Kione came into our life when, really, we shouldn’t have gotten another cat. Late August, 2004 and we already had two cats. I don’t remember how Anna talked me into getting another cat. And then she nearly picked the wrong one – that’s a whole other story…

Kione – Kiki – died today.

She had been going downhill for a few weeks and in the flurry of prepping the puppy run I didn’t get a chance to call the vet. I thought there’d be more time. Kiki was an institution – she outlived her three other cat siblings, Winston, my marriage… she’d been with me through everything. Surely she’d be fine…

She was super skinny when we got her. She’d been at the shelter for almost a month and, well, her time was nearly up. Apparently no one wanted an emaciated tortoise shell cat. They estimated she was about a year old when they brought her in.

When we got her back to our house, though, she fit right in. She had a very old soul and I don’t remember any of the other animals ever having an issue with her. When we adopted Clementine as a kitten, Kiki immediately filled the role of surrogate mamma cat. They were inseparable. Now they’re back together again…

Lately Kiki had been finding more and more obscure places to sleep. The bathmat in front of the shower. Under the couch. On a flattened cardboard box. Her favorite spot, though was in the office. During my last days of work from home week last week she came in and wanted to spend the days like she did during the early lockdown days – perched in front of me as I typed. The tap tap tap of the mechanical keyboard and her warm contented purrs.

I found her in the office when we got home tonight, laying on a blanket half curled up. I bent down to scratch her ears and she didn’t move. I pet her and… she was gone.

There was a time at the River House where she was able to go out through the kitty door and play outside… and hunt! Her tortoise coloring blended in perfectly among the dried leaves in the dappled sunlight through the big fig tree. She caught garter snakes, mice, big scary bugs… there was only one problem: she never actually killed them. Usually, she’d bring her trophies in and present the dazed prey to us and drop it like “Look what I brought you!” And then the snake would start to come to its senses, and I had to figure out how to get this damn live snake out of the house!

I haven’t processed it yet. She’s been in my life for seventeen years. The tears are breaking through the disbelief, but I haven’t yet wrapped my head – or heart – around the magnitude of this loss. She was a quiet, old soul, and her presence ran deep and steady.

I love you, Kione. I’m glad you’re in a better place with Clementine, Amaya, Shurik, and Winston. You will always be in my heart.

The email said “Free puppies.”

Yes, we’d talked about getting a dog in the hypothetical, “Sure, it’s a good idea” sense, but…

And, Yes, it was Valentine’s day…

And, certainly, the puppies were free to take and they needed good homes…

But there’s no such thing as “free puppies…”

…

Winston August Guiffre-Jensky died today. He was two months shy of his twelfth birthday. That’s a long time for a big dog, and Winston was a big dog. When asked what type of breed he was, I’d always reply, “Part black Lab, part dalmatian, part horse.”

He wasn’t really part horse, obviously. That third part? Rhodesian Ridgeback. Honestly, I didn’t see it in him until I was dropping him off at a boarding facility for Thanksgiving Weekend. When Winston was happy to meet you, his favorite thing in the world was to walk between your legs. Much to my shock, he started straight for the facility owner’s legs. “Oh, I see he’s part Ridgeback! That’s a classic Ridgeback trait!”

…

He had been going downhill for a while now. A few months ago his back legs stopped working properly. At first it just manifested as a wobbliness, but in a surprisingly short time he had trouble standing up. He’d get his front legs up fine but then he would have to do this lean-tuck maneuver to pull his only-partly-useful legs under him. It worked on carpet or his bed, but on tile or hardwood… forget about it. But if I lifted his butt up to get his legs under him he could coax enough movement out of his rear legs to walk, but it was tenuous.

…

Anna picked him up in what we called a “puppy drug deal.” Winston’s family was from Vacaville and when Anna called them, the mother was already en route to Napa to drop off two of Winston’s brothers – could Anna meet her somewhere halfway? Maybe Sonoma?

They met at the historic square in Sonoma, a pickup truck full of boisterous, jumpy, oversized-puppies in a pickup truck. Anna looked at the already enormous and hyper dogs and wondered whether these “free puppies” were maybe too much… And then she saw one dog – the runt – asleep on the lap of the boy in the cab.

“That one’s not available, is he?”

“They’re all available. We can’t keep them.”

Anna eventually got over the stigma of taking a puppy from a developmentally disabled boy. “His name is Levi,” the boy told her. “Please keep his name!” he requested.

“I will,” Anna told him.

We totally didn’t.

She voted for August. I was pitching Winston. I think she gave me Winston for the first name because she thought it would assuage my reticence about this “free puppy” that already was costing us vet bills, and toys, and a crate, and…

Winston August.

…

His labored breathing caught my attention this morning first. It came on suddenly. His lousy hind legs meant that the squat-poop that all dogs do was no longer an option. Instead he just kind of pooped where he lay. If I was lucky he would be on his side and wouldn’t notice and I could clean it easily and disinfect the surface. If I was unlucky he’d be realize he’s pooping and try to stand and end up smearing it everywhere. Every. Where.

He pooped at 4:30 this morning and I was able to get to it and clean it and the area without any issues and was back in bed surprisingly quickly. His breathing was fine. But by 5:30 his breathing was really labored, coming in quick deep breaths. Not panting – that I was used to. I thought maybe he was in distress because he had to pee, so I went to lift his butt to help him to his feet.

He flailed his front legs uselessly.

And then he peed himself.

Sure, the poop thing was annoying, but it was livable. One trait I found remarkable about Winston was that he had an iron bladder. That dog could hold his pee for an eternity! Seriously, 12-13 hours? No problem.

I can count on one hand the number of times he had peed inside over the course of his adult life (not including puppyhood – if you raised a puppy, you totally know what I’m talking about).

I set him back down on his bed, and he settled back into that labored breathing.

Thirsty? I brought his water bowl in. Not interested.

Hungry? I brought a piece of pork from last night. Not interested.

I sat on the floor with him, listening to his breathing and knowing what this portended.

“I don’t know what to do!” I said to Akilah.

…

People had a hard time believing this 100-pound dog was the runt, but I believe that utterly informed his personality. He had this inborn sense of compassion and caring that was palpable.

I took him to the dog park at Ragle Ranch in Sebastopol. Just as we came in a mastiff and a pit bull were going at it in the middle of the yard. The owners stood nearby, watching, sure this was just a territorial dust-up, they’d figure it out. But it started getting heated, the dogs more than gentle nipping each other, and by the time they got excited both owners feared for their own safety trying to break up what had turned into a dog fight.

Winston bolted for the fight at a full galloping sprint. Before I could even call him back, he was at the melee where he jumped right in between the pit and the mastiff. Both dogs were so surprised that they stopped for a moment. You could practically hear Winston saying, “Look guys, let’s just play!”

At my friend Jen’s cabin, up in Fish Lake outside of Yosemite, Winston earned the moniker “Big Dog Ambassador” when his patience and calmness helped a Chihuahua terrified of dogs bigger than her (read: all of them) reconsider her position. It was just a weekend, and he wasn’t a miracle maker, so the small dog never completely let her feisty guard down, but she came pretty close.

While he was an only dog, Winston’s fur family consisted of up to three other cats, to which he was always deferential despite his size. When he was a puppy, our smallest cat, Clementine, took evil delight standing on the sofa swatting his tail so he started bounding around the couch as she would run to the other side to swat at his tail again to keep him moving. He never turned on her, never even complained.

We would get big beef knuckles from the butcher and they were Winston’s absolute favorite thing in the world. On warm summer afternoons we’d let the chickens have free rein of the yard and throw Winston a meaty bone. Chickens, in case you didn’t know, also like meaty bones and they instantly found Winston’s bones very interesting, crowding his space. But he didn’t bark or snap. He’d pick up his bone move to a chicken-free part of the yard, place his bone on the ground and start up again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

…

The discussion with the vet was brief and had the feeling of a fait acompli.

When Winston hobbled on his mostly-useless rear legs, his toes would often curl under and he’d walk on them without noticing. At one point recently, his folded paw caught in the gap between driveway and walkway and Winston fell. But he didn’t howl or let out any noise of pain whatsoever. He just sort of fell over with this look on his face like, “Well, this is annoying!”

David Erik was the first to put it into words.

While I initially thought his legs were the result of the deteriorating hips of a big dog, DE suggested the folding paw and dragging legs didn’t look degenerative. It looked neurological.

This morning, the vet agreed. She couldn’t say whether his inability to now use his front legs well enough to stand was a progression, but it didn’t really matter at this point.

His breathing, she said, “scared” her. Scared. That’s the word she used.

She looked at his gums to check his circulation. It wasn’t good.

She said we could do a full run up on him and see if we could figure out what was going on, but…

…but…

…I had said Winston had started to go downhill a few months ago. At one point recently as he lay on his bed panting, I said, “Winston, we know what’s coming. I don’t want you to suffer. When it’s time, let me know, please. Please…”

This morning Winston told us, in unequivocal terms, he was ready. It was time.

…

I will miss his booming barks.

I will miss him insisting on walking between my legs as a greeting.

I will miss the comfort of him breathing softly in the middle of the night.

I will miss him asking with his eyes “Are you done with that?”

I will miss his Dalmation spots on his chest and his “socks”.

I will miss the equine-like gallop he got into when he started running.

I will miss his expressive eyebrows.

I will miss countless more things that I can’t think of right this second because my dog died this morning and, yes, I’m absolutely sobbing as I’m typing this and I know that a light in my life has just winked out and that light will never re-light and it’s one light in a constellation of lights in my life, but that light is gone, and as the years go by other lights have flickered and gone out and for many of those dimmings Winston was there for me to bury my face in his thick black fur and cry until he turned his head and licked my tears….

…

You may not want to read this next part. But you’ve already come this far with me…

In the room at the Vet, Winston lay on his side on the cart they wheeled him in on. I sat with him, his head on one of my hands, the other petting his side. He looked up to see what was going on when the vet techs came in. He looked at me and we made eye contact. He knew. He was ready. This was okay. He lay his head back down on my hand. He didn’t move at all when they put the catheter in. Minutes later when the vet back in with the syringe he didn’t move. He lay there, his body heaving with his labored breathing, his mouth open, a little drool pooling on my arm.

I had told him a million times that day how good a boy he was. How much I loved him. How thankful I was that he was in my life. And that, yes, it was okay to go, that I didn’t want him to suffer, that I knew it was time.

And then it really was.

And then he was gone.

The labored breathing stopped.

He was at peace.

A minute later, the vet places her stethoscope against his still chest for verification. He lets out a gasp. She turns to say something, but I nod that it’s just muscles. He’s gone. She moves the stethoscope around.

A minute later he starts to pee. My dog held his pee until he died! Best. Dog. Ever.

…

There’s a brief section here where I had Winston’s body released to me to take to the pet crematorium but they weren’t answering their phone and I started to freak out because now I had a 100 pound dog body in the back of my car and nowhere to take it…

…it ended fine – they turned up. His body was wheeled off.

And now I’m home. Alone. Well, with Kione. But not Winston. And the place feels interminably empty without him. I can’t move his bed. I can’t move his food. I can’t move his leash. I can’t, I just fucking can’t…

…

Anna posted a farewell to Winston on Facebook shortly after he died, and people are sharing condolences and memories and I’m grateful and thankful…

If you met Winston, you loved Winston. He was that kind of a dog. He was my friend, my companion, my buddy…

The email read “free puppies,” and in a way it was true.

Winston proved over the course of his life to be so unbelievably priceless and my soul is greater for having spent time with him.

Thank you, my friend. May you enjoy your nom bone in peace.

The clock always ran slow. 

Every few months I would have to add a few minutes to make up for it. That’s the one main complaint I had against the 2007 Pontiac Vibe that came into my life almost five years ago. Before that it, the Vibe was my mom’s car. The last memory I have of her in that car was her in the passenger seat, stoic, quiet, while my aunt Jean drove to Island Hospital in Anacortes for what would be her terminal diagnosis of an unbelievably aggressive abdominal cancer. While that drive is seared in my brain, it’s not the memory I like to remember with her in the car. That went back a few years before that, when she first bought the Vibe as a replacement for her Saturn. And what a replacement it was! Make no mistake, my mom loved her Saturn, but by the end a couple of the motor mounts had given up and the car shook like a P-51 Mustang even at idle. A litany of other problems finally forced her to the dealership with Jill and Lenny and she got a great deal on the Vibe. I wasn’t there, but I suspect the color – lively and bright “Wave Blue Effect” – as much as anything sealed the deal. It shined even in the dark of the garage when she and I got into it. I don’t remember where we went – out to dinner, I suspect – but I remember her smile as she backed out of the driveway, shifted into drive and started down the road.

Before she died, she indicated she wanted her beloved Vibe to go to the one in the family with the oldest car. At the time my 2002 Corolla was soldiering on with almost 300,000 miles on the odometer, so the 2007 Vibe came as an upgrade. 

And, though the Vibe came into my life under sad circumstances, it shepherded me through tumultuous times. While it served as a physical reminder of someone vital to me who was gone, the Vibe arrived just as I started my divorce proceedings and helped in my move from the home I’d lived longer than any point in my life – 12 years along the Russian River. It served as a make-shift lumber rack more than once, but most memorably carrying the lumber I used for the bed I still sleep in – it’s astonishing how that beast would swallow 8-foot sections of wood and still allow me to close the back window. It never got as cold for the Vibe as it was when my mom drove it in Washington, but on more than a couple bartending gigs that topped 110 degrees the Vibe never faltered. 

I did my best to honor my mom in the car. I always had a pack of Altoids in the glove box. I made sure Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hits CD was always in the center console, never far from the radio. Jean told me of the adventures she and my mom had in the vibe, driving the scenic route up to Washington when my mom moved north. I wanted to honor her by adventuring in the Vibe, and that started the first Mother’s Day after she died when I took Highway 1 down the coast to Pescadero where the Vibe and I stopped in at Duarte’s tavern for a slice of pie that my mom loved. Sojourns to visit friends in San Luis Obispo, running out to Reno for the balloon races and a summer drive around Lake Tahoe, camping in Big Basin, midnight drives up Coleman Valley road to watch a meteor shower, an evening picnic on top of a parking garage in Berkeley watching  the sun set over the bay, and countless trips to wineries and vineyards, the Vibe never failed to be a boon companion and I always knew I had an unseen copilot. For the first few years I had the Vibe, if the sun warmed the steering wheel just right it would release the scent of the hand lotion my mom always used for her perpetually paper-dry hands. I’d often put my iPhone on shuffle and more than a few times the sequence of songs seemed to be far less than random. 

There was some deferred maintenance to attend to, but with the busy summer I was able to start to catch up on the needs of the car as it worked its way beyond 200,000 miles. 

And then on Christmas eve, heading out of Guerneville like I have a million times, the rain dislodged part of the hillside adjacent to River Road, and a trail of debris fell into the road, championed by a rock the size of small filing cabinet. 

I swerved. 

It wasn’t enough. 

The rock slammed into the front of the car, exploding against the driver’s side wheel and severing the control arms to that side. The car bounced up with the impact before slamming down to the pavement. Metal against asphalt shrieked as I used to right wheel to help steer-skid to the too-narrow shoulder. 

The clock read 5:42. It was 5:45. 

My insurance company has written the car off, explaining in clear, cold arithmetic how the necessary repairs exceed the resale value of the car, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

I collected everything from inside the car including the Altoids and the Jimmy Buffett CD. I let the tears run unabated as I tried to pack up so many minutes, so many miles into the plastic bags I brought for the task. They’ll go in whatever I get next, certainly, but… it won’t be the same.

And maybe I have a better appreciation now for that slow-running digital clock. I want to go back to that first drive with my mom and slow it down – make the minutes longer, add moments, bend time so that my mom were still here, so that I could still see her smile, so that her car – her last car – would still be intact. Take the time when those amber digits lingered just a few fractions of a second longer each minute and add them together and live there where they were both still with me…

But I can’t. She’s gone. Yesterday I signed the form consigning the 2007 Pontiac Vibe to an ignominious end I’m not even going to justify to write. It’s gone.

And another piece – one of the last, tangible, physical reminders – I have of my mom is gone, too.

Postscript. 
I went through my phone looking for pictures for this post and found surprisingly few. However, so many more pictures of adventures and trips and gigs I looked at the pictures and immediate thought, “I remember the drive there!” Even the pictures without the Vibe in it came about because of the car. Do me a favor if you would: if your car means more to you than just a car – and there’s nothing wrong with that, don’t get me wrong! But I know some of you have cars that mean as much to you as the Vibe did to me. Go out and take a picture of your car (or truck!). Just do it. And then hug your vehicle. Or, if you’re worried what the neighbors will thing, just pat it and say thanks.