Day 21: "What's Your Cat's Name?"

i'm maybe six years old and i am sitting in front of my old house in cerritos, on the curb, not quite in the street. i am waiting for my mom, or dad, or brother to come home from work or school. i remember having an toy car, and i remember playing with it.

driving it up my driveway, through the curbside gutter, around leaves, shrubs, debris. just being a six year old, and i am waiting for my mom, or dad, or brother to come home.

while i am playing one of my cats comes running to me. my cat, and i laugh as she pounces the car i am playing with, sort of like a godzilla cat, and through this, she is making my lonely car playing less so. so now my car races around: for my amusement the cat is a villain, powerful and menacing. for hers, it is just a shiny plaything zooming (sound effects and all) through her legs, narrowly missing her paws, always just a step ahead of her reflexes.

i didn't think she minded me not giving her the car, i think she liked the game as i did: it was carefree.

the girl who lives across the street from me, maybe the person who was my first crush,  is standing across the street watching this game i am playing with my cat, this game of cat and car. she asks, nearly shouts, "what's your cat's name?".

"buckwheat," i say, not knowing that the name is of a little rascals character, not knowing that, really, it's name is somewhat racist.

buckwheat was a black cat.

i tell her this right as my mom (or dad, or brother) is pulling into the driveway. buckwheat gets up, goes to the front door and waits to be let in (or fed, maybe both, who knows with cats?), and i say good-bye to ann-marie and follow.

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thinking about it now, i think a lot of my cat's names where named (innocently, i believe) somewhat in a racist manner by my north carolinian mother. buckwheat, midnight, even arsenio (named after arsenio hall).

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i loved buckwheat, maybe more than i have any other pet i have ever had. maybe more than any i will ever have.

i loved her with a love that only a child of six and truly have for an animal, a cat, a dog, a pet. i remember, vividly, when she started to have seizures and how worried i would become because of it. how i would beg my parents to take her to the veterinarian to have her checked. i worried about it constantly, incessantly.

when we moved to brea, she became an indoor cat, and she would sometimes get out and i would always  be worried she would become lost, or eaten by something bigger and meaner than she could ever be. i would sometimes not find her right away and have to go to school worrying my thoughts of some monster coyote dragging my cat off, thinking of how many storm drains are around, thinking with a childish paranoia that eats young minds away.

i remember waking up one morning to my dad and mom sitting in my room, tears in my mom's eyes, my dad unusually quiet, and knowing. somehow knowing that buck had died in the night.

died and left me, i guess.

i remember that my dad asked me if i "wanted to say goodbye" and thinking what is there to say goodbye to?

i almost believed this momentary thought, that there was nothing left of my cat to say good-bye to, to say how much i loved her to, to pet one last time. i knew she would not meow, or purr, or lick me, but i knew somehow there was still something to say goodbye to. in my heart i knew that she was waiting for me to.

i petted her, she was stiff, i was scared of what death meant then (and now), but i said good-bye.

i said, "i love you buckaroo".

and i still do, and i still miss just playing a game of cat and car, acting as if she was a destroyer of worlds. a gozilla cat come to eat all the little people driving all my little cars.

i remember saying that her name was buckwheat when asked, "what's your cat's name?"