It's almost Spring and, somehow, my thoughts often turn toward the best cat I ever had, Sneezer.
Sneezer was an over-sized, heavy, Silver Tabby who wasn't really my cat to begin with, though I paid for all his fees when my live-in boyfriend at the time brought him home in a box from the Denver Dumb Friends League one afternoon in early Spring.
Frank and I were living in a small, one-bedroom apartment in a three-building complex called the Park Humboldt Apartments on Humboldt Street, one block away from Cheesman Park in Denver, CO. It was 1993, I believe; and since I already had a cat, Schnozz, from my years of living in Colorado Springs, Frank wanted one of his own.
One afternoon, he set a large cardboard box on the small living room floor and opened it up. Out came the largest and most gangly looking feline I had ever seen. At first glance, I wasn't even sure I thought Sneezer was particularly attractive or especially lovable. Schnozz, specifically, wasn't enamoured of him at all. She'd always been an only cat and didn't tolerate competition very easily. But there he was, and we'd all have to make the best of an awkward situation.
Frank didn't have a name for the cat yet, but we noticed very soon that Sneezer, well, sneezed a lot. He seemed to have a runny nose from the very beginning. "Great," I thought, "a cat with allergies." It seemed natural enough, though, to call him Sneezer.
Frank consulted the Vet and was told to try and give him an antihistamine tablet to deal with the runny nose and sneezing. It only made Sneezer act highly irascible. Frank, an abusive sort I would soon discover, attempted to bend Sneezer to his will, which only made the cat even more cantankerous and he then yowled. In short order, Frank was all for taking Sneezer back to the Dumb Friends League instantly. However, I cautioned, "He's never acted like this before, Frank. It's probably the antihistamine that's freaking him out. Those things always caused me to act funny."
Even though Sneezer was not my cat, I suppose I saw something in him even then and wasn't about to let Frank take him back to the shelter. So, he stopped giving him the pills and Sneezer quickly began to return to normal.
With the two of us and the two cats, the small one-bedroom apartment was simply too crowded, so Frank eyed a larger, one-bedroom at the end of our floor when it opened up. Soon he convinced me of the need to move and we all packed up and set up residence there, where Frank had painted the living room wall and had me buy new furniture: a sectional sofa and a dining room table.
Unfortunately, our stay in this larger retreat didn't last long. Not only was Frank hostile toward Schnozz, he didn't have any genuine feelings for me, only having moved in out of necessity when he had no job and no place else to go. One night he came home from a party to which I was not invited, with a woman, no less. He was drunk, and because he offered to have her sleep on the sofa, he returned to our bed, a place where we had not slept together in many weeks.
When Frank was drunk, I discovered that he could be extremely belligerent. He decided to take out his deep hostilities on Schnozz, who was always afraid of him. In terror that night, she scratched him when he tried to grab her from under the bed. He retaliated by trying to hit her with my bike helmet, which he damaged. When that failed, he chased her into the living room, grabbed her and threw her against a wall, twice. (The young woman on the couch soon fled.) I started trying to get him to calm down, but he quickly turned on me. Since I started crying at the sight of this now-drunken monster, his response was to bounce my head against the wall with the palm of his hand.
I quickly grabbed Schnozz and fled out of the front door. (I later learned that the neighbors had thought to call the police but did not. This wouldn't have been the first time Frank would have been arrested for a domestic disturbance--he'd gone to jail overnight after a fight with the first boyfriend he'd had when the two had moved to Colorado several month before.) I had no time to think of Sneezer that night as I took off for safety.
I spent the night on the couch of a friend in the south building of the complex. (We lived in the middle building.) Schnozz just sat on the floor, ignoring Ramsey's cat, clearly traumatized. I would also later discover from the Vet that Frank had caused a hair-line fracture in her back when he'd tossed her against the wall, so she must have been in some pain that night, as well.
Unfortunately, I had to fly to California that next day because my mom was undergoing open heart surgery (something Frank was fully aware of). My sister met me at the airport to tell me that things were not going well. Our mom had had an adverse reaction to one of the medications during the surgery and might not make it.
We stayed at a hotel next to the hospital. My mom's two sisters and their husbands were also staying at the same hotel. The next morning, although it appeared that mom would survive, California was hit with an earthquake which shook us quite a bit in the old hotel. Later, a second earthquake, not an aftershock we would discover from watching the news, also struck.
After that extended weekend in California, I returned to Colorado and promptly moved out, leaving Frank and Sneezer behind in that large one-bedroom apartment. I moved into another small, one-bedroom unit in the north building of the complex, knowing that Frank's time there was limited because he still had no job and no income. I would make certain that Sneezer had enough cat food, but Frank's situation was no longer my concern.
Eventually, when he was on the verge of being evicted, I offered to buy him a one-way plane ticket out of town--to anywhere he wished to go. He decided he would fly to Virginia to stay with a lesbian friend he had there. I took him to the airport and wished him well. I then moved what was left of mine from the old apartment, including the couch. (I sold off the dining room table and chairs, having no space in the small apartment.) Of course, Frank couldn't take Sneezer to Virginia, so I picked him up, as well, and carried him to my new place in the north building, to rejoin Schnozz.
From their very first night together again, they began to fight; and I realized this was not going to work out at all. Something was going to have to be done.
