So for those of you not in the know, I have two cats, Zasu and lily. Zasu is a 16 year old torty who is blind, incontinent and, now, totally out of it. After watching her suffer illness and more recently the indignity of wearing puppy diapers, I had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye to Zasu. So I’ll spend the next two days feeding her delicious meat flavored baby food, watching movies, and oh what the hell, letting her pee and poop all over the house. Cleaning up is a small price to pay, I figure.
However, dear friends, this is not a sad blog, this is a blog reflecting on the life of a cat who really has had a remarkable and long life. A life filled with love, adventure and misadventure, travel, and lots of hunting.
I first met Zasu at the ASPCA in Chicago in the winter of 1993 -1994. My mother, incidentally, refers to the ASPCA as “the society for cruelty to animals”. I’ve reminded her on countless occasions that it’s ANTI cruelty, to no avail. We were attracted to Zasu because of the permanent comical-quizzical expression on her face and after we brought her home changed her name from the banal “freckles” to Zasu, after the silent film era actress Zasu Pitts. Zasu was a tiny scrawny kitten with ear mites and an attitude problem which throughout her life manifested itself in attempts to write her complaints in urine. Zasu has many complaints, starting with the lack of an opposable thumb.
At any rate, Zasu came home and met Nico, who we got from the cruelty society a few months earlier. Nico was an absolutely adorable precious tuxedo cat with a charming personality everyone adored. Zasu immediately felt threatened both by Nico’s beauty and charm, as well as her smack downs. Nico would follow Zasu to the litter box, which Zasu did not like. Zasu responded by writing “Can I Have Some Privacy When I Pee?” on the leather couch. We got Zasu her own bathroom and kitchen, in the front most bedroom of our palatial three bedroom apartment in Ravenswood. I say palatial because that apartment (which cost the big $750) is at least twice as big as my house.
We had to rig the door with a shoestring to make it open wide enough for Zasu, but not wide enough for Nico, who ate so much she was fat within six months. At this point Zasu displayed her evil streak. Once she realized that she was completely safe if she made it to the front room she would provoke all sorts of fights with Nico and then, when the going got tough, hide in the front room.
Back then I had this crazy idea that cats had to be taught about the great outdoors so in case they ever got out they could make their way back home. I used to try to take Nico and Zasu on little cat leashes on the back porch and down the stairs. Nico was pretty game for this, but Zasu was not. Zasu behaved as though I was throwing her into the belly of the inferno with each step.
In 1997 I bought a house and obviously the cats went with me to the house, which was on the west side. Since they hated being confined in carriers, I thought they would be ok for the relatively short drive to the new place during the actual move. As it turns out, it was the car they disliked more than anything. Zasu squeezed herself in the back window where she stared fearfully at the car behind us and cried. Nico tried to actually drive the car. They were not allowed in the car without carriers again.
Just a year or so later I moved to California and into an apartment. We’ll leave out the details of that whole thing. Anyway, Nico and Zasu made the trip with me. Since you can only take one cat with you on the plane, Nico went with me, and Zasu was in the carrier. Nico tried to break out of the carrier mid flight. I only caught her because her tags made a noise and woke me up. Zasu was freaked out because we had a delay.
The cats liked California. It was warm and sunny all the time. Nico made friends with people in the car courtyard by hissing at them and then, when they said she was beautiful, flopping over to show her belly. Nico was a whore. Zasu was more circumspect in her excursions. Zasu is one of these mysterious creatures that likes to move, unseen and unnoticed, wrecking havoc. Zasu once went missing for over a week, and I truly thought she was a goner. I put up color posters offering a reward (“thanks!”) but no one called. I searched. I called. I tapped cans of cat food and looked like a crazy person. Finally our landlady asked if we had a cat (which we were not supposed to have) and we admitted it. The landlady told us Zasu was hiding out in the basement which she apparently broke into when some work was being conducted. We were busted and had to pay the pet deposit.
In 2000 we moved into the house in Laurel Canyon. The cats loved the house, and the yard. They played in the sun, walked on top of the fence, brought home dead and not dead animals. Then, in 2001, Zasu made her move to acquire undisputed supremacy over the household. Zasu started a campaign of peeing on the bed, once or even twice a day. Needless to say this infuriated me because I couldn’t read what she was trying to say. I tried everything. Did she want new cat food? did she want different cat food? did she want to be petted, or not petted? I didn’t know because she just kept peeing.
After a couple weeks of this, I thought I’d try just letting them outside unsupervised. My rule up until then (and again, since then) is that they are only allowed outside when I’m home, and during daylight hours. They basically have the same curfew as a grade school kid. So I let them out one day – it was February 13, 2001, if I’m not mistaken – and left for work. Before I left I called out to Nico who came running on the fence for a final pet. Well did we know that it really would be her final pet.
Later that day Zasu made an unholy alliance with the neighborhood coyotes. In exchange for Nico, the coyotes agreed to leave Zasu alone. Zasu sold out her sister in a diabolical pact.
It was raining when we got home, but Zasu was inside and suspiciously happy and playful. In fact, deliriously so. We searched high and lo for Nico, but did not find her. A neighbor later found her collar by a tree in the next yard, and another neighbor said she heard a cat fight that afternoon. Her work done, Zasu stopped peeing in the house.
Zasu’s glorious reign as the only cat in the house was brief, as we adopted Lily from Kitten Rescue maybe a year or so later. Zasu’s attitude can only be described as basically that of Archie Bunker in All In The Family. She would walk from one end of the house, pausing briefly at the dog’s bed to glare and sometimes make guttural noises, on her way to the kitchen. Lily and the dog (Lani) got along great. Lily has a very laissez faire attitude about life. Zasu did learn how to break out of the house, which was really annoying but at least demonstrated all the security flaws. If there was any way to get out of the house, Zasu would find it. At one point I caught her digging a tunnel in one of the closets…
We lived in a tenuous equilibrium for years until in 2008 both Lani and Zasu got sick, at the same time. Worse, they had the same symptoms, which were vomiting and peeing without any regard for who has to clean it up. Then Zasu started suffering asthma attacks due to her long standing pack a day smoking habit. An asthma attack in a cat is a frightful thing, because you’re not sure if the cat is having a health problem or channeling Satan. Zasu underwent a series of steroid injections, which she disliked. Then the vet told me she couldn’t give any more steroid injections and I’d have to use an inhaler on Zasu. If you’re curious, the way you give a cat a dose from an asthma inhaler is by crafting a cone type thing from a Solo cup and cutting a hole in the bottom for the inhaler. Zasu liked this even less than injections, and peed “IF YOU STICK THAT FUCKING CUP ON MY FACE ONE MORE TIME I WILL PEE ON YOUR HEAD”. I stopped with the inhaler, but miraculously, Zasu was cured of asthma right after she got her last shot. Go figure.
Around the same time as the great asthma adventure, Lani died on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. This was very sad for me, but once Zasu figured out Lani wasn’t coming back, she peed “DING DONG THE BITCH IS DEAD” on the floor. If you think I’m kidding, you never met Zasu. One of Zasu’s most endearing traits is how she would befriend visitors and coyly convince them to pet her, only to viciously attack them a moment later. I have no idea who she learned that from.
Things were good for a time, but then Zasu got sicker and sicker and her attempts to convey in urine more and more frequent and garbled. The last thing I could make out was “I AM OLDER THAN PHYLLIS DILLER”, which, in cat years, was probably true. I mean, Zasu was alive at the same time at Kurt Cobain.
I was forced to put Zasu in diapers a few weeks ago. I felt bad about it, naturally, but I was out of options. Zasu doesn’t like diapers, and walks like Fred Sanford when she’s wearing one. A very disgusted Fred Sanford. She knows she looks ridiculous and has stopped grooming herself figuring who the hell cares anymore. Besides, she can’t see herself in the mirror because she’s blind.
Zasu’s blindness became apparent a couple months ago when I had some people over and we just looked at her bump into things all night while trying to navigate the room. At first I thought she was drunk but then I remembered she doesn’t drink, just a little cat nip now and then. It was funny, yet sad, to see her accidentally walk into the fireplace or right into a wall. At least the fireplace wasn’t lit!
So there we were, the three of us, sitting around the other night watching “Detroit Rock City” and eating dinner. Zasu came into the room looking really out of it, and just started circling around and around like a stoner trying to induce vertigo. She didn’t even notice when I yelled at her, which made that analogy even more apt. I realized, at that moment, that Zasu was really really out of it. I put her on the couch and called to her, but she didn’t even seem to know I was there. Which was curious, because she sure as hell knew the food was there a couple hours earlier.
Anyway, she’s had a good run, that cat. She’s lived in two cities, two houses, two apartments, and been with me longer than … most people. If she could talk, I’d have to kill her. As it is, she’s scrawled a long biography in urine which I’ll be reading for a long, long time.



































