made up of cul-de-sacs branching off a central dead-end street…she was one cul-de-sac over. We don’t know why he hadn’t come home…there was a house under construction, so it was noisy, but the workers went away at night. The evil dog who lives there (we think that’s who put him in the E-collar shown above) was gone because the whole house was under construction and the family wasn’t living there. He could have come home at night if that were the problem. We could only assume he became senile and forgot his way. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the area where we had been calling – because it was part of his normal territory, we didn’t even think he wouldn’t come home from there.

On the evening of the 27th, I put flyers in the mailboxes on that cul-de-sac and some houses on the main street near it. They mentioned he was probably senile, wearing a purple CatBib, and gave my phone number this time. I normally keep my ringer off, but I kept it on after putting out the flyers. On the morning of the 30th, after I woke up but while I was still in bed, my phone rang. She gave her address. She mentioned the orange tabby she found in her front bushes “wasn’t alive.” Not knowing what to expect, we brought a box, trash bags, and plastic gloves. I was kind of expecting him to just be curled up under there. I thought we’d pull him out, lay him in a bag, and put him in a box.

This is where the story turns from sad to grotesque, I’m afraid. I have to share the facts, though, they’re part of the story.

When we got there, the woman who called came out to meet us, along with her dad, the homeowner – she was visiting. She showed us where to look. I stepped back through the bushes first. I saw the CatBib and the collar. “It’s him,” I said to my wife.

I saw a paw. I saw his tail, intact. I saw his back half. I saw a solid piece with teeth.

The neighbors – lovely people, very kind – brought us a little shovel and paper face masks. The woman who called us had smelled something the night before, when she got home from vacation, so the masks were needed. She’d also heard scratching coming from where he was…said it must have been his ghost.

We used the bigger, opaque trash bag for the remaining half plus tail. I touched him a little bit, with gloves on, because I could see maggots even on top, and I didn’t dare touch him directly. I held onto a piece of blackened skin or tendon while my wife cut it with the shovel, so we had an intact piece of him. Then my wife lifted him with the shovel and we put him in the bag and I immediately put it in the box. You know how they talk about “seething” maggots? That’s what was under him. The dad kindly helped pull the remaining trash bag from my back pocket for the rest of the job.

The rest of the job…there was not much to see. My wife did lift the head with the shovel and asked if I wanted it in the bag in the box. I wasn’t sure, but she suggested I might want it, so we put it in. The rest…really it was mostly fluff and muck, and we put it in a trash bag. By the time we got to that paw – which my wife says was actually his whole arm – I said just put it in the trash bag. I kind of wish now that we had saved it, but at the time it was too hard.

We had to clean up the dirt somewhat, too. This was in their yard, and we weren’t going to leave the mess. So we shoveled up some of the dirt, with the maggots, who were still pretty small, and there were no flies (which means he wasn’t there very long). We’d have done this whether it had been Boo or not, of course.

After we threw out the trash bag at our own house, we drove to Heavenly Days in Urbana, MD. We were met by the lovely Jeannette, and we completed the requisite paperwork. We’d left Boo outside though…he didn’t smell very good. (We’d put him in the trunk for the trip.) Jeannette mentioned putting him in the freezer, which I guess will kill anything that was left on him. We’d called ahead – she said it was fine that he wasn’t all there. Because Urbana is about an hour from us, we’re having him sent back by Priority Mail. We’ll put him in the urn with the three girls from the picture above. Soon I’ll be getting a tattoo to go with the other three for the girls. I have to open up the little keychain I have and add him to their ashes. I carry it everywhere on my keys.

So that’s the story. We don’t know how he died. It was probably fast. And then nature took its course. We’ll never know if the CatBib played any role – whether he was able to eat during those weeks he was missing. But more importantly, we’ll never know why he didn’t come home.

He was loved, though. We loved him very much. And my mom said the most comforting thing: he died exploring his world, as he loved to do.

Here are the last two pictures I have of him.

Rest in peace, little Boo.