Chapter 8: Spook

2 weeks ago I had about 3 Pages written. I am not by any means an accomplished typist, so when the power in my house surged so, I lost everything I had written. So barring any unforeseen frustration let me tell you about Spook. Spook was my cat for many years. To be honest I don't remember where we were living when she was born but I knew that we were in possession of her mother so obviously we had her, her entire life.  The intention was to save spook to give to my aunt,  But by the time Spook was old enough to be weaned from her mother I had already formed a relationship with her. I named her spook because she was a tortoiseshell with an orange Sunburst on her forehead. I always called her my Halloween cat. Before I continue, let me explain to you my mother's relationship with her animals. She claims to be an animal lover and claims to love her poodles but nothing could be further from the truth. Well, she does take good care of them on a day-to-day basis she makes sure they have veterinary care she makes sure they have medications that they need she keeps them well-groomed and keeps them in good order. The issue is when an animal gets too old to provide any more service to her as a useful accessory she Disavows them. To tell this story I have to tell the story of Kate. Kate was a German Shepherd we adopted from the Humane Society when we lived in Charleston. I don't know who named her but the name stuck. She was in short the world's most perfect dog. She was the most docile loving caring beautiful dog anyone could ever hope for. She would just walk by look up lovingly and wag her tail. One day my mother and I were in the University of Illinois student union for some odd reason and we left Kate in the car. It was about 60 degrees the windows were cracked so she was safe. we're inside for about 15 minutes or so. when we got back out to the car which was parked in the circle driveway, the second we opened the door Kate bolted out of the open door. We were afraid she was trying to run away so we went running after her yelling at her to come back. No, she was not running away. Kate had sat in the car as long as she did which was probably close to an hour or so in the middle of our running errands around town. Poor Kate had to potty. She sat and waited for us patiently and as soon as we got to the car she ran out and did her business on the lawn in front of the Union. A lesser dog would have just shit in the car. Not Kate. That's not the type of dog Kate was. After fuckface initially moved in with us, We ended up moving into a house out of our apartment. As I may have mentioned before he's a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. On this night in question, he drank himself into Oblivion as he tends to do and ended up putting an ashtray into the garbage with a lit cigarette in it. Any idiot knows what a lit cigarette can do to garbage. An hour or two after he stumbles off to bed we all hear Kate barking her head off. This was not like her to do that. Dumb fuck goes out to see what's wrong with her and finds the garbage can engulfed in flames. Kate literally saved our house from burning down. Again that's the type of dog Kate was. She also protected her owners from strangers. if somebody came in that my mother did not have a good sense 4, Kate made sure to stay between the family member and the person. Kate grew old as all things do. She developed incontinence. Nothing bad just a little bit of leaking every now and again but this had gone on for about six weeks or so. She grew old she had no control of her bladder anymore. On the day in question, Kate was laying on the floor in the room called “The Grooming Room”. As she lay on the floor a puddle of urine emanated from under her. My fucking mother, bitch that she is, grabbed Kate by the neck and yanked her out into the car. I remember asking her to stop. I remember saying let's take her to the vet. My mother screamed back "I'm so goddamned sick of this"! She drove Kate to animal control and relinquished her. She came back with an empty car I asked her where she went and she just walked away. She took Kate to be murdered in a cold austere environment with strange noises and strange people. Kate had no idea what she had done wrong. My mother and her fucking cognitive dissonance to this day insists that an old farmer showed up right after she did and took Kate into his house. Let's say for argument's sake that that's true. Kate would not be happy. She was not with the family that she had loved so much. All she did… the only crime she committed... Was to commit the venal sin of growing old. I can tell you I can't wait to throw my mother into a nursing home where thankfully they won't kill her, they'll let her sit in her own urine until the day she dies. It's what she deserves. This is the way she treats her animals. Don't let the verisimilitude of her “love for animals” polish her in anything other than the actual truth. She had a poodle named Alex that she decided that she didn't like. One-time Alex wasn't behaving her on the way to the vet so she kicked him. She kicked him in the sternum which resulted in Breaking the buckle on her shoe. She claims faulty manufacturing. This is a pair of Bass Shoes. Bass is not known for their "faulty manufacturing”. Our veterinarian has never liked her. He understands the way she treats her animals and how she does not provide end-of-life care for them as they deserve. Like I said when they stop serving their purpose to her She has no use for them. Shortly after fuck face moved in with us, my brother and I were in our bedroom in bed. Spook Had come in and I put her under the blanket. The truth is she wasn't allowed under the blankets to keep cat hair oh wait. I knew this. My mother came in and found Spook under the blanket. Spook didn't do anything wrong. She's a cat. She didn't know right from wrong.  So my mother grabs her and puts her into a crate that she used for her dog grooming business in the kitchen. Our duplex was about 450 square feet so as you can imagine the kitchen was very close to my bedroom. I can hear spook meowing and meowing to be let out of the cage. fuckface kept screaming that he was going to put a bullet in her head. "I'm going to take her outside and blow her goddamn brains out if she doesn't stop fucking meowing" .Actually, that may not be true he may not have been screaming but I absolutely heard him say that. So I went running out to the crate I'm not sure what I was going to do but I'm sitting in front of the crate petting her through the wires saying it's not her fault she didn't know what she was doing punish me instead! I was in 5th grade. Speak didn't do anything wrong. I did. I'm the one that should have been punished. When we moved into the new house, Spook did what cats do when they're in a new environment. She hides and then marks her new territory by peeing on it. Again I had to listen to a whole new Cavalcade of fuckface making threats against her. I specifically remember an orange chair we used to have sitting in the corner of the new living room with a puddle of urine underneath it. I remember frantically grabbing her and running to my bed hoping nothing would happen. He's such a fuckface asshole I can't even get over it. Such a fucking piece of shit. I started keeping a knife in my room. It wasn't until the shotgun incident that I didn't sleep with it under my pillow but I definitely kept a rainbow knife in my room for such an occasion I might have to use it to protect my cat. I question myself now and again if I would have actually followed through with any type of violent action should something have happened. I really don't know. I think I may have thankfully none of us had to find out. When spook finally passed away from renal failure in 1992 or 1993 I asked my mother to take her body to the veterinarian. I asked her to be cremated so I could keep her ashes. My mother was insistent that I wouldn't have had the money to pay for that which was partially true but I would have gone to the end of the Earth to ensure that I had the money to pay for it. She ensured me that she was going to have Spook buried in the backyard. That didn't sit well with me but what was I going to do. She answered me that spook was buried in her favorite place in the backyard. a few years later I asked her where spook was buried. She claims she didn't remember. I said you said it was Spook's favorite place in the backyard. I didn't know she had a favorite place you seem to know so where is it? This went on for a few years. I started losing patience and then one day she called me and said that she found Spook's name tag. I said that is amazing! Where did you find it did you find it on the spot where she was buried? Perhaps it migrated to the top. At this moment she told me she found it between the garbage cans. The garbage cans are about 75 ft from the backyard on the side of the house. I had already told years previous her that I knew she had merely thrown Spook's body in the garbage. Now I had her caught. She's been lying to me all these years that she had spooked buried then she admitted by virtue of finding Spook's identification tag between the garbage cans that she yes indeed, in fact, had just thrown Spook in the garbage. Just like she did Kate, Jesse, and her kittens, and Hobo. I’m not going to ask her about Bingo, and Rowdy.