SHELTER
With Tobey at my father’s house in central Washington.
People always ask me if I was sad when Sleater-Kinney broke up. Mostly I felt a sense of relief. My grief was on hold, my emotions compartmentalized and transferred. The band was a phantom limb: I could still feel it there, I didn’t really believe that it was gone, but mostly I ignored it. In a small room on the second floor of my house, a former attic built out by the previous owners, with slanted ceilings and corners only accessible by crawling, I placed a striped wool rug, a guitar, and a lone amplifier. The only time I entered the room was to pet my cat Hector, who often sat in there atop a carpeted “cat condo” and watched over the contents of the space like a furry museum guard.
Instead of playing or thinking about music, I dove into my volunteer work at the Oregon Humane Society, which is just about the only way I knew how to deal with the loss. If you’re wondering how sad I was, you’d never know by talking to me, but you would know it by the fact that I won the Oregon Humane Society Volunteer of the Year Award in 2006, the year of Sleater-Kinney’s demise.
I clocked in over one hundred hours that year. I developed new programs to help long-term canine shelter residents get adopted, I made laminated flyers replete with photos I took of the dogs and added pat, inspirational, and euphemistic phrases like “If you love a toothy kiss, you’ll love Buster” to promote specific dogs. I walked them on the shelter grounds and even took them on field trips. I taught the more rambunctious dogs to sit, wait, go to their bed, how to walk better on the leash. I sat in the lobby wearing my teal volunteer apron with two large front pockets gritty with dog treat remnants, torn and gooey from overeager puppy mouths, stretched from too much wear and not enough washing. I greeted customers in the lobby, grateful to be in a uniform, just one of many, anonymous and near invisible in a place where frumpiness and depression thrive. The dogs I brought with me to the lobby were my interlocutors, my translators; they bounded up to customers and I channeled their optimism. They lived in the moment, grateful for the interaction, and so was I. I had a purpose, even if part of that purpose was hosing down feces-covered kennels. The dogs’ needs seemed simple, and I required simple needs: to have somewhere to be. It’s easy to feel sated when all you’re asking for in life is food, water, and some gentle petting.
I befriended the older women who made up the majority of the other volunteers. Retirees and former powerhouses in realms like consulting and finance, bored at home, sapped by stale marriages, with reticent or far-flung adult children and ill or dying friends, these women felt useful and appreciated. We formed a constellation of surrogates who likely should have been paying the dogs for therapy; it could have funded the entire shelter operation. We cried when dogs were euthanized but also when they were adopted; we had been seeking comfort in the constant and could barely deal with change. The term “shelter” seemed to apply as much to the humans as it did to the animals.
One’s perspective on the number of animals it is appropriate to have within city limits changes when you’re working at an animal shelter. To have no animals indicates that you’re volunteering merely as a way of finding a pet to adopt, dabbling, putting you in a perennial state of searching, never to be taken seriously. Everyone waits for you to find your pet and then move on. Having merely one pet hints at a snootiness, as if your lifestyle is so refined, your abode so fastidious, your car so clean that only a single perfect creature will do. One dog or cat is more of an accessory. Most people who work with animals have at least two dogs, or two cats, or some combination thereof. But it is just as likely that a shelter worker or volunteer has four dogs and three cats and a rabbit, none of which get along, and a house set up like a kennel or boarding facility, with dog crates and baby gates, an upstairs/downstairs stratified dynamic, even going so far that spouses will sleep in separate rooms to accommodate the needs of the animals. These sacrifices and compromises are not seen as excessive but rather valiant.
After Sleater-Kinney ended, Corin threw herself into being a full-time mom, Janet immediately found other bands with which to play, and I, under the influence of the humane society culture, started bringing home dogs, fostering one after another, seeking a perfect fit. I already had one dog, but I went ahead and adopted a second. Now I found myself with my own menagerie.
There were four of them now, two cats and two dogs, one for each of my limbs; enough of them so that I could evenly disperse my worries and obsessions among them, worries that would have been too much for just one of them to bear. They were my family. We lived in my four-bedroom Craftsman home in northeast Portland, with a fake crow on the roof that I never stopped reminding people I didn’t put up. It was a house big enough so that each of us could have had our own bedrooms if we’d wanted—and in a futile attempt to keep them off the furniture, there were in fact dog and cat beds everywhere but in the bathrooms. But instead, we all chose to sleep in mine. At night we vied for spots on the queen-size mattress, the cats my itchy neck warmers, one dog burrowing under the covers, the other in the crook of my knee. We were close enough that the exhalation of my breath made their ears twitch, that if one of them had fleas we all did, so near and entwined that I couldn’t tell one whisker-filtered snore from another. Despite the daytime chases and cross-species pestering and a scuffling of paws, the occasional annoyed meow or impatient whine, in the bed at night we were all at peace. It was constricting, a fur coffin, but also a crib. If the fake crow were looking down on us, he would see a woman in her thirties, living alone, jobless and aimless, with animals to fill the space and to patch the holes.
Leaving the house became a series of meticulous rituals. The ones for my own benefit were easy: spend two minutes locating the keys, gather my wallet, lipstick, and gum, and place them in a cavernous bag, check my outfit in the entryway mirror, and leave. But the animals required much more.
Whenever I left, all I wanted to ensure was that I’d return to a space that was relatively the same as when I left. Sure, there would always be subtle changes: a couch pillow on the floor, the corner of it damp and freshly chewed, a shoe mysteriously moved from the entryway to beneath the coffee table, a rawhide half-eaten, releasing into the house that fake smoke flavor that’s supposed to appeal to animals, as if dogs and cats, back in their days in the wild, barbecued their meats.
So, before I would leave, I prepared: I thought ahead, I predicted behaviors that could be set off by boredom, loneliness, or sheer instinct. Like my record collection transforming into a five-foot scratching post or my books becoming mealy tug toys. I minimized risk. Step one, the big one, was to tire the dogs out—as I’d learned in my training classes, 85 percent of behavioral problems stem from lack of exercise. So we went on runs until their tongues fell out the sides of their mouths in a collapse of pink. Once home, the dogs would crash for hours. All the other steps came later, right before I walked out the door: refresh the water bowls, leave out a few cat toys sprinkled with catnip, construct edible and impossible treats for the dogs that take them hours to eat, and finally, most important, rig the opening of the upstairs door with a piece of green garden twine, making a loop, leaving a gap just wide enough that the cats could slink through to the quiet and safety of upstairs, but too narrow for the big, boisterous dogs, who had a tendency to get into the cats’ personal space.
Last, I would turn the radio on and say the words “Be good—I’ll be back.” I said this to no one animal in particular, but to all of them, and to myself, and because it’s something I’d want to hear even if someone never intended to come home.
Hector, my first and oldest pet, was a sixteen-pound black cat with white details, a tuxedo cat with a chest broad and sturdy enough that I could lay my head upon it. He was a repressed and worried kitten when I got him at eight weeks of age, too thoughtful for silliness like string. I named him after the Greek warrior to instill in him a sense of empowerment and duty. He grew into the name and took on the other def
inition of “hector,” which is “to bully,” and when he was outdoors he made sure the neighborhood cats understood the concept of property lines. Hector brought me presents from the outside world: movie ticket stubs, old receipts, a parachute from a Fourth of July firework, and he once retrieved his own collar, lost weeks before. He announced the arrival of each gift with a tiny, high-pitched meow, comically disproportionate to his girth, like a football linebacker reading poetry. I’d had him since I was twenty-five; he had seen me through nearly a decade of living spaces, relationships, breakups, and tours; and when I called him “my best friend,” I was only half joking.
Poor Lyle, my second pet and second cat, always a sidekick; gray and white, with half a mustache, an endless supply of eye gunk, an acrobatic vertical jump that rivaled a pro basketballer, and a penchant for announcing himself when he walked into a room, which would have been fine except that he was always walking into rooms. Lyle was constantly getting into scrapes. He survived a collision with a pickup truck and walked away without a single broken bone but with a tire tread across his face. He roamed around the neighborhood, crossed streets without looking both ways, tried to befriend a squirrel—he was stupidly, happily fearless, like a teenager on a dare. But he was also sensitive, particularly to my moods, absorbing my worry in his lithe little being. Whenever I moved cities or dwellings, Lyle would come down with gastritis. A plumbing disaster sent me into a rage when I bought my house in Portland, and immediately Lyle was back in the animal ER, not eating, vomiting up bile in dramatic, spastic heaves. The vets never could find the underlying cause of his illnesses. I figured that Lyle was just checking himself into rehab. He needed a little break. He always came back from his vet stays rehydrated, rested, and ready to deal with me anew.
Fortunately, both Lyle and I had Hector. Steady and unwavering. Worthy and tolerant of the Andrews Sisters–style songs I wrote about him, like the one called “Greatest Cuddler of All Time.” Lyle and Hector spent much of their days locked in a yin-yang cuddle, Hector’s fur matted and glossy from Lyle’s diligent grooming.
When I realized that in fact I was the cause of Lyle’s stress, with my anxieties and transferred hypochondria (it’s not my fault that as a child when I drank a few extra glasses of orange juice my mom asked my dad if he thought I had diabetes, or that if I came home with more than one bruise on my leg she suggested I had leukemia), the most logical solution for Lyle was to find ways of creating a calmer household. I could have learned to play the pan flute or taken up yoga or meditation, but I got a dog instead. After all, I needed to spread my worry among more vessels, so that none would bear the brunt of it alone. Now I had a whole new species, one that demanded a lot more than my cats did.
This was Tobey, another boy, also another black and white, but bearded and wiry, some kind of pointer, and he quickly grew to sixty-five pounds of tightly coiled muscle. He mauled shoes and books; he stole rising pizza dough off the counter where it ballooned in his belly; he ate an entire bag of coffee beans; he side-tackled me at the river so hard it sent me to the ER. I was enchanted by his athleticism, even though all that made him agile made him potentially hurtful as well. It wasn’t merely love, it was an adventure.
If we measured our affection toward others by how many nicknames we bestow upon them, our pets would be the most loved. Here’s the etymological journey for the nicknames I have for Tobey: Tobito. Toblerone. T-Bone. T-bonics. Ta-T. Ta-Tobes. Tubby, for when he’s gotten into the trash and gorged himself. Nicknames with origins based on appearance: Bearded Yum Yum, Handsome McHandsome, Fuzzy Face. Then this strange progression: Pooch. Poochers. Poocharoo. Poochacho. Pachune. Then, somehow, Pooch turned into Mooch, and so there had to be Moocharo. Muchacho. Manu, and most recently Man-nu-nu. All these monikers I say in voices more commonly echoed from the confines of straitjackets and padded walls. Anyone we truly love should come with their own dictionary.
Yet for all his strength and keen prey drive, Tobey was afraid of Hector, whining and doing a little tap dance in the hallway because the cat wouldn’t let him pass. He shared armchairs with Lyle during TV shows and movies, jealous that the cats could sit higher, jump higher, and, most maddening, fit on my lap. We had struck a delicate but functional balance. A house with fourteen legs and four hearts. It should have been enough.
Here I was again without a family, my only identity a loner. A male loner is a hero of sorts, a rebel, an iconoclast, but the same is not true of a female loner. There is no virility in a woman’s autonomy, there is only pity. I was floating. I had created my own abandonment.
At the Humane Society, after a year of resisting the charms of countless puppy litters and special-needs, blind, three-legged dogs without teeth, I fell in love with Joni Rose, a name better reserved for a twice-divorced aunt working a late shift in Reno than for a five-month old wrinkly-faced Shar-Pei mix with a circular bald patch on her nose. A fungus, they explained, or perhaps ringworm. I renamed her Olive to help bring out her cute side. She was my first female pet, a goofy brown nugget who communicated in a series of snorts, and in yawns so big they emitted a whistle. Unlike Tobey, she was easy to train, gentle and malleable. With Olive, I felt certain that I was done, complete. I had two pairs.
Yet now the balance felt tipped. I was both the center of attention and the odd number. I was suddenly in the middle, with the cats on one side and the dogs on the other. Olive, with her puppy curiosity, was unafraid of the cats, and Tobey’s deference to them gave way to a newfound and sometimes alarming sense of empowerment.
Thus, the departure rituals, the precautionary measures in the house became more deliberate: an added cat door leading to the basement, a baby gate to keep the dogs out of certain rooms; the cats’ realm became higher, more restricted. Safer, or so I thought.
One reason people get dogs is so there is always someone excited to see them when they get home. Whether I had been gone five hours or five minutes, Tobey and Olive’s greeting was the same: effusive, sloppy, unabashed, a surprise party every time the key turned. It was my birthday, their birthday, Halloween and Christmas, confetti!
On that warm July night in 2007, I knew something was wrong when I returned home, opened the front door, and no one came to greet me. No wags, no slobber, no clumsy collision of noses to knees. There was an acrid smell in the house, an airlessness in the entryway. I walked farther in. I saw that the green twine preventing the dogs from getting through the upstairs door was broken, the stairway exposed. Olive and Tobey ran down; they were panting, wild-eyed, wet. I ran upstairs with the dogs at my heels. There were tufts of indistinguishable fur in the hallway, undercoat. I looked to the left into the music room.
Here is where all the air in the house had gone, to give this ugliness breath and a brutal force. There was the crumpled rug, more fur, and the still, black body of Hector. He lay next to my guitar, lifeless.
I ran downstairs. I dragged the dogs out into the backyard like intruders, like garbage. I picked up the phone. I called friends, inarticulate with shock. I tried to sink into the walls, I tried to climb them, I bore my way into the couch. My house could not hold me. A friend came to take the dogs away because if they stayed I said I would kill them. Yet I put together their dog food, carefully measuring out the servings in Tupperware containers, enough for a week, as if I were sending them away on vacation or to summer camp.
We wrapped Hector’s body in a towel. I touched the tip of his tail, the white part that always looked like it had been dipped in paint. I held him. He was heavier than he’d ever been. We drove to the 24-hour animal hospital to have him cremated. It was the only time Hector didn’t cry on the way to the vet.
I returned home to an empty house. Lyle had been outside the entire time.
I spent the next week sleeping downstairs on a lumpy futon mattress with Lyle, trying to get him to appreciate our time alone. He had all my attention. I brought out every cat toy, I put his food dish on the ground now that the dogs
weren’t around to steal from it, I bought him salmon-flavored snacks and played laser pointer until the batteries ran out. I wanted him to be sad, to miss Hector, to grieve, to comfort me. Mostly what I wanted was for Lyle to understand that for his own safety, he would be rehomed to a friend, that these would be our last days together, too. But like always Lyle just wanted to be outdoors; and it became clear to me that we weren’t looking at this in the same way. Humans and animals rarely do.
There wasn’t any blood. But when I could bring myself to return upstairs, it looked like a crime scene, the entire battle told in the deep, desperate scratches on the wood floor. It was clear that Hector had tried to hide under the bed, there had been a struggle in the hallway, and then, finally, in the music room, in that useless, sterile room that I kept as a mausoleum, a mourning I was ostensibly going to deal with when it was convenient, was a plain and sinister floor map upon which I could retrace every mistake I ever made. A body. A guitar.
Now, finally, I was sad. Here it was, that shadow that forms on your insides, a dark pooling, the grief. Everything I had was gone.
CHAPTER 21
HOME
Long ago I stopped focusing on performing for the sake of my family, but instead performed in spite of it, away from it, to get out. The bottomless urge I had to entertain as a child had sent me headstrong and hurling myself into rooms, hoping I’d arrive in time to delay or minimize the breakage. Cop, coach, clown. A one-girl Greek chorus there to protect, instruct, and delight. But there is no one I could really save but myself.
That’s what I mean when I say Sleater-Kinney was my rescue and salvation. It was the first time I felt I could be vulnerable in my creativity in which the emotional and psychic stakes were neither futile nor self-annihilating. That unlit firecracker I carried around inside me in my youth, eager to ignite it at the slightest provocation, to detonate my whole being and fill the room in a glowing spectacle, found a home in music. My restlessness and unease was matched by my fellow miscreants—bandmates, collaborators, and audiences alike—but more crucially by a warmth and sustenance. In Sleater-Kinney, each song, each album, built an infrastructure, fresh skeletons. These, at last, were steady bones.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl Page 20
