• Do you realize? (Narrative essay)

    We got Winky the summer I was six, just after my parents got divorced. He was always there for my mom when my sister and I would go up to my dad’s for holidays so they became really close. Every day when she came home from work he would jump up onto the couch and get on her stomach where he would fall asleep as she was watching the news. Though she did get mad at him when he would throw up or scratch her, she was never really able to stay mad at him when he started purring none of us were. He had a habit of knocking open her bedroom door with his head and sleeping close to her head, leading to her losing another goodnights’ sleep.

    From eighth grade on, it was my responsibility to feed Winky leading to it becoming a part of my routine for relaxing as I came home every day. I could hear the scampering of his and Thisbe’s, my other cat, feet when I opened the door. Occasionally when I left my bedroom door open, Winky would crawl into my bed and rest on my chest or legs so in the morning I’d find myself pinned by a big old orange cat who didn’t want to get up quite yet, one who would glare at me and let out a low growl if I tried to get up.

    Winky was always the loud one meowing whenever he wanted food, wanted out, wanted in, or just when he wanted to be petted which led to a great deal of annoyance. Whenever we ate dinner at home he would have to be put out so he wouldn’t jump up on the table to eat the nearest unguarded portion of food. Midway through dinner he would jump up on the window sill and start meowing for us to let him inside.

    One Friday afternoon during my senior year in high school, I came home from school and about 4:00pm, let myself into the house, as I did most every day since eighth grade. I fed Winky with his daily second can of wet food, feeling a little disgusted as some of the sauce got on my finger like it usually did. I washed my hands thoroughly as a force of habit after feeding him and let him out so his meowing wouldn’t interrupt my nap. On the way back to my room I poured some dry food out on a paper plate for Thisbe to eat. That’s all she would eat since Winky intimidated her out of eating wet food and would eat the dry food if she was around even if it meant stopping in mid meal of his wet food.

    After a nap which lasted until 5:30pm, I went about my routine for the day of turning on my laptop and the television so I could listen to the news while I surfed the web. A quarter to eight I put a premade Lasagna in the microwave since my mom had gone to a concert with a friend and didn’t expect to come home that night, a fact I was more than fine with since it gave me time to myself. I ate my dinner while I watched the last night’s episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report since I rarely ever stayed up past 11:00pm.

    Around midnight Mom came home in our black Honda Accord station wagon and we made slight conversation about how the concert was before she went to bed. “Go to bed soon,” she reminded me as she always did on the weekends.

    “Okay,” I responded, not really paying attention since I was typing away on my computer. She went to bed and I stayed up watching some bullshit tv show on Cartoon Network for the sake of white noise to keep me awake. Around 1:00 a.m. I heard some barking which I disregarded at first, but then a distressed cry from a cat and the persistent barking led me to put my laptop down. I walked outside expecting just to yell at some stupid dog to shut up but then I saw a dog shaking something in its mouth. I ran inside to grab the broom and then burst outside swinging it “Hey,” I yelled at the dog to scare it away. I knelt down beside to see the lump only to have my fear realized, it was Winky and he was breathing heavily as his tongue hung limply out of his mouth like it always did in the cartoons that came on Saturday mornings. “Mom!” I cried, running back into the house. I never was able to pick animals up I was as afraid of dropping them.

    “What is it honey?”, she asked, having just been woken up and still groggy. She adopted the same look I had when she saw my scared expression.

    “Winky’s hurt.” I lead her by the hand to where Winky lay, still holding the broom in my other hand. While my Mom got a towel from the bathroom and took Winky inside, I ran looking for Thisbe, desperately calling out her name as my mind filled with images of her dead or being attacked by a dog somewhere. I remembered Winky and then ran back to him. He was now laying on a towel on the kitchen floor while my mom put clothing on and searched the phonebook for directions to an emergency vet. I tried to comfort him by petting him gently. It probably did more for me than it did for him, I silently wished Mom would hurry up but couldn’t verbalize it because I was busy pleading with Winky to live, “I love you, please don’t die.” I repeated that over and over again like a mantra while I sobbed.

    “Come on Eric,” my mom said, trying to stay calm enough for the two of us. “The vet is in Anderson so you’ll carry Winky.” I scooped Winkie up in the blanket with my arms and got into the back seat behind the driver. The back seat is where I usually sat even when the passenger front was open. We pulled out of the driveway and got out on the road but we had to turn around at the armory since Mom went too far.

    We lived in Clemson at the time, and Anderson was a fifteen minute ride that usually seemed extremely short but that horrible night it seemed to last forever. I kept repeating my crying mantra as I held Winky, sometimes emphasizing the ‘please’ like that was the magical word. My mom tried to reassure me by saying I was doing a good job. For the first half, my only comfort was the steadying pace of Winky’s breathing and that once or twice he made a motion to escape me like he did whenever someone held him against his will. But these two attempts were weak and after that he offered little resistance. My comfort soon turned into my fear as I couldn’t tell if I felt his pulse or if the slight bumps in the road gave the illusion. My mom kept driving “Is he still breathing?” She asked trying to get me talking as to calm me down.

    “I don’t know,” I cried, trapped in the worst kind of uncertainty. We finally entered Anderson. We rode past Target and the other stores we usually went to, as I put my hand in front of his mouth “I-I can’t feel his breath,” I cried, as I repositioned my arms so I could hold him with my hands instead of just the towel. I felt wet warmness in my hand and I began crying even harder as I realized what it was and what that meant.

    We approached the Vet’s office. “Eric I don’t think they could have done anything for him,” she tried to comfort me, barely holding her tears in as she accepted the fact that he was gone. We pulled into the parking lot and she took Winky from me with towel and all so I wouldn’t have to take him in there. I made my way to a plastic chair in the lobby which I imagine would look friendly under normal circumstance, but now it added to the despair. “Eric, would you like to have Winky cremated?” Mom asked me, after talking with the receptionist.

    I wanted to say that what I wanted was for her to help Winky. I refused to believe he was dead, yet what my mom said sank in and all I could do was nod. I looked at my left palm and saw the blood on it “Where’s the restroom?” I asked the receptionist, still holding back tears.

    “Right down the hall,” she pointed to a door marked ‘Rest room’.

    “Thank you,” I barely got that out before I went to the restroom to wash my hands with whatever antibacterial foam they had. It wasn’t a second after I turned the water off that I sat against the wall and began crying my eyes out. I cried all of the way home from the Vet’s as I sat in the front seat, my mom crying too as she drove us home. I laid in bed that night trying to get to sleep, sleeping only after taking my mom’s recommendation of a dose of Benadryl. As I laid in the bed waiting for the medicine to kick in, I still couldn’t help but cry.

    A week after that we got Winky’s remains back in a box with his name on a little metal plate and his paw print in a piece of clay that we could bake and have as a keepsake. I realized something that night as listened to ‘Do you realize?’ by The Flaming Lips. There is a line in there that asks, “Do you realize, that everyone you know will someday die?”. When I listened to that song I never realized Winky would die. I knew that he would be gone someday, but it never clicked that he would die. I don’t think any of us truly realizes it because it’s just so hard to imagine a world without the people or animals we care about, and the day you truly realize it is the day you’ve seen too much death for one person.