A Tale of Two Schmischkins

More Cat memories! Buster-the-Usurper arrived in my life when I lived on Haggin Lane, a lonely dead end road that straddles Jesamine and Woodford counties in central Kentucky. It was my habit back then (1990) of walking the mile length of the road in the evenings after school. On one of these walks, she emerged from the thick weeds along the ditch, and once her cries captured my attention, I stopped briefly to scratch her chin (she was all the size of a tea cup!) and she followed me the 8/10's of a mile back to my house on her little obsessive legs. Once home, I put a little saucer of milk on the porch for her. And within a week we were bonded.

Three and a half years later I met my ex- and within 8 month I moved to Washington, DC to be with him--Buster was just part of the package. At some point in our relationship, From a life in the wonder, rural expanses of bucolic central kentucky, she found herself an indoor cat in a kingdom of three stories with two litter boxes. She took to it like breathing air. Nary a problem. She also accepted my ex- sans concern, and he loved her dearly, too. As a child, he was never allowed to have a "pet."

I think around 1999, a colleague of my ex-'s was forced to move and could only take one of her cats with her--(I have to this day found this story more than dubious)--and my ex- asked if we could give the other cat a home. I honestly could never say no to him. So, Miko joined our family. The other cat that his colleague kept was named Chico, ergo I christened her "Miko-sin-Chico". Cats deserve hyphenated names. Just sayin'.

Her transition to our home was traumatic to say the least. She'd never lived with men before. Buster thought she was a cat--and Buster thought she HERSELF was a dog--and dog's don't care for cats! Not long after arriving (30 minutes?), Miko just disappeared. Fucking disappeared. We tore the damn house apart and could NOT find her. After 6 days, my ex- just started crying at the drop of a hat over it. But I told him that she probably wasn't dead, because we couldn't "smell" her. And dead things generally really stink. (I know, not my best strategy!)

On the 8th day our friend Lisa came for a week's vacation visit. The next morning after breakfast my ex- and I left for work--but neither of us mentioned Miko to her--we didn't want to spoil her vacation. So that evening when we returned and Lisa said, "Hey, why didn't you tell me you had another cat?" we did a quick double-take and asked in unison, "WHAT!? You saw her!?"

Not only had she seen her, but after we left, she settled down on our couch to read a book. Within 15 minutes, Miko appeared and joined her on the couch, purrring and settling against her for a long desired cuddle fest.

Through the course of the next week, Lisa helped Miko to accept her new home and us.

Over the years, Miko-sin-Chico was by far my ex-'s girl. She grew to delight in him. She tolerated me. And especially when I was prone--that's how she liked me best. When my ex- up a split, he left her behind...just one of many complications that he abandoned. So we three brave souls did our best to make a family. 

The pics are of me and Miko just the way she preferred me to be. The other is of the "Two Schmishkins": Buster-the-Usurper and Miko-sin-Chico. We always called them Schmischkins whenever they would act like "friends".

Miko's first companion was Noriko a jewelry-marketing designer and colleague of my ex-'s at the National Gallery of Art. My bottom-line theory of the case is that being a rather difficult soul psychologically (that is Miko, NOT Noriko) Noriko took advantage of her move to loose Miko and my ex- was the purrrfect patsy in the equation. Not that we and then I didn't try to love her, we certainly did. But just like Noriko, my ex- abandoned her, too. I kept her "for" him for over two years after he split. And she and I did our best to co-habitate. But she destroyed things and fouled things and never seemed happy, and made me most unhappy many times over. All the while my ex- claimed he was trying to find her a home, and finally I threatened to just toss her out and gave him a date certain for the event (not that I would have, but goddamn it, he needed to man up and take responsibility, and years of playing nice had gotten the situation nothing toward a resolution). So he came by and got her. And then he emailed me that he had taken her to a vet and had her euthanized. It's the most asshole thing he ever did.

Remembering Buster-the-Usurper

My beloved kitty.  Buster-the-Usurper, 1990-2005.  She usurped by heart, and rests beneath a kwanzan cherry tree in my gardens.

Homage to My Little Girl

bustercollage
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

It was a hot and oppressive afternoon in late June in 1990. I was taking my routine afternoon walk from one end to the other of Haggin Lane (2.1 miles) when she entered my life. Strutting past the old antebellum mansion on the left and my friend's horse farm on the right, I suddenly was confronted by a Siamese-esque kitten whose plaintiff cries demanded my attention.

What could I do? I knelt briefly to comfort this little urchin and then continued my regemine of exercise on to my home. And she followed me....of course! So I gave her a little bowl of milk out of dumb compassion.

And that was it. We were lovers.

And you can do worse! Trust me.

She soon took up with my two dogs, a Doberman and a Beagle (Both real whimps in their own right). And both realized early on that she was in charge, thus the monicre "Buster". Many's the time that a vet assumed "her" to be a "him" based on her name.

I cannot begin, in this post, to do our relationship justice. So I won't even try. Therefore, let's fast forward to the spring of 2003 and her diagnosis of feline diabetes. It really surprised me at the time...I had never fed her anything but manufactured cat food and mostly the dry kind. Yet, I then became her doctor, and we bagan a regime of twice daily injections of insuline. It was a routine that she never balked at. It was something that she actually participated in with a typically faithful heart that made it easier on me.

Her life took a couple of downward turns in the autumn/winter of 2004/2005 and she finally died in my arms on the Monday after Easter in 2005. I buried her in my backyard and placed a statuary of a cat over her grave as a marker. I also planted an Easter lily there, which bloomed and then died back. And then, about three weeks ago, it sent up another shoot, and this past week offered two new glorious blooms.

Gifts that flourish. Life continues to bless.