There comes a time in the life of every cat when it must die. Our family cats were no different. They just happened to meet their inescapable fates with extreme frequency and in the most peculiar ways. Why? There are a number of theories.
The explanation could be as simple as our family’s being irresponsible pet owners. But we weren’t. Our cats never went unfed and almost always enjoyed clean litter boxes. Beyond that, we did everything we thought responsible people should do. And when one of us willfully took the life of one of our cats it was almost always out of mercy rather than anger.
Some people might offer up an explanation that’s more complex in nature. For example, it could be that our animals behaved in dangerous ways because of the grating, deep vibrations of my father’s voice. Or perhaps it was my mother’s anxiety that triggered a suicidal switch in these cats’ telepathic brains. Or maybe it was the general intolerability of my little sisters, which makes most rational creatures want to stop living.
I like to think the reason is more mystical, like the cursed idol that caused the Bradys to experience bad luck on their trip to Hawaii in season four of The Brady Bunch. Curses do happen. But was each of these cats the victim of a “LaVelle Curse,” a curse that caused car doors to close when they shouldn’t and dogs to attack when they normally wouldn’t? Was it a curse that caused our cats to be euthanized by my parents or frozen alive? Probably. It has been my belief for some time that most things happen because of magic.
Occam’s razor is a scientific principle that, in the most basic terms, can be summarized as “the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is most likely the correct explanation.” Of all the possible reasons for my family to use up cats at an average of one for every 2.3 years, the answer is undeniable. It wasn’t because of my father’s voice, my mother’s anxiety, or my sisters’ intolerability. And it most certainly wasn’t because we were irresponsible pet owners. The simplest explanation is magic. After all, who am I to argue with scientific principle?
Good or bad, magical things tend to happen to families who have interesting dynamics or who are basically screwed up. If your family only functions through dysfunction then you know exactly what I’m talking about. And chances are, you wouldn’t want to trade the experience of being in such a family for anything in the world. Besides, people like us make for better stories. Charlie Bucket’s inheriting the Chocolate Factory wouldn’t have been nearly as remarkable had he not been living in squalor with his parents and both sets of grandparents. E.T. could have found a family with a father, but then Elliott wouldn’t have had any pain that needed healing.
Unlike the parents of Elliott or of countless other kids I wanted to trade places with, my parents never divorced. My father never took mysterious business trips and my mother didn’t sleep with a state trooper while she worked as a dispatcher at the Palo Alto County Sheriff’s Office in Emmetsburg, Iowa. My parents weren’t bad people. They were just poor hippies forced into becoming family while still in college when they became pregnant with me. I thank God for their belief in the sanctity of human life at any stage—and that neither of them had a couple hundred bucks to spare. Besides, without me, the stories of their many cats would have remained untold.
My parents were forced to grow up in a hurry when I was born. Much of their formative years were spent changing diapers and working thankless jobs in order to keep the heat on and feed me, the creature they made with their privates. I get the sense that even though their young adult life was pretty much a wash, they’ve always carried a little piece of their youth around with them. You can see it from time to time. My mother still cries about the stupid things and disregards the important things. My father is a dreamer and can create an uncomfortable silence with his far-out thinking. Occasionally they’ll drink too much and fall asleep sitting up. To me, their lingering adolescence is charming.
My sisters serve as my constant critics. As I creep beyond my mid-thirties, I am slowly starting to replace my father as the butt of all their jokes. Everything is fair game: my morning smell, my lack of hair, and my crooked gait while making my way to the bathroom. They will undoubtedly experience extreme remorse and regret for not being nicer to me if I accidentally consume poison or get eaten by wolves. Or maybe they’ll just move on without emotion, like they did through the passing of more than a dozen cats. Whatever the case, I reserve the right to use these stories as a forum to insult them unfairly and whenever possible. In the event that someone outside my extended family actually takes the time to read what’s between these covers, Phelan and Caitlin will experience a shame equal to or greater than the shame I experienced on the night they caught me practicing my cocktail party laughter in front of a mirror, wineglass in hand.
This collection of silly and sometimes upsetting stories takes place over the course of thirty years. In that time, I undergo a dazzling physical metamorphosis. It has been said that, as a child, I resembled the baby Jesus. This is ridiculous because Jesus was a black man and I am not. I had blond curly hair and blue eyes, which I later traded for dirty brown hair and nearsighted brown eyes. My grade-school years were marked by childhood obesity, thick glasses, and bad hair. As a teenager, I lost weight and attempted to mimic a Zack Morris hairstyle, which ended up as more of an A.C. Slater. Genetics and pomade would cause my hair to fall out by my mid-twenties. Today, I am a shaved-headed clone of innumerable bald men who try to emulate Jason Statham but always end up looking a bit more like Howie Mandel.
With a revolving door of girlfriends claiming to find bald men sexy, I became wise to my repulsiveness. This, coupled with the “LaVelle Curse,” is why as a single adult man I have generally avoided keeping cats. I stumbled briefly when I took in a stray Chicago alley cat I named Clive. With an endless supply of food, Clive became grossly overweight. It was impossible for him to get any exercise living in my tiny Lincoln Park apartment. That’s when I bought a harness and leash so Clive could accompany me on my Saturday afternoon walks in Oz Park.
Tennis players, stroller moms, and dogs fetching Frisbees were too much for Clive to deal with. Over stimulated and lazy, he refused to heel. His body fell limp and I was forced to pull his protesting corpse across the freshly cut grass.
On our final visit to Oz Park, a child asked her mother, “Why does that man have a cat?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Indeed. Neither did I, really. Why was it that this twenty-seven-year-old bald man was walking his reluctant cat in a busy city park? Such an activity had previously been reserved for old women and the mentally ill. It was time to take my cat and go home. I reached down to pick up the petrified Clive, only to be met with the ferocity of his eighteen razor-sharp claws. I tried desperately to grab hold of the gray-and-white cloud of hissing and spitting. The child, now terrified, was ushered away by her mother. A small group of tennis players watched as I wrestled the twenty-pound cat back into my Volvo station wagon.
This is not the beginning of a dead cat story. Clive’s tale has happier ending. To this day, he lives a fat and happy life with family friends in Omaha. Clive and I recognized early on that our lifestyles were at odds; my forearms showed the marks of our turbulent relationship. We decided it would be best to part ways, as our lives together would have undoubtedly ended badly.
Clive got a second chance. Some might even say he used the first of his nine lives, which is preposterous. Many cultures perpetuate the myth that cats have more than one life because of their uncanny ability to escape situations that would kill most other creatures. Truth is, cats have a low body weight relative to their size and possess a highly developed inner ear that enables them to twist and turn, almost always landing on their feet regardless of the height of their fall. Also, cats’ keen eyesight and hearing can warn them of potential dangers, keeping them out of harm’s way. Using Occam’s razor, biology is clearly the simplest explanation of how a cat cheats death. Definitely not with the series of nine consecutive lives dramatized in cartoons as numbered spirits ascending into feline heaven. This notion transcends magic and borders on the absurd.
But for the other Thirteen Cats LaVelle, biology proved no match for magic. Call it a curse. Call it destiny. But no amount of praying to a merciful and funky Jesus could change their fates. Each of these cats had just one life, a life that was hastily spent by living with us.
(excerpt from Thirteen Cats LaVelle)
