Category Six Books, Part II

Category Six Books was named for the term "a perfect Kinsey Six," meaning totally gay.

By the 90's, Jim the owner had hired a young, dark-haired employee named James Dovali to run the store. I had always dreamed of having my first book signing at the store on 11th Street; however, the landlord intended to raise the rent so much that Jim decided to move elsewhere. South Broadway appeared on the verge of becoming a mini-gay-mecca by the mid-90's, what with The Blue Note Cafe and Theater On Broadway, as well as Heaven Sent Me and a couple of other gay-owned restaurants anchoring the immediate area. Jim decided to move into a store front at 42 South Broadway to join this burgeoning group. Unfortunately, it never quite worked out as well in the new location, though it was not from lack of trying. I would, in fact, have my first book signings at Category Six Books, but at the South Broadway location instead of on Capitol Hill.

After a couple of years in the new location, James optimistically bought the store from Jim. James was always very generous with me and my books regarding promoting them and allowing me to have book signings there at least twice a year. We typically had signings on the Saturday of Denver's Gay Pride weekend in June and, even more significantly, the weekend before Christmas, a big time for last minute shoppers. I brought cookies and donuts, brought in a coffee urn and filled it with apple cider and spices. James always had the store decorated for the holidays.

Sadly, though, as the decade wound to a close, the store could not compete against the large brick and mortar outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. Then, of course, by 2000, the Internet also was taking a huge chunk of business from all the small, independent book stores such as Category Six Books. Even more unfortunate, best selling gay authors such as Maupin and many others simply stopped being directed to Category Six Books by their publishers and handlers, opting to do their one local signing at a Barnes & Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore in Cherry Creek.

The few local Denver gay writers such as myself were the only ones to remain loyal--Category Six Books' survival meant our survival. I used to show up at the store most Saturday mornings to chat with James and see how my books were doing. Too often I could see what James saw daily: most patrons were no longer interested in buying books, neither fiction nor non-fiction. They would enter the front door, nod in his direction, and head to the back where the porn magazines were kept on display. James loved books and discussing literature and music. Sadly, he more than anyone knew that it was the porn sales that kept his store barely afloat so that he could still sell books, his singular passion. He maintained a prominent shelf of his store's weekly Top Ten bestsellers. Periodically, one or more of my books would be on display there, helping sales a bit more. But, as those few years passed, we could each see that between the chain stores and Internet book sales, his store was inexorably dying. He gave it a couple more years and then he'd be forced to close, he would explain. Also, young people, whether gay or not, no longer seemed to be reading books. What patrons he did maintain became progressively older, not younger.

Before that happened, an older couple, two of his better patrons, continued to query him regarding how much he would ask if they were to consider buying Category Six Books from him. He tried repeatedly to warn them off, that they were wanting to buy a dying business that had no hope of recovery. They were not to be deterred. Finally, he named a price and they agreed to pay it. Before the sale was finalized, he gave them some valuable advice: don't sign a new lease with the landlord because the location was part of the problem. The area never did develop as the next Denver gay mecca. The Blue Note closed. Theater on Broadway also folded. He also advised them that they not rename the store either. Everyone knew about Category Six Books even if they didn't often shop there. To change the recognized name made little sense.

They didn't heed his sound advice on either of those two issues. In fact, they didn't listen to his advice on much at all. They bought new equipment like a cash register, an unnecessary expense; they changed the store's name; and, worst of all, they signed a new lease with the landlord who sold the property to another landlord not long after. The two also remodeled the interior in such a way that it looked like some old lady's living room, Norman Bates's mom's living room. Nothing trendy or hip for them, nosiree.

Rather than recognizing that Category Six Books had only been sold and renamed, word mistakenly got around that the store had instead closed, not the kind of word of mouth new owners want to cultivate within the community. Sales of my own books at the store plummeted after the new owners took over. They later tried to promote several of us local authors, but it was too late. Even after The Book Garden, the local lesbian bookstore, closed and they began carrying books for the entire GLBT community, including women, sales did not pick up.

After they had owned the store for about a year, we all learned that James Dovali had died of liver cancer. After suddenly falling ill, he entered the hospital and died shortly thereafter. He may actually have died of AIDS-related complications, but liver cancer was what everyone was told. In the months after he sold the store, he had tried a couple of different careers, but nothing seemed to work out for him. He appeared to others to be rudderless.

I never saw James after the other two took over the store and changed everything. I definitely missed our Saturday morning discussions, and especially the twice-yearly book signings that we enjoyed so much. A couple of years before he moved on, I had given James Schnozz's old, beloved, carpeted cylindar when I had moved to my condo and had less space. James had found a stray kitten one morning outside the back entrance to his store. He named the striped kitten Slim Shady. Shady loved the cylindar, James told me, taking up immediate residence. After James died, I heard from his boyfriend. He'd inherited Shady but could not keep him since he himself periodically lived on the streets after that. He assured me that he'd given Shady and the cylindar to an older couple who had known James in happier times. Shady again had a loving home.

relativelyWilde, the store's new name, died sadly, as well, about a year or so after James passed. The new landlord intended to remodel the storefronts of it and the space he owned beside it. Business had been bad enough in the previous months, but the thought of their few remaining patrons having to clamber over and around construction apparatus and debris just to get inside made the two realize that their days as proud bookstore owners were about over. The landlord would not let them out of their lease to allow them to move elsewhere, so they put everything inside up for sale over a few short weeks' time and then closed the door when the entire contents, including the relatively new cash register, were gone. Before the end, they told me to come and get my books before the sale since they knew I always had my novels there on consignment rather than have James pay me in advance.

I suspect that James would have been mortified at the thought of downloadable books. He also bought music CDs, so even downloadable music would probably have been strange to him. He was not a man for the digital age. The era of Category Six Books and other gay book stores like it all over the country has certainly passed. They were havens of gay culture at a time when there were few other places to go. The gay person behind the counter could steer you in the direction of gay authors like Armistead Maupin and others and to gay books like Tales of the City. They opened up whole new worlds for many of us, and Rainbow Arc of Fire would not have existed had those stores not existed.

Not a Christmas season or Pride weekend goes by that I don't think fondly once more about James Dovali and his gay bookstore. A few more than 20 years passed since the store first opened on Colfax Blvd., and then it was all gone for good.

---

Category Six Books

Most large cities had at least one, if not two, gay or lesbian bookstores, typically founded sometime in the 70's or early 80's..

I first became aware of Category Six Books in Denver in the mid-80's when it was located on 11th Street, near Downing. (I was told that the store had originally started out on Colfax.) I road up to Denver one fine, sunny spring day, possibly 1985, with a friend at the time. We parked near the store and hiked around the corner and up the front steps..

Once inside, I noticed carpeted stairs that led to the top floor of the building--they were modestly blocked by a rope that prohibited climbing them to the living quarters above. To the immediate right inside the front door was the checkout counter. On either side of those interior stairs were the two halves of the store. Fiction and picture books and magazines were located on the right. Non-fiction books and other, miscellaneous items such as pins and flags and CDs were to the left. My friend had a good friend who was a flight attendant but who also periodically worked in the store when he wasn't flying the Friendly Skies.

On one of my early visits to Category Six Books it was this guy, upon learning that I had never heard of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, who walked over to the main shelf, grabbed the first four volumes (the next two volumes were yet to appear), handed them to me, and sternly advised, "Do yourself a favor and buy these books.".

An avid reader of histories and biographies, I didn't see how I would ever find the time with my part-time evening teaching for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base during the week, and sometimes on Saturdays, as well as my full-time job at Kaman in Colorado Springs during the day, to read this series of novels. But I bought them anyway because the covers were colorful and they were "gay books," something I had not previously owned or even been aware of..

For many of us in the 80's, or definitely the 70's for that matter, it was only in these specialty independent gay book stores where we could find gay books (the Internet as we know it today was years in the future). This was also a few years before the chain stores began to feature a specific, typically small, GLBT section. In addition, whereas you might not be comfortable buying a gay book or magazine at Barnes & Noble, most of us had no problem buying from a store that was usually gay-owned and gay-operated. We were among friends in those stores. They became comfortable hangouts, possibly even pickup places if the mood were right and the stars properly aligned..

My good friend Bart worked for a guy whom he was roommates with in Colorado Springs. Bart's roommate owned a porn book store on Platte Blvd. But that was porn, straight and gay. While Category Six Books also carried gay porn magazines in the back, their primary mission was to provide an outlet for GLBT writers and books that had few other places where they weren't marginalized, if they even were carried at all..

Category Six Books was also located in a prime area: Capitol Hill in Denver, the gayest part of The Mile-High City. Most residents could simply walk to the store. It was there that I bought Maupin's last two volumes in the series (at that time). In fact, I drove to Denver when Maupin was doing a book signing for Sure of You, the final volume, at Category Six Books. When my friend Dino and I arrived, the line to meet Maupin snaked around inside the small store and out the back door. There was sweet and welcoming atmosphere inside the store (I was told the owner sold dozens and dozens of books that night). Perhaps some of us were particularly sad since Maupin had announced that those six books would be all that he would write about the delightful denizens of 28 Barbary Lane. One woman ahead of us in line actually wept openly when he confirmed that there would be no more tales..

Toward Dino and me, Maupin was particularly friendly and confirmed that, if we went to San Francisco, Macondray Lane was the setting he envisioned for Barbary Lane. (Four years later, we would fly to San Francisco, rent a car, stay at a local gay B&B, and find Macondray Lane, the highlight of the trip. We even heard that we had just missed Maupin, who had been in the Castro a couple hours before we arrived there.).

This synchonous relationship between gay bookstore and GLBT authors was what kept each afloat and financially viable for several years. And it was the existence of such stores, as well as my enjoyment of Tales of the City, that stimulated me to write my Rainbow Arc of Fire series. The night that we met Maupin and attended the book signing made me realize how special, how significant, was the relationship between these authors and those specialty book stores..

Sadly, though, that relationship wasn't to last. I think our communities, such as they are, or such as they have become, are the poorer for that lasting change.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part IV

As with Miranda, Sneezer experienced problems visiting the Vet during his sunset years. When he was there to get his teeth cleaned and one removed, the breathing tube damaged his throat while he was knocked out. We didn't discover what had happened until the next morning when he came by the bed to wake me up and ask for food--uncharacteristically, he hadn't jumped up on the bed. I looked down as he followed me into the kitchen, and I noticed that the entire front half of his body was puffed up to about twice its normal size. As he breathed in, air was filling up his body cavity alarmingly. He could easily have died.

Fortunately, the Vet was open and I rushed him there that Saturday morning. She put him in some kind of enclosed device--an incubator perhaps--for 24 hours. But then she advised me over the phone that I should take him to another Vet in the Tech Center of Denver for the next couple of days since her facility would be closed and no one would be there to watch over him. It was at her expense, so I bundled him up in the Vet's office and drove him there. When I began to carry him inside that next evening, he instantly realized that this was not home and he meowed pitifully. Like any reluctant patient, he had obviously expected, and wanted, to go home.

Two or three days later, I was able to pick him up. They'd made a couple of incisions in either side of his body, to let much of the air out. It had worked well enough so I could then bring him home. I know he wasn't sure where he was headed in the car at this point since the two previous drives had not led home. After I parked the car in back and carried him toward the front porch, he realized immediately that he was home and struggled to break from my hold. I carefully set him down, and he deliberately hiked up the front steps and then through the front door under his own power. It was as if he knew he was home and would make his own way inside, thank you.

He also, briefly, developed a tumor, possibly also from the rabies shots. But his was on his side. The Vet removed the small one, though another one soon took its place. That second one was also removed and no others came back, unlike with Miranda. The Vet advised that neither cat ought to be vacinated again, though for Miranda it was too late.

Sneezer was king of the condo, of course. In warm weather, when the front window was left open, if another cat ventured near, even in the middle of the night, I would hear this furocious, almost blood-curdling yowl as he sought to get at the offending tresspasser. There was a neighborhood black cat that used to sit just outside the window and torment Sneeze with its presense. One time, it sat on the front porch and calmly began grooming itself. It did not realize that the front door was open. Sneezer slowly crept toward the unsuspecting adversary and then lept. Instantly, there was black and then gray and then black and then gray as the two tumbled over and over in their tempestuous, swirling struggle. I tried reaching in to separate the two, finally grabbing a mass of gray fur and held fast. The black cat immediately took off, having been thoroughly bested.

Sadly, the inevitable course of old age finally began to take its toll on Sneezer. During one visit to the Vet, I was shocked to learn that he had lost so much weight that he was down to just over six pounds. He wasn't eating any regular cat food, a sure cause for concern. I had to buy canned chicken instead--that was all he would eat. Soon, he would only slurp up the juices of the chicken. Then, he would only drink water, large amounts of only water. Clearly, the Vet told me, his kidneys were failing. I would have to buy rubber bath mats to lay in front of each litter box and then place old towels and rags over the mats because Sneezer would no longer use the boxes but stand in front and pee.

After Miranda died, but before Sneezer's health began to fail, I was told by a sister of a co-worker that she and a friend had rescued an adorable kitten from a grain bin at Coors Brewery where they both worked. She asked if I wanted the new kitten, and I readily accepted. He was adorable. I took him to the Vet and he was given the usual shots. Fortunately, she discovered that he was carrying bacteria that would have killed him had it not been caught in time and cured.

I soon named him Pudge. I kept him in the bathroom until Sneezer became familiar with a new cat in residence. But this was going on for days and he seemed no more likely to accept this latest competition than he had Miranda, whom Pudge resembled in fur pattern (though he lacked the orange splotches). One morning, though, when I was speaking on the phone with a friend, bemoaning the fact that they may never get along, I glanced down and much to my surprise, Pudge and Sneezer were eating side by side off the same plate on the floor. I realized that Pudge had figured out how to open the folding bathroom door and had gotten out. Sneezer simply accepted his presence and that was it.

One evening before Christmas in 2005, Sneezer lay beside me on the couch as I watched my usual string of Christmas shows on TV. I looked at him and wondered if he would make it to the next Christmas and how much I would miss him when he was gone. Sadly, he didn't quite make it.

In early December of 2006, although he had not done so in several months, Sneezer walked from the station he had taken up beside the toilet in the bathroom, laying between the toilet and the cabinet and rarely moving--only drinking from the dish I had set beside him. I was shocked and saddened when I looked down and realized that he was walking on the joint of his right leg rather than on his paw. He had probably experienced a stroke. In his confusion, he had returned to his old ways of hiking to the kitchen for his breakfast even though he hadn't eaten anything solid in weeks.

I knew it was time. I tearfully called the Vet that day and explained that I would bring him in that afternoon when I got off from work. I wrapped him up in a large towel. I carried him to Pudge on the couch to say goodbye. I even stopped beside his favorite bush out front so he could take in one last sniff of these familiar surroundings before placing him in the car. I knew he was ready to go because, during the entire mile drive to the Vet, Sneezer never complained. Not one sound of protest was uttered even though he always did so previously any time he had to ride in the car.

The Vet and the staff were helpful as the assistant carried him to the back room to install the shunt in his left leg. She brought him back and she and I petted him as the Vet inserted the needle into the shunt. In a moment it was all over, and I cried like a baby.

They asked me if I wanted to stay in the room with his body for a few minutes, but all I could tearfully murmer was, "No, he's already gone," as I walked away in sadness, glancing back one last time at his inert form on the counter where we had ended his pain. I cried most of that day when I thought of that gangly cat that emerged from the cardboard box from the Denver Dumb Friends League so many years before. Sneezer was already six when Frank rescued him in 1992. He was nearly 21 when I took him to the Vet in late 2006. He had outlived both Schnozz and Miranda by several years each. The three tins that contain the separate ashes of each cat sit together on a shelf in my condo.

At the end of my own days on this earth, I hope we are all buried together on some high ground somewhere peaceful and serene, along with Pudge and Tabby, my current two cats. Each has given me devoted love and affection in his or her own way over the years since I was exiled from the Air Force over 31 years ago.

Is there a happy place where we can all be together once more? I suspect not but I always hope so.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part III

One evening, a friend of mine called and said he was going to take me by my new condo. (His presumption was that I would buy it after I saw it.) I'd not owned anything since I sold my house in Colorado Springs a few years before. It was now 1997, and my job was likely to continue indefinitely (I'm still working on the same project).

I came, I saw, I soon bought. Miranda had no problem with the move. Sneezer, once again, took up station under my bed when he arrived.

He never liked to travel by car anyway. Each trip to the Vet would elicit many long, low and pathetic-sounding, Yeows. Perhaps he thought he was being taken back to the Denver Dumb Friends League. Perhaps he thought he was being farmed out yet again to a new owner. Fortunately, the drive to the new condo was just three and a half blocks. But a new residence was daunting enough, no matter how close.

After a few days, he finally appeared and began to tentatively explore his latest, and last, new surroundings. I like to think these were the happiest times for Big Sneeze. Unlike the Park Humboldt Apartments, he was able to explore the immediate surroundings of the house on Franklin Street. He never ventured too far, and there was a shady bush near the front window where he would lie underneath and sniff the air (see the green bush on the lower right side of the photo above).

He could also lie on the back deck and enjoy the warm sunlight. And there were windows in the bedroom, bathroom, living and dining rooms that he could sit beside and watch the world go by outside. He would always wait by the front window for me to return from work. Once I appeared, he'd let out a glad, clipped "meow" and jump down to the couch and then the floor, to meet me inside the front door to my unit. He would sleep beside me in bed, under the covers if it were a cold night.

In 2000, when I began to hold my annual Pride Parade Parties because the Denver parade in June surged out of Cheeman Park and coursed along Franklin Street right out front, he would mingle with the many guests and enjoy the constant attention.

He would also lie beside me or be cradled in my arms whenever I lay on the couch, watching TV. Miranda was not quite so fortunate in the new house. In late 2000, she began to develop terrible, aggressive tumors on the back of her neck from the semi-annual rabies shots. Her unfortunate reaction was rare; but even after three extensive surgeries, her time was near the end. The Vet could not close up the opening after the third surgery and nothing had stopped their incessant growth. In early October 2001, I called the Vet to come over and ease her pain for good. Miranda waited in the front garden amidst the flowers and undergrowth, her favorite spot, until the Vet arrived.

Sneezer, again, disappeared under the bed.

I had first met Miranda when my friends Dino and Larry lived in an apartment near the Governor's Mansion in Denver and got her as a little kitten. She used to jump on me when I slept on their couch whenever I visited them but was still living in Colorado Springs. When they bought a house in Thornton, CO, she moved there with them. They eventually acquired three more cats before they bought a triplex in Denver on Capitol Hill. But after they bought a dog, the cats were soon farmed out one-by-one to new owners. I inherited Miranda after Schnozz was put to sleep.

I always felt sorry for Miranda since she had been tossed about almost as much as Sneezer because my friends weren't allowed to keep her in their apartment after the landlord discovered she was living there. So she spent a number of months staying with Larry's parents until he and Dino bought the Thornton house. Not only had she endured the intense suffering from the tumors and the three surgeries, one time she was given a shot by the Vet's assistant in a front paw. The next morning I saw that it had puffed up to three or four times normal size. She had to spend time with the Vet until it got back down to normal.

Before she was put to sleep, I had to tape a sock around her open neck wound so she would not keep scratching it. Even with the sock taped around her neck, she would still attempt to scratch. The sound was a distinctive one because of the masking tape. A few nights after she was gone, I awoke to that same distinctive sound, coming from the kitchen where Miranda spent her last couple of weeks, sitting atop the counter by the refridgerator where warm air would make its way around to where she lay, trying to sleep despite the pain.

I would have attributed hearing the sound in a dream if it were not for the fact that Sneezer, laying beside me in bed, already had his head up and his ears turned toward the kitchen. I could see his distinctive silhouette in the light that reflected off the far wall. The light was emitted by a night light I maintained in the kitchen. (Being Calico, and predominently of white fur, I could see Miranda's form even at night; but Sneezer was gray, and I would often walk right into him without at least a nightlight to expose his presence on a dark carpet.)

Perhaps her spirit never left the house when she was put to sleep in the living room. I have no sure idea about such matters. All I know is that I heard the familiar scratching sound, and so did Sneezer.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part II

Sad to say, the only solution that I could come up with was to find Sneezer another home. If they were fighting at night, they were likely fighting during the day when I was at work. I soon gave him to a guy who lived upstairs in my apartment building.

He seemed a nice enough sort who would enjoy a large, lovable cat. Unfortunately, the guy discovered he had a terrible allergic reaction to cats, so I took Sneezer back. My friend Ramsey's brother had a dog but thought he could give Sneezer a good home. However, a week later I was to learn that Sneezer simply sat in the basement all day and night, as if profoundly unhappy with his new surroundings, and would not even come upstairs at all. I bowed to the inevitable and soon took Sneezer back. He'd always had those big, sad eyes that looked pathetically into yours and seemed to ask for love and affection unquestioningly.

Fortunately, he and Schnozz seemed to quickly declare a truce and the fighting stopped. I bought a second carpeted cylinder so that each cat would have one to sit atop in the small bedroom and look outside at the alley below and watch whomever or whatever might pass by.

This new apartment wasn't nearly as nice as my first, small, one-bedroom apartment. That one was along the front of the middle building and looked out at a tree and down to the front sidewalk below. But after several months living in this new unit under crowded conditions--I now had more and larger furniture after living in the large one-bedroom apartment with Frank--that when a tenant moved from the two-bedroom unit at the north end of the building, just two doors down, I grabbed at the chance for additional space.

However, I never realized how attached Sneezer had become to the cozy one-bedroom apartment, now that he had had a permanent home, until a friend and a buddy of his helped me move. Schnozz took to the new, much larger apartment instantly, exploring the entire length including each of the two bedrooms and the large living room/dining room. She was immediately content, being far more adverturous.

Since that move was a success, I then carried Sneezer to the new apartment and set him down, hoping for the best. Moments later, though, he sneaked back into the old apartment; and I soon found him, head forlornly down on the carpet in the bedroom, not wanting any part of the move or the new place. I just left him laying there until we finished moving everything else out. He spent the next few days in the new apartment hiding under my bed.

When need of food became pronounced, he finally ventured out and began to explore his new surroundings. Since his carpeted cylinder was against the window in the first bedroom that I mainly used for storing my CDs and laser discs and other less-needed items, he could sit atop it undisturbed and watch people walking their dogs on the sidewalk below, as well as keep an attentive eye on squirrels in the trees along 10Th Street.

But when I would leave the front door open, and Schnozz would climb the stairs to the deck above the third floor to watch birds pass overhead, just out of reach, I would find Sneezer sitting in front of the door to the old apartment, almost quizzically looking up. Perhaps he was wondering why he couldn't go home again. Perhaps it was also because, in that apartment, I had also maintained a dry-food dispenser where Sneezer could eat at will all day and night long. He normally weighed in at a studly 17 and a half pounds whenever I took him to the Vet for his regular checkups and shots. However, being able to graze at the food dispenser at any time, he began to pack on the tonnage, becoming a very robust 23 pounds at one point. He had become one, ginormous lap cat. There was no doubt about it, he had to lose weight. About the time we moved to the larger apartment, the food dispenser was immediately dispensed with and he was given food on a strict schedule.

It was in that apartment where my Rainbow Arc of Fire self-publishing career really took off. Most of the first six books in the series arrived there from the printer in Canada. Sadly, too, it was there that I had to put Schnozz to sleep when the Vet discovered that her colon was riddled with cancer after 13 years on the planet. I wrote about her passing in Worlds Beneath Us. When the Vet arrived, Sneezer, sensing trouble, hid under the bed and remained there until long after the Vet left with Schnozz's body.

It was there, also, where I was given Miranda, a high-strung Calico. Sneezer did not take to her at all in the beginning--yowling and chasing after her relentlessly. He simply did not like other cats. This was a pattern I would discover from that point on. Another cat was competition for food and attention. With me, he was as lovable and friendly as can be; toward other cats, however, he was ruthless and defensive. "Live and let live" was not his motto regarding another feline, even one in residence. But, eventually, he declared a truce with Miranda, as he had with Schnozz before, and we all settled into a routine those final months that we lived in the Park Humboldt Apartments.

---

My Cat, Sneezer

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.

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