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.
The guy renting out the room in his apartment in Jersey City had double-booked a roommate interview. Unemployed, I sat on a couch next to a professional (a doctor, if I can remember back twenty-five years) who was well groomed, while I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. Things were grim, until I saw his bookshelf.
See, televangelist Pat Robertson had written a “novel.” I am by no means a fundamentalist Christian, or even a Christian at all, but I had actually read this book. (I’d accuse it of being ghost-written, but ghost-writers are professionals, and this book was not.) The late nineties were the End Times, and I was getting a kick out of people being freaked out about it. Ironically, I read every book I could find about the coming apocalypse. All the fiction books had a henpecked president and his lesbian, Satanist wife, who may or may not be the Beast. They got old after a while.
I pointed at the book and said, “I’ve read that!”
The guy looking for the roommate said, “What did you think about the ending?”
I said, “It was a great twist!”
The room was mine.
I lived there six years, then another four years in the home Kate had purchased before I moved in, and the next five years in a series of private and corporate apartments that Kate took care of, until the government took care of everything and set us up in a compound in Doha, Qatar. From there, we bought a condo with my father-in-law’s money.
After that, I lived in the apartment Nicole had been renting out for years, until we moved together to a two-bedroom. Even though we are both on the lease, Nicole did most of the work. It’s privately owned by a single landlord. We paid an application fee, a security deposit, a month’s rent, and a small pet fee. It couldn’t have been easier.
My new apartment, owned by a corporation and subsidized by HUD, requires proof of employment and a month of pay stubs, a signed twenty-five-page lease, Newcastle’s photo and medical records, an account with the electric company, two lease addendums, a loading-dock reservation, one month’s rent (pro-rated), an amenities fee, a pet fee, a security deposit, a pinch of paprika, and renter’s insurance (but not the policy I already have).
I turn forty-eight this year, and I’ve never lived alone. I’ve been insulated from this process, so I had no idea what a hassle it was. I move on Friday, but I can’t pack until Tuesday. It’s okay, everything here belongs to Nicole. I left my marriage with my clothes, my note-, sketch-, comic, and just plain books and some art supplies. I’ve acquired some furniture and some organizational equipment that had one job and failed, and a huge number of toys, mostly Doctor Who related. That’s it. It will take ma a day to pack. And then, it will be Newcastle, me, and a pile of stuff to sort through. Finally, I’ll be able to start MortalMan.
This is a pretty huge adventure I’m embarking on. I feel like, after all this time, I’m finally a grownup.
Sometimes a bad day doesn’t have to be a bad day forever. New Year’s Eve started really poorly, the kind of poorly that could have carried over into the new year. I won’t get into any specifics because they’re none of your business, but my life is going to change drastically, possibly as soon as this month.
I spent the afternoon kind of shock, but one of my oldest friends got my stunned text and helped talk me through it over the phone. I’ve worried that I don’t have many friends anymore because everybody has a life, and many of them were pushed out of my life while I was married. However, everybody I reached out to got back to me as soon as they read their texts, and I was able to process the events of the day.
The reason I didn’t have a bad day was because I got to hang out with the Nerdy Couple, a husband-and-wife duo I can trace back to Bloomington, Indiana. They had with them their Delightfully Weird Friend and another friend I could only describe as unhinged.
I told them all about my morning while trying not to editorialize (while editorializing), and after that twenty-minute conversation, we talked about Star Trek, the Star-Trek-adjacent fic I’ve been posting on AO3, but haven’t updated since October. We talked a lot about Star Trek. Nerdy Husband told me that there is a novel with some information on how Sarek and Amanda Grayson got together (a question that’s been plaguing me for a while), and we all agreed that the Kirk of the original series is actually a thoughtful, diplomatic man and not the horny cowboy everybody remembers him as (thanks, in no small part, to the JJ Abrams movies).
From there we gorged ourselves on sushi, cupcakes, and (for me anyway) Adderall and coffee before playing Cards against Humanity and observing ourselves becoming horrible people. I shared my favorite pick-up line (“You remind me of my pinkie toe: you’re small, cute, and I’m probably going to bang you on my coffee table later.”) which matched the tone perfectly. My bedtime is 8:00, though closer to 7:30 lately, so by ten o’clock I was feeling loopy, which only helped me win a few rounds. Taking breaks to show each other TikTok videos and to share horrifying medical stories, we wrapped it up in time for the ball drop. Delightfully Weird Friend dominated, followed by Nerdy Husband. The rest of us weren’t even close.
That’s how I’m going to remember New Year’s Eve 2023. It was the year I became an artist again and illustrated two-and-a-half comics. I saw Romania, which was awesome, and I kicked my marijuana habit. Newcastle came down with hyperthyroidism and arthritis, but once we put him on treatment, he’s incredibly healthy (for a cat who has those ailments plus kidney disease and cardiac failure). I finally made a new friend, at work, and we text each other all the time when we’re not being productive or going out to coffee. I lost the hearing in one of my ears, but yesterday it came back. I did put on a lot of weight, which I’m not happy about.
This year I’m going to illustrate the MortalMan story I’ve been dreaming about since 2000. I even picked up a new art board to do it with. At some point, I’m going to move to a new apartment, and I’ll be living solo for the first time in my entire life. I have a plan to take my weight off. Other than that, my year will be wide open.
This has been a very matter-of-fact post, but that’s because I’m probably going to hop back into bed shortly. Once upon a time I spent New Year’s Day nursing a hangover, treating myself to a greasy breakfast, and watching bad TV, sometimes with a girlfriend, sometimes with my sister, and sometimes alone. This year I’ve spend most of my morning in my pajamas, drifting in and out of sleep and reviewing my first round of proofs while Newcastle cuddled me. I cannot be happier at this moment. Twenty-four hours ago should have ruined me, but it failed. I’m filled with as much chill and hope as I’ve ever had.
I uncovered even more jobs I did (mostly) for money, including, Big Face Records in 2012, a rap label that never took off.
Wish Slap from 2010, a truly terrible idea for a TV show where you paid money to have someone slap your favorite celebrity.
The cover (actually used) for the 2014 fantasy noir anthology, Fae Fatales, where I was first published.
And finally, Li’l Dicky from a Bush Administration parody comic I pitched to the Unemployed Philosopher’s in 2004, rejected because “There’s no way Bush will ever get a second term.” This is the worst reason I was rejected.
i did a lot more commissioned work than I realize. There’s more to come.
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes people hear I’m an artist, and they think they could get a custom logo for their businesses. They rarely ever used my art because my style doesn’t necessarily have that clip-art, professional je ne sais quoi that makes it look corporate. What they needed was a graphic designer, but they still paid me, and it is some of my best work. Here’s eight examples.
First was for a post-apocalyptic novel series that I think the author did actually use. It’s a pretty good logo, in my opinion.
Second and third are for a Southern barbecue restaurant that never took off. This guy was never satisfied with anything I turned in, but some of the sketches turned out well regardless.
A friend wanted to write a kids book about a misbehaving kitten, and I mocked up a couple of character sheets, fourth and fifth, and some pages, but the book was never written.
I can’t remember what the sixth one was called, but it was for an indy publisher. This was the one ultimately used on the only book he published, but it took a couple of tries to get it right.
The seventh one came about when a roller derby team asked me to make a figure for their flyers. My style would have been a great match, but they didn’t like my first draft because apparently this is something you’re never supposed to do in the ‘derb.
And finally, the owner of the salon I used to frequent asked me to help with a warning label. The figure chosen from the sixth picture would have the circle/slash signifying “no.” They liked the idea, but it wasn’t slick enough.
Of course, I used to do work for PPC Hero, but my art was never clip-arty enough, and they eventually let me go. The blog no longer exists. That’ll teach them.
I’m happy to be doing my thing these days, with no hope of making money. I may turn in some fantastic work, but it’s usually not good enough for what the client has in mind. As I said, I’m not a graphic designer. Even the ones that used my ideas tended to replace them as soon as something better came along, which is what happened with the comic I wasted 2004 working on, The Book of Jesse. The one I am good enough for is myself. There was a long period of about four to five years ago when I wasn’t, and my art was bad (even my birthday self-portraits), when I was doing it at all (my birthday self-portraits). My renaissance began with a pushy coworker demanding a portrait, but once I shook the rust off, I’ve been amusing myself, and if I can’t do that, then what’s the point?
Jeremiah Murphy 