I got some cash for Christmas, and I ordered a custom stuffed animal of Newcastle. I knew he didn’t have long (but to be fair, I was kind of hoping to get a little longer), and I wanted to have something to remember him by. I sent them eight pictures, and two months later, it arrived. I put it in my closet as soon as I unboxed it because I still had the real one. After Newcastle died, I left it there because whenever I had to get something from the shelf it occupied, I could see its tail, which was one of Newcastle’s defining features, and I’d be hit with grief.
It’s a shockingly good likeness, though they didn’t get his fur color right. (You can’t tell from the pictures, but Newcastle’s fur wasn’t black, but rather the color of black coffee.) It’s a little bigger than the real thing, but somehow the people at Cuddle Clones nailed that signature Newcastle expression (“Huh?”), which you can see as it puzzles over the queen mother. It’s got a pouch for his ashes, but I think I’m going to leave those on the shrine. This isn’t Newcastle.
Today is a month without my best friend, and I’m still in pain. I broke down in tears at my desk Thursday (don’t worry, that’s the first time I’ve ever done that), and I see and hear him through the apartment. I still have to remind myself when I come home that he’s not there, and I get nervous about holding the door open so he doesn’t get out.
But when I was trying to find my 2022 tax return, I saw that fake tail and decided to give it a try and see if I could handle it. And I can. It’s right next to my desk, on top of a podium, which is on top of a chest of drawers, and there’s no way I can’t see it. I was worried that I would confuse it with Newcastle out of the corner of my eye, like I did with a pillow this morning, but nope.
Some of you might think this is morbid or creepy or obsessive, but I’m finding it comforting. I will not be petting it or feeding it or anything unhinged—it’s just there, filling up an empty space.
If it does move, though, I will kill it with fire.
So I can’t use the lyrics to “I’m too Sexy” in my book. I tried. The publisher told me it could potentially cost thousands of dollars (for fifteen words; yay capitalism!). The first version is almost perfect because it captures that moment when you realize, “I’m going to have to listen to this again.” The second version is lame, so I’m not going to do it. The third version is what I’m going with.
Original Version Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. A deep voice, almost comically so, said, “I’m too sexy for my love; too sexy for my love; love’s going to leave me.” Her head slammed down onto her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant?
The What-I’m-Not-Going-to-Do Version Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. A deep voice, almost comically so, said the opening lyrics to “I’m too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. Her head slammed down onto her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant?
Final Version Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. An aria, with a voice as deep as the bowels of hell, heralded a first-person ballad she had come to know of a man whose sexiness exceeds the tolerance of his love, his car, his cat, your party, several cosmopolitan cities, and his shirt, the latter of which actually causes him pain. Her head slammed down on her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant? “I’m Too Sexy?” Really?
Conclusion This whole ordeal reminds me of the original Cybermen from Doctor Who. The women who designed their costume had something like fifty dollars, so she bought a vacuum cleaner and some floodlights and constructed one of the most iconic bad guys in science fiction TV. Nowadays, if you want something onscreen, you throw millions of dollars at some keyboard jockeys, and they make it happen. Before CGI, you had to work within existing space with limits, and they did some amazing things. Think about how much better A New Hope looks like next to Rise of Skywalker. Being limited ultimately gave me a chance to describe how dumb that song is without using any of the lyrics, and the result is better than I’d originally written it.
(Special thanks to Donna Martinez who helped me brainstorm this approach. Someone, I won’t say who, has earned a space on my acknowledgements page.)
When the vet left my apartment, taking Newcastle with her, she left behind three things: his collar, his paw print, and a lock of his fur. Nicole was with me through the whole ordeal, and when she left, I looked at the three items on my kitchen counter and kept myself from sobbing uncontrollably by putting them on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet I only used to store his canned food. They have been there since. I knew I’d get to them eventually.
About a week later, I cleared out his food and water bowls and hid them in the cabinet on top of the refrigerator. Nicole didn’t take the canned food because I might decide to get another one someday, so I went into the cabinet to get it, and I saw a small piece of his collar poking out of the top shelf, and I realized I wasn’t ready.
A week later, the box I’d bought to display his hair was delivered, but I still wasn’t ready.
Last Saturday, I picked up his remains from the vet, and I’ve been experimenting in places to put him. Here’s a corner that is currently full of capsized Doctor Who action figures (that he knocked over), but that’s in a corner, tucked away from everything. Things tend to fall off of my desk, so that’s out. My dresser is covered in weird tchotchkes I haven’t sorted out. There’s a small metal shelf by the door, which would make a great location, but I use it to store art supplies when I work on my comic. I finally found the right spot.
Yesterday, I decided I would take his stuff out today. And I did. It was hard—it was really hard, but the spot I picked is perfect. It’s almost as high as the dresser, so it overlooks the whole apartment (which should tell you how big my apartment is). It’s a small chest of drawers that displays my owl collection (Newcastle always reminded me of an owl), and it’s close to my bed. No, I’m not going to cuddle with the box of ashes, but I will see it every time I turn off my lamp.
Here it is, my shrine to my best buddy.
Here’s Newcastle himself, in his coffin.
His paw print, which is nice to have, but it doesn’t make me emotional.
Here’s his fur. He was so matted in the end, but I couldn’t bear to shave him because I didn’t want him to die bald. The vet took this out of his tail, which was still fluffy.
Finally, his collar. This is the part I have a hard time looking at. It was mostly covered by his luxurious mane, but that lumberjack plaid was his signature look, and he’s had the tag forever.
He was such a big part of my life that I want him in a prominent place in my home. Typing this in bed, all I have to do is turn my head a little, and I can see some souvenirs from my friend. It hurts, and I’m okay with that.
We traveled to other countries together. He was with me through an entire marriage. He held on long enough for me to get used to living alone for the first time in my life. He was my friend.
Yesterday, I picked up Newcastle’s remains. I could have had them shipped to me, but I thought it was better to pick them up at his vet’s, so I could see the office one last time. I paid a fortune for his death, and I can see where the money went, from this hand-carved, sealed box to the kind, professional vet who came to my apartment seventeen days ago and took him away.
I don’t know where to put him. The other mementos they gave me when he passed, including his collar, paw print, and the lock of his hair are in a cabinet because I can’t bear to look at them. It’s like if I see them, I’ll have to accept that he’s gone.
There’s good days and bad. More often than not, I forget he won’t be there when I get home from my duties in the outside world. It’s the days when I remember that hurt the most. I’m not ready to accept his absence. Last weekend, we had a single spring day amongst the ongoing cold drizzle we’ve been enduring in the DMV area, and I thought about how I’d love to open a window, but I couldn’t because it was still too cold for him, even in his Wookie-fur coat. The same thing happened to me when I
decided to treat myself to a pizza last week because I was going to have to share my sausage with him. I didn’t enjoy the pizza. Too much sausage.
I’ve spoken to a grief counselor twice since he died, the second time when I had forgotten how his fur felt. I may have to call her again. Everyone has been so good to me, though. The girls in my eight-cubicle “pod” at work got me a card, and my boss got me a beautiful window ornament I have displayed at my desk. I have some friends I still talk to when I really miss him, but I feel like the rest of the world has moved on, even if that’s not true.
The worst day was last Wednesday, when I was so overcome with grief, I had to leave work. On the train ride home, I was struck by the image of Neil Gaiman’s perky, goth personification of Death picking the little guy up, scratching him behind the ears and whispering sweet things to him as she carried him where he needed to go. I burst out into tears. I still cry, even writing that sentence. I fell asleep at 3:30 in the afternoon and woke up twelve hours later. That was the worst day I’ve had since the actual day.
My neighborhood consists of a Walmart, some liquor stores, and a lot of fast food, so I went one stop past mine and discovered a beautiful area with a vegan donut shop, a vegan cupcake shop, and a vegan soul food restaurant. Most importantly, there is a café, called The Lost Sock for some reason, and on the rare moments when it hasn’t been raining, I’ve sat outside and drawn or painted. Now that I’m not eking out my last moments with my best friend, I have room to wander, and it’s calling out to me.
Last night, past my bedtime, I went to Artomatic, in which hundreds of local artists set up mini-galleries in a large, empty building. There’s seven floors of art, music, bars, and sandwiches from the historic Busboys & Poets. I made it through two. Also since he left, I’ve unpacked my books, the last remnants of the move, and hung up most of my wall art. It only took two months.
I’ve been drawing and painting a lot since he left. I’ve only managed one page of my comic before it became a burden, but I’ve been focusing my attention on my sketchbooks. I loved drawing and painting him. I have over a dozen works with him as a subject, from bad to good, from 2004 to 2024.
Last week, I rediscovered the hilarious “Gangham Style” video, and I recreated my favorite five seconds in any music video as a self-portrait, with him playing the part of Psy. Drawing him didn’t break my heart, so I think I’m going to see what happens if I do it again.
It’s still hard to talk about him without tearing up. The other day, I barely held it together as I told my sister Rachel about the night I was afflicted with sleep paralysis, and he stayed at my side the whole time, protecting me from the evil dark figure looming at the foot of my bed. He was a good boy. The goodest.
The weekend Newcastle died, I redid the page of MortalMan that I’d destroyed with paint. I don’t have time on the morning of Tuesday through Thursday to work on my comic (the set-up of my work area is a real pain in the ass, and I can’t concentrate when I’m watching the clock for when I have to leave.) However, I have plenty of time to do the Three Stories in One drawings I posted this week.
Yesterday, I designed a logo for a fictional newspaper, and I roughly sketched out a panel. Today, I was able to finish the panel and do the roughs on another panel, and that’s all I have. I spent the rest of the morning drawing this.
I am afraid if I put MortalMan down, I will forget about it because that’s my M.O. But I’m really straining myself to do the little work I’ve done so far. There’s no deadline, and no one is clamoring for more pages. So I’m coming to you to ask permission: may I extend the break I started when Newcastle got sick, even though he’s not here anymore? I’ll still be drawing, just not the comic. Can I be trusted to get back to the comic on my own time?
On Wednesday, 21 February 2024, at approximately 3:30 a.m., I made the decision to end Newcastle’s life. Everyone I’ve spoken to about the subject told me that I’d know it was time—that he’d tell me. I didn’t understand. I’ve spent the past three weeks in a near-constant state of stress. I spent mornings on work-from-home Fridays and Mondays, along with the weekends, begging him to come out from under the bed. In the afternoons, he would. He would walk to the food bowl, eat (less and less each day), drink some water, go to the bathroom, and yell at me to come pick him up like a baby. But after I got home from work at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday for a telehealth appointment, he had found a space under my bed that was dark and cramped, and he hasn’t come out.
Ordinarily, when I would lie down on my bed at night, he positioned himself at my feet like the lions at the New York Public Library (Patience & Fortitude/Hallelujah & Amen/Run & Hide/Rack & Pinion, whatever their names are). He’d done this since he was a kitten. I think he was protecting me from the monsters. After I was asleep, he’d go somewhere else until breakfast. He didn’t do this Tuesday night.
Last night, I dreamt that he was fine. He jumped onto a stack of boxes I still haven’t unpacked to get my attention. The dream faded, and I found myself on an empty bed in an empty apartment, and I remembered. I gave him one of those yogurt tubes that cats will maul you for, and he ate some. I was so happy, I gave him another one, and he turned around and faced the other way. That’s when I knew.
Between crying jags, I made the preparations. I reached out to a pet hospice that makes house calls; it’s expensive, but this was the last time I’d spend money on him. I found a pet grief counselor to talk to after. I canceled his quality-of-life appointment Friday, and I canceled his twice-monthly kitty litter shipment, and let the online pharmacy know we couldn’t be needing their services anymore. I scheduled some time off work and arranged coverage for my job.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with his stuff. Because it’s a handy place to stash art supplies, I’m going to keep the cat tree I’d planted next to my desk so he could take a nap with Dad while Dad was working. He never used it because he’d rather lie down on Dad, preventing Dad from working.
He’s never going to do that again.
I asked Nicole to be there, less for me and more for her and him. When Nicole lived with Kate and me in 2012, she and Newcastle had a pretty great relationship. When we moved in with her five years ago, she was his auntie, though I’m pretty sure he thought of her as Mom. She gave nicknames to all the cats she’s lived with as an adult, so Henry is Gibbon, Andrew was Gray Cat, Magik was Badgley, and Newcastle was Babycat, shortened to Bebe.
Newcastle was an ugly, sickly kitten. They were going to put him to sleep when Kate rescued him and nursed him to health. This was during the six weeks between my deciding to move to Bloomington and me actually doing it. As she was cleaning bloody snot off the walls and giving his greasy body baths, she told me that she intuited that he wasn’t her cat. She didn’t know whose he was. After I’d been living with her a while, she realized that she couldn’t separate us.
When he wanted to play as a young adult, he’d run up to me, meow, and do a backflip. He was like a dog, always at my heels, playing fetch. When I’d taunt him with the birdie on a string, he’d reach a point where he’d just grab it in his teeth and walk away. I always let him take it to his den. He’d earned it. It’s been a long time since he’s played with me. Until Tuesday, he just wanted to snuggle.
He also did this thing where, before guard duty started at night, he had to sit on my chest and massage my throat. This wasn’t exactly comfortable for me. It seemed to be a compulsion, and he always had a serious look on his face when he did it, like it was his job. And yet he purred the whole time. If he came to bed and found me spooning Kate, he’d tap me on the shoulder until I moved down to my back. I tried massaging his throat with my thumbs to see how he liked it, and it turned out he liked it a lot. It’s been a long time since he’s done that.
I saw a movie the other day. I’d put it on so I’d have something to listen to while I drew, but it turned out to be engrossing, and I brought my iPad to bed and pet Newcastle while I watched it. Ben Kingsley played a good-natured senior citizen who befriended an alien, and Jane Curtain played an elderly woman with a cat so elderly it couldn’t walk anymore. Another character tried to persuade her to put her cat to sleep, and she said, “He’s all I have.” She took a breath and added, “He’s all I had.” Newcastle spent his last three days under the bed, not eating, not going to the bathroom, and only coming out for water. When I looked for him, he was just a pair of yellow eyes just out of reach.
Newcastle loved me. He loved me when I was depressed. He loved me when I was manic. He loved me when I was angry. He loved me when I went on long vacations. He loved me when all I wanted to do was hide. He loved me. I’ve never had that kind of devotion before, and I can’t imagine I ever will again.
I’ve never felt as lonely in my life as I have this past month. My hobbies are reading what I want to read, watching what I want to watch, blasting whatever music moves me and me alone, and writing and drawing. These aren’t social hobbies. Even when I lived with Kate and Nicole, people with whom I spent most of my time, and even when I drew apart from both of them, I always had Newcastle.
I never doubted him, but after the move, I could never be sure how he was doing. When the vet gave me the diagnosis of his kidney failure, I watched him so closely I got headaches. The vet gave me a couple of months. It’s only been two weeks.
The thing that upsets me the most, as I sit here in bed without him, typing this, is that I’m going to get used to his being gone. I’m not going to come home from work or from the store and look for him. It won’t bother me when I sit down at my desk to work, and I don’t get interrupted by his begging for attention. That editors and coworkers won’t see him draped over my shoulder and ask after him. I don’t want that to be normal. I don’t want this pain I’m feeling to ever end. But it will. I will feel better. I’ll go back to work on Tuesday. My gas bill is due tomorrow. I need to run to the store to pick up half and half.
Today, 22 February 2024, at approximately 9:30 a.m., Newcastle died, his face in Dad’s hands.
When the cardiologist diagnosed him with congenital heart failure, he gave Newcastle a year. That was in 2015. I had twenty years with him. It wasn’t enough.
This is a hell of a big find for me. Sixteen years ago, I wanted to do a three-to-four-panel comic strip about my sleazy reporter character, Max Fuentes. I filled out this really great chart I found on DeviantArt, mostly as an effort to draw the same face over and over again, something I’ve never been able to do. I wish I could find this challenge again.
Eventually, all of these storylines came together in the novel I entitled The Grind, as I’m a better writer than I am an artist.
Since spilling paint all over page 5 of MortalMan and on the same day, getting a bad feeling about Newcastle’s health that was (mostly) true, I haven’t been working on my comic. Instead, I’ve been drawing and playing with pastels and even writing. A sketchbook or laptop is easier to put down than my comic-making rig when Newcastle wants attention, and you better believe I am going to give that cat everything.
First, I bought flesh-colored paints, and there was such a variety of colors there (I still haven’t figured out the yellow) that I made a whole picture with just those colors.
Next, I scanned in a painting I did before applying inks to see what it would look like. Then I applied inks.
The next two are just characters from my fan-fictions, one with the arms too short, and one with an interesting style I’m going to keep in mind for the future.
As you know, since it’s become an oft-misunderstood meme, Schrodinger’s cat existed in a quantum state of dead and alive, so long as you didn’t open the box where it was kept. (Insert joke about cats and boxes.) Since Monday, when Newcastle was tentatively given a thumbs up until we heard back on the blood tests, he was in that box. Finally, the box has been opened.
I was told I had to wait twenty-four to forty-eight hours to receive the verdict on Newcastle’s blood tests, and it took seventy-four. The vet told me that Newcastle is on the verge of kidney failure. She said that we can treat it (for now) by hospitalizing him at the boutique vet where I get his heart checked twice a year. It would buy him a number of months.
I learned then where I draw the line. I think some people believe I spend too much on my cat. I give him three pills twice a day, at a negligible cost (the last bottle I bought will last me two months, and it cost $4.00). For hyperthyroidism, I buy a transdermal cream for $60 a month. He has arthritis, so I get him a painkiller injection every four weeks at $80 per shot. For the hyperthyroidism and for the cardiologist, I get his blood tested for $300 a pop. If the doctors find anything wrong (which is rare), he gets another blood test and X-rays, for as much as $500. I take him to a cardiologist every six months, to the tune of $1,100 per visit. So if you read that paragraph and think I’m too obsessed with saving a broken cat, I don’t blame you.
I love Newcastle, and I would do anything for love. But I won’t do that. I’m not spending what may be thousands of dollars to put my cat in a stressful situation for days on end to buy half of a year. That’s not even up for debate. That doesn’t mean I’m not wracked with guilt. I feel like this is me saying, “I only love him so much.”
Untreated, Newcastle has a month, maybe two. I’ve contacted a hospice veterinarian, and we discussed the process and the price. When it’s time, I will call them, set up an appointment, and they will come to my home, perform the procedure, take his paw print, and cremate him. It’s expensive, but that will be the last money I spend on him, so I don’t care.
I also spoke to Nicole. When she lived with Kate and me twelve years ago, she and Newcastle had formed a bond, and when we lived together the past five years until January, she spoiled him and loved him as his auntie. She will be there for him.
Upon getting the news, I’ve been stoic. I called the hospice, then my parents to let them know, and I sent texts and DMs to my closest friends with the news and the fact that I didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to be a complete wreck. When I sat down and decided to write this, I’ve been crying, but it’s a low-key kind of crying, more of a babbling brook than the tidal wave I was Sunday and Monday.
Honestly, I’m relieved. Since I noticed that something was up with him on Sunday, I’ve been worried that it would be his time, and I wouldn’t know, and he would suffer needlessly. Now I know, and I’ve been given enough time to enjoy his company. As you can see below.
Today, he figured out how to get to my owl collection, so he’s still pretty spry.
Considering how bad his health is and that he’s lived so long anyway, he’s probably going to live for at least three months.
From what I recall, the second-to-last time I cried was in the spring of 2010. I was walking on the treadmill because I was severely overweight and out of shape, and I had been prescribed 300 minutes of cardio a week. Earlier that year, my psychiatrist and I found the right cocktail that stopped the depression that had been drowning since Kate and I moved to the DMV area. I was finally myself again. I had figured out how to transfer .mov and .avi files to my iPod, so I was watching a lot of pirated TV (on a teeny tiny screen). Today, I was watching an éclair of a sci-fi show called Warehouse 13, and the episode was about how one of the main characters always felt alone at the holidays, and at the end of the episode, the rest of the cast threw him a surprise Christmas party, and I broke out in tears. The show was fun, but it wasn’t good. I talked to my psychiatrist about it, and we determined that I wasn’t that moved by the show, but it was a product of reacting to the exercise endorphins and the new drug regimen.
Since then, I well up a little at shows and movies when emotional scenes like that happen, but I don’t cry like that anymore, not even when I was ambushed with divorce papers. (I went into a zombie-like state of depression for a few days, but no tears.) Sunday and Monday of this week, I ugly-cried.
My old apartment was 850 square feet (between 250 and 300 square meters) with two bedrooms, a living room, and a bathroom. It had a backyard full of grass. There was a cat named Henry who was pretty active but cuddly (not to me, but he did show me some affection between clearing off the top of my dresser). My roommate was Dr. Doolittle, who lived to spoil animals.
A month ago, Newcastle was moved from there to a 435-square-foot studio with one room and a bathroom, and no roommate or cousin. He had Dad, but that was it. He hid under the bed for the first week, coming out to eat and occasionally socialize. Chalk that down to cats not liking change, especially after three years in the old apartment and five years with roommate and cousin. The second week, he suddenly came out and was very social. He explored (not that there was much to explore), and he ate a lot. He has stairs to my bed, but usually he made a lot of noise when he was finished eating or going to the bathroom, and I’d bring him up to cuddle.
But last week he went back under the bed and he only came out occasionally to eat a couple of bites. He didn’t socialize. He didn’t stay out at all. I was worried about it, and I need him to adjust to living alone, but I gave him his space. And then on Sunday, he yelled at me, and I brought him to the mattress with me and pet him for a couple of seconds before he slunk back onto the floor and under the bed.
I’d seen this before, when Andrew, aka Gray Cat, who was eighteen, turning nineteen in a month, went into what I called the Rage Cave, i.e. the little holes some cat trees have. He didn’t even come out to eat. Kate and I brought him to the vet to put him to sleep, but the vet wanted to try a different painkiller. It was a miracle. Andrew was a kitten again. (For the fourteen years I knew him, Andrew always acted like a kitten.) When I moved out, I made Kate promise to tell me when the cats had to go. She did not keep her promise. Andrew and Magik would be twenty-four this year, so I’m assuming that they’ve moved on a while ago. Thanks to Kate, I never had a good chance to mourn them.
Anyway, recognizing this behavior, I called my vet. They’re closed Sunday. I called Newcastle’s old vet and cardiologist and asked to speak to someone who could help. The vet tech who answered the phone said she could. After I gave the long story about Newcastle’s behavior and his health concerns, she said, “You should bring him to your primary vet.” And hung up. Luckily, I have a secondary vet, and they answered the phone, and they treated me with attention and empathy. We scheduled an appointment for a “Quality-of-Life Wellness Check” on Monday, and I called in sick to work.
After hanging up, I broke out in tears. I knew I would have to put him to sleep. I thought about how much he meant to me, and how I didn’t know how I was supposed to go on without him. Thousands of memories ran through my head. And to make matters worse, I wouldn’t have a chance for a last cuddle because he was in his own Rage Cave.
Two hours later, Newcastle emerged from the bed, ate a bunch of food, and meowed at me. I brought him to the bed, where he spent a while walking back and forth while I pet him, then fell asleep on me. The sadness drifted away until Monday, when I remembered what I was going to be doing. I brought him to the vet, crying every few minutes in the Uber and in the waiting room. When the vet and her assistant asked me what was going on, I couldn’t tell them because I was bawling my eyes out.
She did an exam, and she concluded that he was alert, he was in minimal pain, and since he was eating and going to the bathroom, and I was staying on top of his medications, he was (probably) okay. They drew blood and urine to test, and I find the results out today. I’ve gone from ugly sobs to holding my breath until later this morning when I’m anticipating a call from the vet.
Newcastle is twenty years old. He has cardiac failure, kidney disease, a herniated liver, hyperthyroidism, arthritis, and I think he can’t hear anymore. He has more problems than a nerd in an eighties movie. Let’s be realistic: he’s going to leave sooner rather than later. I know this.
Jeremiah Murphy 