Love

The first being I ever loved, as in the first thing I felt love for and recognized the feeling to be love, was for my cat Milo. I loved my family, said "I love you" to relatives, and loved abstract things and ideas, but the first time I had that feeling and knew what it was it was directed at a cat.

However, anyone who has known me really at all knows that cat wasn't some ordinary cat. Milo was a family member, he was known around the neighborhood, and he was loved by almost everyone. (I only say almost because he was a cat and some people really hate cats.) My former neighbor enticed him back to our old neighborhood with chicken so he would scare off or kill the rats in her garage, leaving me, a 14 year old girl, sobbing every night for two weeks because I was terrified he'd died. Milo helped himself to our neighbor cat's food, then woke up the neighbor's daughter by just walking into their home and hopping into her bed. He brought me a prize about once a month, showcasing his talents as a hunter (which I eventually accepted).

It seems unsurprising to me that the first time I knew what love felt like I was feeling it for that cat. After that, I knew when I really felt love for others. My sisters, my best friends, my pets, other people's pets, my boyfriends, my city, jobs, an apartment, even my old car... all of these things and more I've felt that unmistakable pang of love for. I always referred to Milo as the love of my life, something that's gotten harder to keep saying.

I've had that same lovin' feeling a lot the last year. Far more than usual, even. It seemed like every day I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach, usually when I was doing something mundane like typing or watching TV or getting the mail. All of a sudden I'd just feel it and get really happy. But I also felt being loved more than I ever have. I recognize that feeling in the boyfriend and I know he feels the same thing. It's the intensity that's new.

And it all started 15 years ago with that cat. Happy 19th birthday, Milo. I still love you.

Happy 18th Birthday, Milo

It's definitely getting harder and harder to still say he'd be however old if he were still alive; cats can live to be 18 but not very often, and especially not if they go outside. But I can still pretend.

Usually twice a year I write about how that cat was more than a cat: the day he was born and the day he died. Milo was the best Christmas present I could have ever imagined and there's nothing I could think that could be better. I might've only gotten 8 years with him, which was entirely too few, but in those 8 years he affected a lot of people.

Milo was the love of my life. But he was a lot of things to a lot of other people, too. Milo was the big strong brother of Peanut, my sister's cat. He defended her against the other cats in the neighborhood, taking them on in the middle of the night, even losing part of his fang. Milo and Peanut would tear though our house like horses, chasing each other in their games. They would both taunt the neighbor dog, a giant German shepherd, who got loose twice to nearly kill each of them.

When we got bunk beds, Milo spent more nights in my sister's bed than mine because cats like to be up high. One morning she woke up covered in feathers and had a small panic attack. Milo was a very successful hunter and she tore through her bed looking for the body of the poor bird he had undoubtedly dragged to her bed. It turned out that he only killed her dream catcher, not a live bird.

Milo didn't get along with the other animals in our house, though. He'd watch the birds with interest, probably wondering why we'd keep them in the house in a cage, he ran from the dog, and he mostly hated my sister's cat, Scar. Scar was BFF with the neighbor cat and they played all the time (Milo was way too good to join in). But when their games led to Scar's death, Milo started to tolerate (even befriend) the neighbor cat. I found them laying on the sunny grass right next to each other, as if having some sort of cat conversation.

Soon after that, Milo started to go over to the neighbor's house in the mornings. He'd help himself to the other cat's food (it was more expensive than what I fed him), get into bed with the neighbor girl and wake her up, and spend a few minutes with the family. The mom was the first one to find him after he'd been hit by a car, and she was as distraught as my own mom.

I'd always thought I'd take Milo to college with me, and it wasn't until I got there that I realized he would have hated it. I suppose it was for the best that I didn't have to make that decision; in our home he could roam where he wanted, he knew enough to avoid predators and cars (making his death highly suspicious), and was king of his land. He might not have done so well in San Diego, but leaving him would have killed me.

As always, I'll end this by saying I know no cat will ever be like Milo was, even though that will never stop me from keeping and loving Chloe and any future cats. But maybe tonight Chloe will get some extra love, a can of wet food and maybe a little catnip, just because.

Love Of My Life

It doesn't feel strange at all to me that the first time I felt real love was for my cat Milo. I loved my parents and my sisters, had some obligatory love for more distant family members, really liked my friends, but that cat was different.

And it's not just me saying that: ask my family, my friends who knew him, even my old neighbors. He was mine, and he was universally loved. (Well, almost universally loved, but that's another story.) Once, my dad and my first boyfriend were talking about him and my dad said, "It's a shame you never met him." My boyfriend laughed, thinking my dad (who never admitted liking animals, especially cats) was being sarcastic, but my dad quickly corrected him, saying, "No, it really is a shame. He was a good cat."

I loved my boyfriends, but now that they're out of the picture that love is gone. Milo has been out of the picture for almost 9 years but he's still the love of my life. Today he would have turned 16. I would have made him a cake (wet food on a plate with dry food sprinkled all over, topped with a candle), would be telling my friends to come celebrate, and would have taken pictures. He would have hated it but he would have put up with it, because that's just the kind of guy he was.

It was with him that I recognized that warm spark in my heart, and because of that I was able to recognize it with others, even Chloe, as different as a cat could possibly be from Milo. Somehow animals give more than people do, something I'll always be grateful for.

Milo

This afternoon I was laying in the sun at the beach, iPod headphone in one ear and holding the other headphone in my fingers, feeling it pulsing, when I remembered the last time I had felt for a pulse with those fingertips; that was roughly eight years ago.

I was on the verge of hysterics, doing my damnedest to remain calm and rational, but I was holding Milo in my arms and he wasn't responding and reason was failing me. I ferociously pressed my index and middle fingers into his very warm chest and felt a pulse... But somewhere in me knew I was feeling the pulse that was naturally in my index finger. I was sobbing and trying to explain to my parents what I was doing and why it wasn't working. I shut myself in the bathroom for quiet as I tried to listen and feel for any sign of life in him... It was too much to try and calm my own raging head with a screaming family.

Then I remember my dad driving us to the vets. I held Milo in my lap, tears pouring silently, mumbling incoherent words I hoped formed a prayer. I looked at the hills by my house knowing I would remember that drive for the rest of my life. The day was so normal, yet my whole life was going to be forever altered by that morning.

At the beach today I was overcome with this memory until I remembered the date. It's September 25th, Milo's birthday. He would have been 16 today, a very old cat. But he didn't even make it to 8.

Eight years ago May 12th fell on a Saturday and I was still in my pajamas in the late morning. My friend's birthday party was later and I was fooling around with the keyboard. I heard a knock on the door but I didn't want to be seen in my pajamas. I couldn't hear who it was but I must have heard something because my stomach sank and I ran for the door. My mom heard me burst into the hallway and she looked scared, crying like someone just hit her. I never remember hearing anything, just knowing, and when I saw our neighbor at the door also crying I ran outside. My mom grabbed me, told me no, but it wasn't too hard to break away. My slippers flew from my feet as I ran and I saw his body in the street in front of our house. As I reached the road my brain told me a car was coming but all I saw was Milo and that's all that mattered in the world.

I've seen cats hit by cars before and it's a horrible, sad sight. Milo did not look like that at all. He was perfectly normal except for being a little wet, just sleeping in the road. But he didn't open his eyes when I touched him or wake up when I picked him up. Up until when I was back inside, cradling Milo in my arms and feeling for a pulse, is gone from memory. A vet tech was waiting for me when we got there. She asked if he was the emergency and I said yes and handed the love of my life over to her. I don't remember what happened while my dad and I waited, don't remember how long we were there, don't remember if I cried or what the vet said when she called us in, or if we even went in at all. I do remember looking at his body in the cardboard cat carrier tucked between my legs in the truck on the way back home; he was way too big for a regular carrier.

I stayed next to his body for the rest of the day, even after the rigor mortis started. I left briefly to watch my dad build his coffin and went back to him after my dad said the bright side to him dying was us spending time together that day (that wasn't even the most insensitive thing my dad said about Milo). We buried him in the backyard between two fruit trees, at the foot of the ivy he loved to hunt in. I would buy that house back in an instant.

Everyone who knew Milo, other than the neighbors who killed him, loved him. My family loved him like he was the son my parents never had (except sometimes my dad was jealous of the attention the world gave him, a cat), my neighbors in two neighborhoods loved him even to the point of feeding him chicken to keep him around and letting him go into their children's rooms to wake them up in the morning. Sometimes I thought if Milo was a man he'd break my heart with his 9 lives, but I knew I would love him even if he did. Everyone did- you could not help but love him.

The neighbors who killed Milo didn't fit in. They never associated with the neighborhood and though we weren't the kind to have potlucks and block parties we waved, the kids played together and babysat each other, and everyone knew everyone else's name. The neighbors who killed Milo didn't even say hello. The man was freakish about his front yard and would pick weeds in the morning, in his suit. His wife stayed at home and misted the plants on hot days and drove the kids to private school. The man left for work every day by backing his truck around a curb. He didn't like Milo in his yard, which I would have understood if Milo was a dog and dug up the flowers, but he was a cat and other than occasionally rubbing himself on the grass did nothing but keep pests away. When I found him laying in the street he was in the tracks of the man's truck. The next time I saw them, that Monday, the whole family was all hellos and have a great day. A short while later they moved.

If I could go back in time I would beg my parents for a toxicology report and necropsy. I know he died because he was hit by a car, but he wasn't hit by a fast moving car because as far as I could tell no bones were broken and there was no blood. Milo watched my sisters' cat die by a car and had been afraid of cars since; he would not have stood to be killed by a slow-moving car. Milo was famous in two neighborhoods, with all our friends and family members, and the families my mom did daycare for. That man took something very precious away from me and indirectly everyone I knew. I hope karma gets his ass.