Helmut 7/28/92-9/19/07

Written on September 19, 2007:
Helmut died today, or was it yesterday? I’m not entirely sure. I took his nearly lifeless body to bed with us at 11pm last night and quickly descended into some strange dreams. I recall nothing of them, except their unfamiliarity. I woke up at 3am. Helmut was lying in the same position as before. He still felt warm (we propped him next to a hot-water bottle), I reached over to feel for the faint movement of his diaphragm, and there was none.

Yes, he must have died today. I recall feeling him breathing at several moments in the night. It must have been after midnight. Maybe it was a dream? His death was so gentle I did not notice it. Like someone imperceptibly turning a dimmer switch to ‘OFF’.

His sickness came on just as imperceptibly. Maybe it began in the round of puking after I carelessly purchased a box of Alley Cat food in February. Maybe, when he began to sniffle and snort after I repainted the bathroom sometime last spring. Over the course of the summer it blossomed into his fifteen year life’s one and only illness. And in the end it left him floating dead in the East River by Corlears Hook this morning.

He died of cancer? Cancer brought on by old age? All the tests were inconclusive. The doctors could tell nothing without cutting him open. I thought the cancer was somewhere in his face, maybe his jaw, his sinuses, perhaps his brain. Wherever it was, it made existence uncomfortable for the little guy. It became so intolerable that he stopped eating 7 days ago. Three days ago he stopped drinking. Today he stopped.

Soon it will be fall. These are the last days of summer. And as he died, he was born during these summer days fifteen years ago. On July 28^th to be exact (I was given the date only recently, for years I assumed July or August.) in the year of 1992. He was the runt of the litter, living in a salon of a Brooklyn brownstone on Washington Avenue. Helmut’s beginnings were comfortable, and a bit bourgeois.

At eight weeks he moved into the Pratt Institute dorms on Willoughby Avenue, just around the corner from where his mother must have kicked him off the teat. This is why he had a habit of suckling everyone he met. He suckled nearly his entire life, until he got sick…I miss his drooling and curling his claws in my lap terribly.

In the dorms he lived with his sister and a ferret. I visited my friend Elizabeth there a few times to play with the kittens. His name was Hansel back then. I don’t know if there was a Gretel, although for his sake, I hope there was. The next time I heard of him was when Elizabeth was asked by some friends to find him a home. Apparently, he lived in the dorms until May, moved to Indianapolis for the summer. There he lived in a suburban home (all homes in Indianapolis are suburban) with a dog. By time he moved back to Brooklyn in the fall, he was an ornery teen, who did not get along with other cats.

At that point, I moved into my first semi-private apartment on East 10^th street. It was two back rooms on the third floor above Sapporo East—a Japanese joint still hanging on to this day. Around the corner were two of the classic village dive bars—The Village Idiot sharing a graffiti covered wall with Downtown Beirut. They were the kind of places local pan-handlers could afford to go in and get a drink. Both were narrow storefronts, bar running the length, with a smelly semi-open toilet at the far end.

I accepted to take him into my care without much hesitation. Life was a bit lonely at the time and I finally had some space to myself. Although I did not particularly like cats, (I fought with them as a child.) I found their cleanliness and distain for scat very attractive qualities in a roommate/beast. I don’t recall the actual date he arrived, but I know the first thing I did was change his name from Hansel to Helmut. Hansel was too fruity. But the name needed to start with “H”, to make the name sound familiar to him, and remain Germanic. It was 1993, the capitalist revolution was victorious in Europe, and Germany was re-united for the first time since the fall of the Third Reich, Helmut Kohl was riding high as chancellor, so “Helmut” he was called from then on.

I lived with him for the next thirteen plus years—during which he was always free to go. But he never went away for long, a weekend at the neighbors at most. He remained a true and loyal friend until the very end: the last time he moved, he crawled from the bathroom to the floor near our bed. And he never moved afterwards. I miss you and love you little Helmut. Always will.