In memoriam: Elmo

[My gaming readers can feel free to skip this if they like. It's an elegy I wrote for the coolest cat I've known, who died a year ago today, and I post it mainly for my wife and friends who read this page.]


Sir Walter Scott wrote, of dogs, "I have sometimes thought of the final cause of [their] having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much [the loss] after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?"

Maybe so. But at the moment, fuck that guy. Elmo died almost a week ago at the age of only eight and it is stony comfort indeed to imagine a grief more sharp or a loss more aching if we had but had more time together.

He was a cat of outsized emotions: both fiery and 'fraidy, smart yet screwball, "one half boneless cuddler and one half manic nutcase," as I wrote a few weeks after he came to live with us. He raised so much hell the first month or two we had him we thought he was defective. He had a bit of a mean streak, it's true, yet in the end I have known no cat more loving or more eager for human companionship. He wasn't much one for being picked up and petted, but he was quick to find my lap when I settled down to read, or to scooch next to Anne when she knitted on weekend mornings. Hardly a night has passed in years that he did not sleep at my feet.

He ate, played, begged, bit, stretched and slept with gusto, damn, you bet. I sometimes feared he'd burn out quickly, so fiercely did he live. To our heartbreak this has proven true. Healthy and strong till almost the last, Elmo died on July 17th of acute renal failure. We gave him every chance we could, but an intense course of IV therapy could not flush his busted kidney, and on his second day in the hospital, after he gained two pounds of fluid in 12 hours, we said goodbye. He died without dignity, great patches of fur shaved, eyes red-rimmed and leaking, swollen like a balloon, till the vet came and let the life out of him. No dignity, but there is no small grace in the end of his suffering, no matter how much or how long ours might linger.

When we stepped into his enclosure at Wisconsin Humane six years ago it was to look at another cat, but Elmo chose us. He crawled into my lap and, not gently, mashed my chin with his forehead and cheek and it was clear that there would be no other cat for us. This is no less true now that he is gone: he will always be my cat, the cat, to whom all others will be compared.

Playing D&D with my Dad

My dad was always indulgent with my D&D hobby. He surprised me with the Player's Handbook one day after work, and later the Monster Manual too. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders at the art project I made of my monster books. And though I have no clear memories of it I am certain he listened dozingly to many a character background and adventure idea.

I always bugged him to play, but it never came together. Sure, he took me to face the harsh mercies of our D&D playing parish priest, but as I recall Dad deferred to me as I metagamed my way desperately through a few rooms of the pater's dungeon ("The old woman offers you bread and salt." "Don't take it! She's probably a night hag!"). As much as I pestered him, we only sat down to play once.

Looking back, I was outmatched from the start. I was a nine year old daydreamer. My dad was -- and is still -- smart, intuitive and pragmatic. At one point he found a map written in a substitution code which I had laboriously devised. He glanced at it and said, "Here be treasure?" One of the characters I had made for him was a wizard, a homebrewed class based on Ged from A Wizard of Earthsea. I had thought nothing of giving the wizard the power of telekinesis at first level. The first and only combat of our game ended abruptly: "Ok, I use telekinesis to spray the orcs with all of the arrows in the fighter's quiver." My father, powergamer.

We never played again, but I'm thankful for that hour or two, a summer evening many years past, sitting on the porch after dinner playing D&D with Dad. Happy Father's Day, Pops.

Of Dice, Devotion & Dumpsters

Only this morning I mentioned to my wife that I was looking for a new dicebag, and could she keep an eye out for one on Etsy? So what does she do instead? She hunts up a pattern and knits me one herself! Nifty, eh? Shucks, what a gal!

She had a birthday this weekend, and I want to take a moment to thank her for all the loving things like this she does. I also want to thank her for being patient with my oft bumbling ways. At times I am every bit the archetypal absent-minded professor. Once I left our checkbook on the roof of our car, which was parked on the street. Overnight. I sometimes say that I would forget my head if it weren't bolted on.

In return, I hope she knows how devoted I am to being the man and husband she deserves, even if I may sometimes go about it eccentrically. Say, hypothetically, that I were to rest an envelope containing my wife's birthday present against the wastebasket in my office and forget it there. It would not even occur to me that the cleaning woman might think that something near but not inside the basket was trash, but I can imagine my sinking realization were I to find the package had disappeared overnight. Say, still hypothetically, that there were no time to order a replacement. Faced with this purely illustrative predicament let it be known to all that I would not flinch from my duty, but would bravely roll up my sleeves...and go dumpster diving to prove my love.

So, Happy Birthday, Owl. I may not be a knight in shining armor, but still I bear your token in my heart.