Ode to Motorhead

Those who know me and my animal-disliking ways well may be surprised to know that I once owned a cat. While I think it's kind of obnoxious to put your own creative writing in a blog, I'm going to quote from an essay I wrote many years back (published awhile back in Under the Sun) about my cat Motorhead because it's easier than writing about her from scratch (get it, scratch? well, you will after reading this):

Apparently, no one told the mice that the landlord was trying to make the building a little nicer, and they began coming in droves, hiding in the closet, at the head of my futon, in back of the non-working fireplace. At the base of our building was a small storefront from which the smell of reefer and Jamaican food always floated. Often times, a tall black man with a multi-colored crocheted hat sat outside, keeping an eye on the street. We always said hello, but I never entered that tiny storefront, unsure of whether there really was a restaurant operating inside or not. But the roaches and mice took the scent, and the moment the temperature began to dip below forty, up they’d skitter, to the warmth and comfort of my home. So when the friend of a friend begged me to take his cat, I did. I should have known that no one is that desperate to get rid of an animal without good reason. This cat was psychotic. Why her name, Motorhead, didn’t give me the clue, I don’t know. I guess I was just desperate to get rid of the mice. My mother remains convinced to this day that the only reason I got the cat was because she’s deathly allergic to them. This, of course, wasn’t true. That was just an added bonus.

I will say, Motorhead did her job. An underweight, solid black cat, she’d lunge for the rodents with none of the gracefulness attributed to her kind. She’d tease them, batting them between her paws like a tennis ball, nudging them with her tiny nose, tossing them playfully into the air until those mice finally croaked from a heart attack. Then, when she ran out of mice, she’d go for legs, feet, hair, or whatever she could find. I’d lie in bed at night, listening to the couple next door fighting or the sounds of my roommate Flower and her boyfriend Alex making love as Motorhead carefully shredded my calves.

Motorhead was previously owned by some guys I knew in film school. My roommate and I suspected that the guys had fed Motorhead a lot of drugs. It was pretty obvious when she was having an acid flashback. At first I had to keep a squirt bottle in my loft bed, because at night, she'd start to claw the screen trying to get out, so I'd squeeze a little water on her. When she became more determined after a while, I'd end up just pouring a glass of water on top of her. I have lots of Motorhead stories, mostly involving dead and almost-dead mice and me hiding in my loft bed, waiting for the Tweedle Twirp to let herself into my apartment to rescue me from the dead rodents. I would try to coo, "Good cat, good cat," but it always came out as a maniacal shriek as I shifted the loft ladder around so as to keep the cat from climbing it. There were also the bird incidents and the squirrel incident, among others. Let's just say this cat had energy to spare.

When I left New York for Seattle, I traveled for three months across the country in the tiny Mazda RX-7 that had belonged to my father but that he had given me because he was afraid if left to my own devices that I'd buy something that would break down in the middle of nowhere. With no place to live in Seattle and three months of hostels, cheap motels, and a tent ahead of me, I knew I couldn't bring Motorhead with me, so I gave her to my then-boyfriend Ken, who at the time was moving from New York to North Carolina. Ken kept Motorhead for many years until a girlfriend (many years after we broke up) fell in love with Motorhead. Ken called me one day and asked if Cathy could keep the cat. I said fine, and I joked with my friends that I was such a '90s gal that my cat was now living with my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend and I was cool with it. Cathy doted on Motorhead, and Ken would periodically send me pictures. She had grown fat and content and she now sat on people's laps and purred. I was always sorry I hadn't taken her with me, but what are you going to do.

Anyway, Motorhead recently began to have kidney problems, and she was put to sleep this morning. I hope there are lots of mice where ever you are, Moo.