Considering Indiana

Do you ever wish there were more colors? What color feels good? I'm in a bit of an ornery mood tonight. And I can't sleep.

I'm frustrated. Angry. Resentful. Yet somewhat resigned to the way the world is. Tonight it is January 31st, but technically it is already Feb 1st. And tomorrow is Groundhog Day. (Oops. My dumb computer decided to publish this already.) Maybe that has something to do with my mood today. I'm not sure. I suppose when I do the math it makes sense that it would, but I wasn't cognizant of it until now.

What is present in my mind is that I have a cat living with me who is sick with kidney disease and thyroid disease and will eventually will die of these things. He's living with me, and has been since mid-November, but he is not my cat. Though I love him, I am not particularly bonded with him. My sister and brother and mother are much more bonded with him. I never really lived with him. I'm starting to wonder if I don't attach to animals. Do I attach to people? They seem to come and go. When they leave, there's a terrible ripping feeling, a rupturing of the fabric of my universe, so to speak, and yet time passes. And whatever happens happens. And I become accustomed to them being gone.

There's a cat living with me who is not my cat. I've never really known Indy when he was well. When I took a semester off from school, and he had an infected face from some puncture wounds he'd acquired from a street fight, it was my responsibility to hold a warm compress to his face to get the puss to ooze out. But other than that, I'd had very little interaction with him. My family got him after I went to college and I never lived at home after that except for that one semester. In the last few years, I'd never seen him because I always had the dogs with me and he always hid from them. He is my sister and brother's cat in the heart. My mom (begrudingly??) pays his medical bills. My bro and sis don't want to take care of him (they say it's because their respective apartments don't allow pets. But Indy is so harmless and my sister is so good at getting what she wants, I can't help but think she doesn't really want him with her). So I feel a certain responsibility to love this cat since it seems no one else wants to. But I have some weird ideas about death and suffering and companion animals and medical treatments in general.

I have a cat who is sick and dying. My mom pays the medical bills. I think she wants to put him down. My sister resents that my childhood cat lived to be 21 or 22 or so. Perhaps like she resents that I had 8 more years with Dad since I am 8 years older. I don't fault her for it, but it seems somewhat unfair to me as well.

Indy's been putting up such a fight against his subcutaenous drip (a.k.a. juice) that in the last two weeks, I've only gotten about 150cc into him. But there have been days when I've stuck him 3 times, but he does that thing a little kid does when they don't want to be held. He throws his weight around and screams in a way that makes me feel so guilty for sticking him with a needle and then he jumps off the needle. And then I feel guilty that he didn't get more juice. Because I know it's dehydration that has him feeling sick. When I give him a pill to stimulate his appetite, he looks at me and I feel like he's saying, "why are you torturing me!?" And I wonder if he wonders where my siblings are, and who am I anyhow? Who am I to this cat?

I resent that I'm always feeling guilty regarding Indy.

And I think about how weird it is to have animals living at our mercy. It feels like some sort of weird slavery sort of thing, they give us love or whatever it is we want from them, and we give them food and shelter. It's a peculiar arrangment. With many of them, we've breed them, both over time and sometimes in the case of their particular generation, for our own purposes. And we spend lots of money prolonging their lives, putting off their deaths; it's so strange to me. I mean, if you really love a thing and don't want to let it go, I guess you try and keep it going on. But what is life, afterall? We have bizarre and perhaps inexplicable attachments to our egos and the mirage of a universe we've constructed. Is that why death is so challenging to people? Because it is evidence that all of this is an illusion? Or is it challenging because people don't want to see it as an illusion and in the struggle to see it as something real, you suffer? Or have we been taught fear of death so that we keep our elbows off the table and so we stop at red lights when no one is watching.

And what is the life of this cat? Indy. He's a very charming animal--when he's not being sickly. But does he exist for his own sake? Do we keep him living with the assistance of western medicine because it is what he wishes? Is this in his best interest? Does he have the same attachment to ego as humans do? "May all beings be free from suffering." What does this mean?

We say humans have a right to refuse medical treatment. Does a cat?

When I took him to the vet I was struck by all the other animals there. No kidding, right? All the other animals. And their human companions. And I speculate about how many of those human companions eat the flesh of other animals. Here they spend lots of money to care for one animal, which may indicate much love for that animal, and yet they pay 99 cents for the government subsidized flesh of another and eat it un-mindfully while driving a car which is killing the earth and our very selves while they're rushing somewhere un-mindfully... And they eat the fruits of raped and enslaved female animals and think nothing of it. Sometimes it's really frustrating that feminism doesn't imply veganism. Since one may want to shoot the large wild buck who has had a grand time out in the woods, but keep the egg-laying hen in abominable conditions before slaughtering her ruthlessly after her 3 years of egg-laying are up. Which brings me back to Indy, now that I sort of positioned myself on the other side of things. Do he owe him a long decline and expensive medical care because we owe him for the years of loyal service he gave to us?

How is it we see some animals as relative equals and some as machinery that produce us food?

So what is particularly sticky about this, and why I resent the whole situation I find myself in is that it's not my decision to make. It's neither my money nor my heart (as much as it is my fams) nor my relationship and karma to complete. I'm not really involved here except I'm feeling guilty cause I'm torturing him (or so it seems to him) or I'm feeling guilty because I'm not doing a good enough job (of torturing him) in order to extend his life.