In Memory of Bash
Eulogy
I was sitting in my living room ruminating over the loss of my amazing boy. The slightly unaware eight-year-old, Mango, was trying to console me the best he could. Bash was the only other feline companion he had even known since I had taken him in after Bash’s littermate passed away at the age of 13. Even though he and Boo weren’t the closest of pals, when he was no longer a presence in the apartment, Bash was left confused and presumably depressed—in hindsight, it was far more likely that I was projecting human emotions upon him. When Mango arrived, Bash assumed the role of big brother and reluctant mentor to the far more mischievous pipsqueak. In his absence, I was now the alpha, so he was now following me everywhere in the apartment instead of Bash—whose territory included the comfortable POÄNG in the living room. I sat there and sobbed while a perplexed Mango purred as I stroked him while he bore witness to my sadness. Then the waterworks suddenly stopped; I turned on my PS5 and started playing video games. When I finally realized the events as they unfurled in their predictable sequence, I chuckled as a strong memory of an interaction between a dear friend of mine and me emerged. Something that was once just an amusing anecdote had just been bound to my loss in a profoundly meaningful way, and it made me realize just how lucky I was to have certain beings in my life.
I was never a cat person growing up. My father and stepmother had cats, but I never interacted with them much. And then there was one time during my junior year of high school when I clandestinely tried to take care of a neighborhood stray hanging out in the back stairway of the apartment where my mother, brother, and I were living. That effort was doomed to fail because of my mother’s severe allergies. I was mildly so, but it was tolerable enough for incidental contact. I watched a friend’s cat in Sunnyvale, California, once while I was on an extended business trip, and then back in Tucson, Arizona, I briefly dated a stripper whose daughter desperately wanted a pet. Almost serendipitously, along came the later-to-be-named Mungo—a young black cat who would visit me whenever I was smoking a cigarette outside my apartment in the late evening hours. It was mid-October, and I had posited that he would be in grave danger that time of year, so I invited him into my home as a guest whenever he showed the interest. Eventually I concluded that breathing comfortably with the dander he generated was nearly impossible, so I gave him to Kaz and her daughter.
Many years later I met my now best friend Michaela, but at the time we were dating. I would come over to her apartment, where we would watch movies or play Xbox… sometimes both. As I was becoming more fond of her, I was also growing fond of the company of her cats Samantha and Tabitha—named after the Bewitched characters. There were sniffles, sneezes, and wheezes that accompanied the arrangement, but it was manageable. Being smitten with them probably didn’t hurt much either.
Then one day in April 2004, Michaela told me that the person who she got Samantha from had a litter of kittens in their home and that she wanted to visit them. I was still a little hesitant about taking the pet ownership plunge because I had my heart set on getting a Sony Aibo robotic dog for some reason. In retrospect, a programmable pet that was about as useful as a Roomba without suction abilities wasn’t the best companion choice, but I think I was just being my weird, nonconformist self. On our way there, I told Michaela that unless I felt some sort of connection, I wasn’t going to be interested in getting a cat. I had only seen a litter of kittens once before—when a good friend of my brother, the first drummer of the Alkaline Trio’s cat (many years before he was in the band), was pregnant. I would come over after school to hang out with his brother Joel. We would spend hours in his basement room noodling with his Commodore 64 or listening to Genesis or Van Halen, but as the impending labor approached, we would also check out the dark closet upstairs in Glenn’s room to see how the pregnancy was coming along. Until one day, it happened. It was more of a novelty to me back then instead of a miracle of life, but it WAS heartwarming in any event. Shortly thereafter, car ownership expanded my travel distance far beyond where my bicycle had taken me previously. I could drive myself and passengers to any number of arcades whenever I desired, so the experience of witnessing kittens being born soon faded into the mundanity of my teenage day-to-day happenings and shopping mall visits.
We arrived at the home and were led to a utility room where they were being kept—in an area accessible only by high-jumping, nimble felines. Upon entering, I saw five tiny kittens, each one small enough to balance on the palm of my hand. I sat down on the floor, watched them playing a bit, and immediately came to terms with the fact that I would be going home with two of them that day. The group consisted of two black males, two orange males, and a single fluffy white female with grey patches. The first one that caught my eye was the tiniest of the bunch, “the bat cat,” whose ears were far too big for his head; I would name him Boo. Then I noticed one of the orange kitties was clumsily trying to crawl onto my lap. He fell off of my khaki shorts a number of times, but he persisted until he finally reached the pinnacle; I would name him Bash.
Shortly thereafter, Michaela and I would move in together. She ended up adopting the female from the litter and naming her Misty, so in total we had 5 cats in the decently sized guest house we were renting from a mutual acquaintance. Samantha was used to running the show in her previous living arrangement, so she was hell-bent on dictating the tone and the goings-on of her new territory as well. Boo gave her a very wide berth and mostly ignored her, but Bash tried to connect with her. Unfortunately, his futile attempts were met with hisses and swats, so he would retreat to my or Michaela’s general area after these encounters. We had two litter box areas in the guesthouse: one was in the back hall connected to the bedroom, and the other was in a tucked-away corner of the kitchen behind a cat-sized flap—underneath the cultured granite countertop and directly to the left of the two-tiered lazy Susan-style storage area. Both Michaela and I had noticed that Samantha would follow Bash to the “bathroom” and wait outside the flap so she could swat at him upon exiting or perhaps deviously trap him there in perpetuity. As soon as either of us witnessed this antagonistic behavior, we would shoo her away, gently coax Bash out of the enclosure, and assure him that he was safe from one of our two feline witches.
Bash was incredibly tolerant of humans and animals alike. He would provide a number of obvious, yet oddly polite, hints when his patience was wearing thin. It was a behavior that I had observed in him at a very young age whenever I would give him a bath, clip his nails, administer medication, et cetera. He would motion like he was going to bite my arm and stop when his canines touched the skin, and then he’d look back at me as if to say, “I could do that to you for real, you know?” You were completely safe as long as you heeded any of his liberal supply of warnings. One day I came home from work, and Michaela greeted me at the door, stating proudly that he had finally asserted himself. “Samantha kept pestering Bash. I looked over at the two of them. Bash looked at me, back at Sam, and then beat the crap out of her,“ she told me. Samantha learned the lesson and kept her distance from that day forward.
Over the course of his 21 years, Michaela has often mentioned that Bash and I had an especially strong emotional connection to each other. I paid the sentiments no mind at the time, but as I reminisce about it now, I realize that our bond would have been obvious to even the most casual of observers.
Around the end of the year, holiday time in 2004, I had to go on a business trip to Silicon Valley. It would take me thousands of miles away for a week or so—the longest I had ever been away from the boys since welcoming them into my life. Never having had pets of my own before, I was worried by the ridiculous notion that Boo and Bash would suddenly forget who I was after being away for an extended period of time, but my absence came and went somewhat uneventfully, their memories of me intact. I arrived back at the guesthouse a few hours after noon. Exhausted and sapped of energy from my travels, I collapsed upon the bed, still wearing the same “edgy” flames on black button-up shirt I put on before the sun began to rise earlier that morning. “Just a quick little power nap before dinnertime,” I thought. I awoke hours later. Until I heard the light clanging sounds of cooking utensils against mixing bowls and pans, I was unaware that Michaela had already arrived back home from her workday and was busy cooking dinner in the kitchen. Shifting slightly, I was just about to get up when I realized there was a weight perched upon my chest—it was Bash, staring at me intensely. Underneath the cozy, cat-warmed quilt, I stroked the fur on his back and scratched my way up towards his head and ears. Michaela heard my stirring, so she rushed into the bedroom, excitedly wanting to show me a picture she took on her digital camera. Apparently, Bash had been watching me for the duration of my nap, or at least as long as she had been at home. Out of context, the picture was quite humorous, like Bash was deviously calculating or pondering how he would dispose of all the piercings after gnawing my face off. Michaela submitted the photo to the now-defunct www.mycathatesyou.com, to which it was accepted as an example of cats despising their owners, but we all knew that the snarky caption added by the site couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Bash’s favorite treat was shrimp, so when he weakly refused to eat them two days before his passing, I knew that the end of my time with him was near. I tried to steel myself emotionally the best that I could as he fell asleep on my lap while I was playing video games—a regular occurrence for the last couple of years. I grabbed a handful of the miniature cooked and peeled salad shrimp, tossed them into my mouth, and thought of the day Michaela and I had discovered Bash’s penchant for the crustacean.
I was in the living room watching some television while she was engaged in food preparation activities. The living room and kitchen were connected, not by walls or a door, but by open space, so there was a direct line of sight between the couch and the kitchen sink. Suddenly, I heard Michaela shriek, “BASH! NO!” I turned my head towards the source of the yelling and saw my startled cutie frozen in place with a thawed shrimp, tail and all, hanging out of his mouth. Time stood still for a moment, and then Bash scampered away with his prize. Both of us couldn’t help but laugh—it was very unlike him to sneak around the abode, let alone try to grab any of our “human food.” Michaela surveyed the colander of remaining shrimp thawing in the sink and estimated that he had likely eaten two or three more of them before noticing the misdemeanor—a suspicion we confirmed later when we found the forensic evidence of dried shrimp indigestibles hidden around the house.
After a half hour or so of sitting in my apartment and remembering the joy and memories he brought, Michaela drove us to the veterinarian’s office. I had his still warm, yet frail body cradled in a solid blue-colored flannel that my late grandfather used to wear, given to me by my late father. When we arrived, we were escorted to one of the examination rooms. After a little bit of tension-breaking chitchat, I handed Bash to the veterinary technician in preparation for connecting him to the intravenous catheter apparatus. She brought him back into the room along with the doctor who had explained the end-to-end process to me earlier. Michaela and I said our tearful goodbyes; I caressed him lovingly for what would be the last time, fluid was injected, and within mere seconds he fell asleep and passed away peacefully. The whole ordeal was emotionally draining, so following that, Michaela and I grabbed some breakfast before she drove me home. I immediately went to bed with Bash’s “brother from another mother,” Mango, curled beside my head on one of my down-filled pillows.
I awoke hungry, so I went to the kitchen and threw a couple of frozen dinners in the microwave. I solemnly prepared a single bowl of soft cat food, placed it on the food mat, and then retreated to the living area to wait for my meal to be ready for consumption. Sitting there, I was suddenly overcome with a wave of sadness—missing Bash’s presence in an instant. The crying commenced, and Mango did his best to comfort me by sitting on my lap and purring as if to say, “I’m still here for you, buddy.” Minutes passed, the tears stopped flowing, and I turned on my television and PS5 and started to play—then came the realization and chortling.
Back when Michaela and I were dating and Bash was an important fixture in both of our day-to-day lives, I was thinking about computer games that Michaela would enjoy while I was perusing the software aisle at my local Best Buy. Whether it was true or not, I sometimes got the feeling that she only played video games because I loved them so much, but knowing the games she had gravitated toward previously, it occurred to me that The Sims would be a perfect fit for her as a present. For her birthday, I gave her the complete original Sims collection and the newly released The Sims 2, which I was mildly interested in checking out myself. Over the course of the month that followed, Michaela had so much fun with the first series of The Sims that she started playing the other as well. To her, the most compelling feature addition for the sequel was the “Create-a-Sim” function, so she proceeded to create a version of her and a version of me in the game. A few days passed, and then one day after work I walked in the house, and she proclaimed with a hint of annoyance, “I’m mad at you!” Having no clue what I had done to provoke such anger, I asked her to explain. She pointed at the computer monitor and said, “I died, you cried for about a minute, and then started playing video games!” We both laughed as I responded, “I hate to break it to you, hon, but this is EXACTLY how it would happen in real life!”
This intense memory of a programmed character imitating a piece of my life so accurately, even now, is oddly comforting to me. As I sat there grieving in my own, internally coded way, a realization was illuminated like the pixelated scenery I gazed upon from my semi-disposable Scandinavian furniture. The beings I have loved or have yet to love in this lifetime will come and go, as the cycle of existence and the passage of time itself dictate, but the empathy… and memories… and friendships will continue far beyond the 21 years Bash had shared his life with me. Friends, family, felines… I am immensely thankful for all of you being supportive on my journey. Thank you, Norah, Michaela, Mango, and especially Bash, for being there for me through thick and thin and making my life feel more meaningful. I will miss Bash’s unconditional affection, enduring spirit, and uplifting warmth, but I will love you all forever.