Me with Banjo, in the last minutes of his life two weeks ago.
Tomorrow’s edition of Dallas Voice is called The Pet Issue, but the timing for me is bittersweet. Two weeks ago, I had to put down a cat — my pet grimalkin Banjo — when he became inexplicably ill and stopped eating and drinking. I took him to the vet and spent a small fortune without ever learning what was wrong with him, other than he was shutting down. I tried injecting water down his throat with a syringe, but he fought me — he cast a look that seemed to say, “What are you doing? I’m trying to die and you’re messing me up.”
We communicate with our pets in a series of largely non-verbal ways. We cluck our tongues and whistle and stroke their fur. We play with them and walk them and get them worked up and excitable because it makes us happy to see them happy. We feed them and nurture them and, when the time comes, we lead them out of this world — the hardest thing, and the one that requires the most love.
Gay folks often talk about our pets as if they were our children. In many ways, they are, at a minimum, members of our families. A lot of LGBT are used to “making” family — a word we have co-opted to mean who we choose to form a bond with instead of those we are born to. No pets are “born” to humans, so of course they are all adopted. And all are “made” members of our family.
Banjo left this life too soon. At 12, he still should have had a few years left in him. But I adopted him from the SPCA to give him a life rather than having him destroyed. He had a good life, and I miss him every day … even as I have three dogs remaining to keep me company.
Anyway, I hope you will pick up the paper tomorrow, or read the stories online, because even though we call it The Pet Issue, it’s really something else. It’s The Love Issue. Because that’s what our pets are.
