A Cat Named Darwin by William Jordan

Mader had mentioned nothing about a heart murmur, which corroborated my suspicions about Dr. Grog.
    At eight A.M . the phone rang, waking me from the sleep of the late-rising writer. "This is Dr. Mader" said a flat, matter-of-fact voice. "We got Darwin's blood work back. We have good news and we have bad news. I'll give you the bad news first. Darwin has the feline leukemia virus."
    My mind ceased to think. I sat there on the side of the bed and my eyes cast about aimlessly, noticing the wrinkles and folds in the bedspread, the bumps on the stucco wall. A sensation similar to chills spread over my shoulders, bringing back that summer night so many years before when I had just come home from visiting a friend. As I parked the car, my mother ran from the house to greet me with a look I had never seen before. "Something terrible's happened," she said with a strange, hoarse severity in her voice. "There's been an accident. Your grandfather was killed. Your grandmother is critical..."
    That same feeling of horror and shock swept over me as I gazed blindly at the walls, my mind frozen in its frame, suspended in the nothingness of loss. All the neurons, all the synapses, all the enzymes and ions and other chemicals of the brain devoted to the memories and thoughts of Darwin would soon have no further use. At that existential instant I somehow knew that Darwin would not have much time but that it was going to be intense time. It was going to burn.
    The doctor continued to talk, his words bleeding together in a background mumble while my self blundered aimlessly this way and that. Then the words began to break free of the mumble and enter my mind.
    "...the good news is that we don't know how fast the disease will move. In fact, some cats seem to live with the virus and never come down with symptoms. With others it goes so slowly that you can enjoy them for months, even years. We have to make a decision, though."
    I tried to ask what sort of decision, but tears welled up and my throat wouldn't work. I paused, forced composure on myself, and managed a steady, low voice.
    "A decision? What kind of decision?"
    "Do you want to go ahead with the teeth, or put him down?" said Mader's flat, dispassionate voice.
    "Put him
downir
I was incredulous.
    "Yes—many people decide to do that when FeLV is diagnosed."
    "But...
Why?
Don't a lot of cats survive it? Why give up without seeing what happens?"
    "Some owners would rather end it now on a positive note and save their pets from illness."
    I had to decide, and I had to decide now ... but we were talking about Darwin's
life.
At times like this, when profound denials collide like tectonic plates deep in the guts, my mind sometimes separates into pure reason and pure hysteria. The rational self rises into the air and peers down with detached fascination as my emotions writhe on the hook of life.
    "Why spend $160 we can't afford to clean the teeth of a dying cat?" said my rational side. These were quicksilver thoughts, almost instantaneous, more feeling than conscious, but there was no denying the calculations. I knew from the veterinary book that roughly 70 percent of infected cats die in a relatively short time after being diagnosed with the feline leukemia virus, and seven in ten was poor odds for investing money on clean teeth.
    Hope, however, was as tough and strong as it was illogical. Odds are a measure of group history and could not reveal the course of Darwin's individual fate. Viewed with hope, 30 percent of FeLV positive cats seemed to tolerate the microbe—and three chances in ten became fabulous odds. My mouth opened, and off in the distance I heard my voice say, "Yes ... Yes—let's go ahead with the cleaning."

7. Hope, Intimacy, Jealousy
    T HE HOSPITAL called around three o'clock, and I brought Darwin home with clean teeth and a hangover. Still affected by the anesthetic, he wobbled about when I lifted him from his transport box and placed him on the floor, then sat down to