Spring in Atlanta

Here in Atlanta, we have nine seasons, just like everyone else:

• pre-summer, which starts just after spring and runs until about mid-April and is characterized by pollen, pollen, more pollen, temperatures in the upper 70s and 80s, and pollen
• summer, which starts in mid-April and goes to about Halloween and is usually characterized by temperatures in the 90s and 100s 24 hours per day
• pre-autumn, which starts in November and lasts approximately 2 to 3 weeks and is also characterized by lots and lots of lovely yellow pollen
• autumn, which lasts from 8:17 AM to 8:19 AM on a random Thursday in November, usually around Thanksgiving
• pre-winter, which lasts from about Thanksgiving to around Christmas, and is characterized by people wearing winter clothing even though they don't actually need it, because it's expected of them since it's December
• winter, which lasts from about Christmas to early/mid February
• pre-spring, which happens on a random day in early March
• spring, which lasts from 3:14 AM to approximately 5:37 PM on a random Tuesday in early March

You blink, you miss spring. Them's the breaks when you live in Atlanta. Oh, and I forgot monsoon season, which overlaps pre-autumn, autum, pre-winter, winter, and pre-spring. And sometimes spring.

Pre-spring was yesterday. There's no pollen, yet, but the birds are getting excited about the weather changing, and you can sort of feel spring hovering off in the distance, unsure whether to show its face. I think the birds must be cajoling it to come out and play.

It's been cold and warm in turns, wet and dry in turns, and we've had more snow than I can remember seeing in the entire time I've lived here (approaching 11 years, now).

But last night it was glorious. Not too warm, not too cold. With just enough moisture in the air to make things smell fresh and clean, but not so much that it was falling from the sky.

I slept with my bedroom window open, and the entire upstairs of the house smelled like spring even before I got into bed last night. After several months of my breathing the same air over and over, this is a very welcome change.

The cats enjoyed it, too. I woke up at some indeterminately early hour when the sun was not yet out to the sounds of claws scrabbling on hard plastic. I know exactly what this sounds like because I've heard it before: Matt climbs the window unit air conditioner I borrowed from a friend to help keep my utility bills low in the summer. He does this to look out my bedroom window when the shades are up, which is rarely.

The neighbors have a light in their back yard that aircraft use to navigate the city by. The astronauts on the space station see it and say, "We must be over Atlanta." The Nazis could easily have adopted it for questioning prisoners of war. "Tell uz ze location uff ze reziztanze. Ve haff vays uff mehkink you talk..."

So when I awoke to the scrabbling sound (Matt is not aware that, as a feline, he can simply jump. It's kind of sad, really.) I glanced in the direction of the window and saw his silhouette framed therein, the retina-searing light of the Gestapo lamp forming a fuzzy halo around him.

Then I heard a sizzling sound. Someone was making bacon.

Mmmm, bacon. I closed my eyes and tried to drift back into the dream I was having.

Wait a minute, I thought. Bacon? That can't be right. The only ones here are me and the cats, and if they could make bacon, I'd be out on the street.

Fighting my way back into consciousness, I finally recognized the sound as rain gently falling against the house.

"Great," I thought. I wrestled my way out of bed (I have one of those foam mattresses, so "getting out of bed" actually involves a bit of gymnastics.) and over to the window in which Matt was sitting. I felt the sill. Dry. So the rain was, indeed, gentle, and not blowing in.

I left Matt to his silent vigil and crawled back into bed and drifted away again. I think I tanned from the neighbor's back-yard light. (Have I mentioned that it's really bright?)

I woke up again some time later when Matt joined me in bed. Not by jumping (see above), but by grabbing the mattress and pulling himself up.

Graceful, he's not.

I'm hoping that I have a few more weeks of being able to sleep with the window(s) open before it's so stiflingly hot that the house becomes a sauna, but from past experience I fear that I'll be wrestling the window unit back in place before long, and making do with the soothing white-noise sounds of the compressor to lull me to sleep.

Emptiness

It's amazing how resoundingly empty a house can feel when someone who used to be there no longer is.

Back in August, I had to have my 15-year-old cat Taz put to sleep. He was so very, very sick, and the vet told me that there was basically no hope. He had stopped eating and drinking, his kidneys had shut down, but he still managed to come to me when I called, and he'd let me pet him, and he'd talk to me, and purr. But he just didn't feel well. It was in every movement. The way he would lie all scrunched up on the floor. I ignored it for a while because I couldn't face what needed to be done.

It was August 14 when I faced it. And I had one of my best friends—a member of my family—put to sleep.

"Put to sleep." Such a pretty euphemism. He was executed by lethal injection.

Taz was never what you'd call a social cat. He did his own thing and I did mine. He'd come downstairs and have a bite to eat or a drink of water and use the litter box, then come get in my lap for a short while, let me pet him, purr at me, talk to me, drool on me. And when he'd had enough, he'd jump down and go back up to that spot in the bathroom where he liked to sleep. But even when I couldn't see or hear him, I knew he was here. The house...felt different. Now, there's just this big, silent emptiness.

I'm not 100% sure whether it's the house that's empty or me.

I came home from the vet and cried for 2 days. I didn't go to work. I couldn't face it. I wrote the first short story that I've written in months. It was about Taz meeting Gremlin at the Rainbow Bridge. And I'm an atheist for God's sake (that was humor). I don't believe in that stuff. But it made me feel better to at least pretend.

Gremlin died suddenly. Four years ago. It was completely unexpected, and I think the vet might have been almost as upset as I was. I didn't even know he was that sick.

I watched Taz decline. And had to say, "Kill him."

In the first dream, he was back. He wasn't healthy. He looked skeletal with skin and fur stretched taut over his bones. He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't drink, he just sat in the room and glared at me. Friends in the dream kept saying "How can he even still be alive? Look at him!"

And I remember thinking, "Why won't he just die and not make me have to make the decision again?"

Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud. Please pick up the white courtesy phone.

The second dream was just awful. I don't even remember it. Just that I woke up after only about 2 hours of sleep and couldn't get back to sleep. I knew it was about Taz, though. I had that same, awful feeling after waking up. Guilt. Self-loathing. A feeling that I'd let him down. That I hadn't done everything in my power to save him.

The third dream didn't seem to be related until after I thought about it a bit. I was some sort of horrible person. I insinuated myself into the life of this powerful executive type and ended up convincing him to jump out of his 30-story building to his death.

It doesn't take a degree in psychology to figure that one out, either. I didn't kill him, officer. He jumped out the window himself. My lily-white hands are clean. See? No guilt blood.

I hope there's not a fourth dream. Three was definitely plenty.

And now the house is quiet. Eerily and creepily quiet. No quieter from a pure decibel point of view, but every bump, every knock, every groan can no longer be blamed on "the cat."

I've never felt so much like a stranger in any place I've ever lived. This is all my stuff, but it's just stuff. I look at it and feel nothing. I could move out and leave most of it behind tomorrow and not even look back. That's not like me.

I can't get a new cat. Not yet. It would feel too much like trying to "replace" Taz. Or Gremlin. Well-meaning friends and family have suggested that I just run right out and get another cat.

It just feels like a betrayal, though. Like one of those women who meets husband #n+1 at the funeral of husband #n.

I know I'm overreacting. That it's just my own feelings of guilt I'm feeling, and that I did do everything reasonable for Taz except that I waited about two weeks longer than I should have to do the last kind thing I could do for him. I put him through torture because I'm a coward.

I'm pretty sure that's no better.

*sigh*