On Jasper and Cameron

On Thursday my father came and took my boys away.  Jasper Honeysuckle and Cameron Del Mar are gone.  They've gone off to live in a barn somewhere.  I don't know they'll be fine.  It's cold out there.

It seems viciously appropriate that this week they are gone.  It's poetic justice-- the physical manifestation of all that I've left behind and all that has disappeared in the course of the last seven days.  Jasper Honeysuckle a symbol of being on one's own in NOLA, Cameron Del Mar being named after Heath Ledger.

I remember driving out to Poland Ave to the SPCA and picking Jasper out.  Taking him home with his motorboat purr to the first apartment I ever had on my own, leaving him at 5:30 in the morning to walk to the first job I ever had that went to buying our food and paying our rent, and not screwing around because we'd be out on the street.  He was my first real responsibility.  He was my cat. 

It's appropriate, therefore, that he goes the same week that all these free and easy plans become finalized.  In less than a week my lease runs out on the last apartment I'll ever rent in NOLA.  It's been confirmed-- I'll spend three months being coddled in the bosom of my hotel and then I disappear into North America.  No responsibility, no anchors, no turning back.  Goodbye Jasper, hello stunted adulthood. 

And how appropriate that Cameron Del Mar goes away the same week that his namesake dies?  A yellow cat with a bad personality, hissy and angry but cute and lovable despite himself-- not unlike a blonde actor in the performance of his career as a cowboy that it's impossible to love but makes it equally impossible not to try.   Heath Ledger won't make any more movies.  I'll never see Cameron Del Mar again.

Here I am in this empty apartment.  Most of the furniture is gone, and the silence is deafening.  Every time I get out of the shower I expect to see them lying on the rug, looking at me.  I still close the bedroom door so they can't get in.  I can't bring myself to throw that water bowl away.  

Symbolism be damned.  Now I've got nothing, and there's nothing to hold me back but I hate myself right now.  Animals understand base instincts-- They don't understand running away to 'find yourself', to 'escape' and all the rest of this nonsense.  Do they think they've done something wrong?

   In my mind, I see them wandering through this big empty apartment, from room to room to room, looking for me.  But I'm not here.  And neither are they.