Now that I live alone sans cats and other humans, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be raped & murdered on a daily basis. At least for about 15 seconds a day until my logical brain kicks in, but still those 15 seconds are pretty scary and cause many a heightened pulse rate and much heart palpitations.

See, the problem is that not only did Paco die leaving me to live alone, but I also moved around all the books on my bedroom floor right around when he died.

My bedroom floor is littered with books, mostly all the ones I started and abandoned over the past two(ish) years. There are some finishers in there, even some keepers. But mostly the books that make up the two dusty, three-foot tall piles on my bedroom floor are books that I will never finish.

For the better part of two years this stack of books lived in a sloppy, toppled-over heap right in front of my bedroom door, pinning the door open for all time. I’m not kidding when I say it’s been a long time, if I were a better blogger I’d march right upstairs and take a picture of the patch of carpet where the books used to be — a rectangular island of cleanliness surrounded by an ocean of dusty cat-haired carpet detritus. But I am a bad blogger, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

One night, shortly after Paco died, I had to lock Walter in my room with me for the night. It was so he would act like a big, barking jerk who was gonna eat the Culligan man’s face. The Culligan man comes over every other month to deliver & install a thing to make sure I have soft water. He usually comes and does this at ungodly o’clock in the morning, and thus the reason Walter had to sleep with me.

Walter used to sleep with me all the time when I he stayed with me, but he stopped doing that in December. Now he’ll only sleep with me if there is another human in the house. I’m not sure if he’s afraid they’ll kidnap me or dognap him. Dogs are weird. I wasn’t too terribly sad that Walter stopped sleeping with me because his superpower is gaining 900 pounds in his sleep and being unmovable. He also has a knack for sleeping in the exact spot I want to put my butt/feet/arms.

So yeah, I moved the books so I could close the door so Walter wouldn’t eat the Culligan man’s face. No big deal.

Only about once a week it is a big deal. Because now that the door can move freely it frequently slams shut because all the windows in the house are open and it occasionally gets breezy in this joint. Breezy enough that it can move bedroom doors upstairs.

Whenever the door slams shut my brain goes through this series of thoughts quick like a bunny — while my heart races and I search for my phone.

1.) Paco is dead so there’s no way he made that noise.
2.) There’s a murdering rapist who has snuck in through the upstairs window and is creeping downstairs to rape and murder me.
3.) I have ghosts either human or animal and they are making a ruckus.
4.) Oh, the window blew my bedroom door shut because I moved those books.

It’s like the perfume thing all over again.

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Sister #4 is in Las Vegas for our cousin Lisa’s wedding. I’m here at Supergenius HQ with her two cats. It’s been just over a month since Paco died and I’m kinda surprised by how quickly I had acclimated to life without cats. It’s nice having Pugsley & Mabel here, but at the same time I’m all “damn cats leave my stuff alone!”

People keep asking me in hushed, timid tones if I’m going to get another cat. It’s a simple yes/no question and yet every time someone asks me I shrug my shoulders. I don’t know. Maybe. Right now I don’t feel the desire to have another cat, though sometimes I do look at pictures of adorable kittens who look just like Paco and Madison did as babies and in that moment I want all the cute kittens. Then I remember the reason kittens are so cute is that they’re total assholes and it’s that cuteness that keeps you from not murdering them 800 times a day when they’re climbing the curtains for the 29th time.

The idea of bringing a new cat into my house seems weird to me, which probably means I’m not ready. Just having Pugsley & Mabel here is weird. I feel an odd urge to make sure they stay out of Paco’s spots, even thought neither cat had shown any desire to lay in his place. There is probably still some low-level grief sticking around this joint.

A few weeks ago BFK, who has two cats and two dogs (and two children while I’m listing stuff), asked what I do now that I don’t have any pets. She wanted to know who I talk to.

“Well, I sing a lot more now,” I said. “I talk to the tree [a Meyer lemon tree Sister #3 got me for my birthday last year], to myself, to the Internet. I’m pretty sure some sort of murdering rapist has broken into my house in a daily basis because of a random noise I heard upstairs.”

My reluctance in getting another pet makes me feel a little bit like a heartless monster. Like what kind of weirdo wants to live all alone without any form of companion? Probably a serial-killer in training or a bitter spinster aunt really coming into her bitter spinsterhood.

I’m sure I’ll change my mind at some point, but until then the tree and the music seem to be enough.

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I didn’t sleep very well last night.

It was the first time in twenty-one years that I had gone to sleep in my house completely, totally, utterly alone. No cat. No dog. No roommate. No sister as guest. Nobody.

Just me.

My brother-in-law, Ben, took Walter home yesterday around four. I was both happy and sad to see him go. I love Walter. He is my favorite dog of all the dogs. He is funny and kind of emo and he loves me more than any other creature on the planet loves me. He is my buddy and having him here to listen to me chatter away was nice.

But dogs are a lot of work and sometimes they take forever to find the proper blade of grass to poop on while it you get soaked through with rain and even if you threaten to tie them to a tree in your head they still don’t hurry up. AND when you get back inside they’re all pissed off at you because their soaking wet as if it was you who took forever to poop in the pouring rain.

Losing Paco and having to give back Walter within the span of a few weeks, was some shitty timing and bad luck.

On top of all that, I had a sort-of-relationship come to a dramatic, fiery end two days after I lost Paco. It was a lot to happen all at once and for the past two weeks I’ve been numb. I hate numb. It’s boring and unproductive and I’m not entirely sure how to shake myself out of it.

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I thought I was ready. Paco’s health had been dwindling for three years. He was the kind of scrawny that made people wince when they looked at him. Petting him was no fun because he was so bony. I could count his vertebrae and his hips stuck out of his fur to a painful degree.

When I went to bed last night I noticed Paco laying under the coffee table, a spot he never inhabited, but I didn’t think anything of it. This morning, when I was getting dressed, I noticed him laying in a pile of dirty clothes near the top of the stairs and I knew in an instant these were his last moments. I sat on the floor and pet him, seeing if he could stand up. I’d put him on his feet and then he’d sway and fall to the ground. I googled what vet clinics were open this morning, and then I sat down at the top of stairs with Paco in my lap while Walter wiggled and squirmed at the bottom, begging to go outside.

I told Paco that I loved him and that it was going to be okay. I told him he was still the fanciest cat ever and that I would miss him. Then I brought him downstairs, put him on the red chair, and took Walter out. Then I came back in and sat down on the couch and cried for 45 minutes.

The Shakopee Vet Clinic is two miles from my house and filled with the kindest women imaginable. I thought I was holding it together pretty well until another woman who was in the waiting room told me that I was making her cry. The end was mercifully quick and within 20 minutes I was back in the sunshine, petless.

I still have Walter, the loaner pet, for few more weeks, but this the first time I’ve been without a pet since I was 22.

Paco wasn’t even supposed to be my cat. Sister #3 got him when we moved in together back in 1998 because my cat, Madison, was so fucking annoying without another cat around. He was much mellower with a friend, and that friend was Paco. When Madison died in 2012, I thought Paco would need a new friend. He didn’t. In fact, Paco liked it just being the two of us and he treated any one who came into Supergenius H.Q. as an interloper, and was a big fan of shitting on my bed whenever he thought too many people were here for too long.

Paco was kind of an asshole. He hated Jaycie, Max, and The Tibbles and whenever he was nice to any of them they would freak out. He liked to swipe and hiss at Walter and when BFK’s dog Lex came over Paco would just sit and stare at him, which made Lex bark like he was under attack. Paco was an asshole, but he wasn’t afraid of anything but the vacuum. And he loved me. His favorite thing to do was to lay on my chest and purr. He slept with me for a portion of every night, curling up my hip.

I’m so sad right now even though I’m glad that he didn’t have to suffer and that he led a good, long, cranky life. I’m really going to miss him.

The post In Memory of Paco (1998-2017) appeared first on I Will Dare.

Aside from a handful of months, I’ve lived by myself for the past fifteen years.

I love living by myself. As an especially introverty introvert I need to have my own space to revert to after being with people. I need to have a place where I don’t have to speak to anyone about anything or even live with the possibility that I might be required to speak to someone without a moment’s notice. Just the thought of it exhausts me.

There are roughly 77,139 wonderful things about living alone. There are a few shitty things about living alone and most of them involve either doing dishes or things that go bump in the night. Last night was kind of bumpy.

I arrived home from Family Dinner (tator tot hotdish for non-beef eaters & meatloaf for beef eaters) around 9 p.m. and promptly discovered “St. Elmo’s Fire” on one of the eight channels my TV gets. Wooee was I happy. This has no significance to the story, I was just really happy about it.

Long about 11:30 shortly after Billy had helped Wendy shuck her virginity it was time to go upstairs to read and sleep. I do this every single night. Turn off the lights, walk upstairs, and turn on the light once I reach the top of the stairs. There’s a light at the bottom of the stairs, but I always wait until I get to the top to turn it on. I’m not sure why. Maybe because there’s often enough moonlight from outside that I don’t need the light on while walking upstairs. I definitely need it on once I am upstairs because I have an irrational fear of plummeting down the stairs in the dark.

So last night at about the time I hit the fourth step I realize there’s an eery light coming from my bedroom. I stopped, turned, and looked out the tall window in the living room. The moonlight was pretty bright and so I shrugged it off for another step or two. But the closer I got to my room (I can see it from the steps), the more my spidey-senses began to tingle. The eery light wasn’t coming from the windows, it was coming from the opposite direction. Also, it wasn’t moonlight. And also, I had left Supergenius HQ when it was still light out and thus had no reason to have lights on upstairs.

I paused on the next step as I realized the closet light was on. Now, you need to know that the master bedroom closet not only has a light (so bougie, I know), but that you have to walk through the master bath (super boug) to get to that closet (super stupid and if you ever want to hear me bitch about how stupid and poorly designed this joint is, it will start with the fact that there is a toilet practically in my closet).

Why would my closet light be on at 11:30 at night? The obvious answer is that a serial-killer rapist was waiting for me to go brush my teeth before bed. At least that was the obvious answer to my brain. I tried to get Paco to go into the room before me, but he just stood at my feet watching me. “Chicken shit, bastard,” I said. He meowed at me but didn’t budge.

All this happened in about forty-five seconds. I crept toward the bathroom with the plan to grab the scissors off the counter and plunge them into the serial-killer rapists chest. Because of course that’s what I would do if someone popped out of the closet. I totally wouldn’t drop dead of a heart attack right on the spot. Of course not.

I stepped into the bathroom and before I could find the scissors on the messy counter my eyes caught the pile of clothes in the doorway of the closet.

“Oh yeah,” my brain laughed. “All your clothes were still drying after you took a bath and you got dressed from the clothes you never wear in the closet.” (all the clothes in the closet are the ones I never wear).

It took a long time for the fear and adrenaline to wear off. At one point after I had closed my book, turned off the light, and practiced. I was convinced I felt someone getting into bed with me. I kind of pawed the other side of the bed without turning around and didn’t feel anyone.

“It’s a ga-ga-ga-ghost!” my brain shouted, but that time I didn’t listen. Instead I turned on Jason Isbell and snuggled in for some slumber, pretty sure not even a serial-killer rapist or a ghost would disturb me with Jason Isbell playing.

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