Monday, June 21, 2010

Tigger, April 1990 - June 19, 2010

In previous blog entries, I may have made mention of my cat, Tigger. I acquired Tigger in 2007, when the previous owners of Tigger moved into a subsidized complex called the Bronfman Buildings in Montreal. Pets are not allowed in the Bronfman Buildings under any circumstances, so these people had to find homes for three different cats. As I already had Ouija living with me at the time, I agreed to accept one of the cats. I ended up agreeing to take Tigger, who was at that time 17 years old. One of the reasons that I took such an old cat was that there were fears that it would be difficult to find a home for him. The other two available cats were each about four years old, and many people do not want an old cat.

So, after the second Passover Seder of 2007, which I attended at the apartment of the people who were giving me Tigger, I walked home with Tigger in a carrier.

I soon reached my apartment on Beaucourt Street, and opened the door of the carrier. Tigger went out, and immediately hid in a lower kitchen cupboard. He remained in that cupboard for about two days, coming out only to get food and use the litter box.

Eventually, Tigger got tired of living in a cupboard, and got used to living in a new apartment. There was, of course, the issue of which cat would be the dominant one.. At first, Ouija, having been there longer, used to swat at Tigger whenever he came near her, Eventually, Tigger began to swat back. Finally, a point was reached where they could sit a couple of feet away from each other without fighting.

At first, Tigger seemed a bit more rambunctious than Ouija. He still had claws on his back paws, and I often felt them when he was crawling all over me. As time went on, he seemed to become more gentle. I remember him coming onto my bed a day or two after my father had died, and I felt almost in a state of bliss with Tigger being beside me.

In late May 2008, I came home one day to find that Ouija had died, and now Tigger was the only cat that I had.

Tigger remained with me through the troubles
of the following year, and he moved with me to my present apartment on Bourret Street. He eventually got used to the new apartment.

But Father Time eventually began to catch up with Tigger. This past April, Tigger turned 20 years old. He was already starting to walk more slowly, and he seemed to be dragging one of his back legs a little. Around the first week in April, one side of his face puffed up, and one morning, I awoke to see blood all over his body. The veterinarian I brought him to concluded that he must have gotten a puncture wound in one of his cheeks, and the swollen cheek must have been the result of the wound getting infected. The infected area had then opened up, leaving him all bloody. He was given an antibiotic shot, and I was instructed to apply cold compresses to his cheek three times a day. Further tests revealed that his blood sugar was elevated, so from then on, he was given Purina DM cat food, which was designed for diabetic cats.

When he got home from the trip to the veterinarian, Tigger was very tired and only wanted to sleep. However, within a few days, he started to perk up. The new food must have agreed with him. He began to gain a little bit of weight. He suddenly acquired new urges to climb up and jump onto things, even though his coordination was a bit off. He started wanting to sleep on top of a table. Eventually, he wanted to spend much of his time on a shelf in a wall unit which was behind the table.

But the improvement in his condition was not permanent. One day, I heard a thrashing noise behind me. Tigger had fallen off the shelf and into the space behind the wall unit. He was having trouble extricating himself from there. A few minutes later, he managed to crawl out on his own.

Tigger seemed to remain about the same until about a week ago. A friend visiting me noticed that Tigger looked a lot scrawnier than he had looked a week earlier. On Thursday night, July 17, Hydro - Quebec had scheduled a power outage for 11 PM. As I was struggling to finish with the computer before the power went out, I heard a thrashing noise behind me. Tigger had again fallen behind the wall unit, and was lying face up on a folded cardbord box. At that point, the power went out, and everything was plunged into darkness.

After the power went on again, I was able to extricate Tigger from his predicament. I then removed everything from behind the wall unit, and pushed the wall unit closer to the wall. I hoped that there would now no longer be any room for Tigger to be able to fall behind the wall unit.

But now, I noticed that there was a gap between the wall unit and the table in front of it. I didn't know if I should now move the table closer to the wall unit as well. Within a couple of hours, I had my answer. There was a noise, and Tigger was now on the floor under the table. He had presumably fallen from the table. The table was now moved closer to the wall unit.

Friday, July 18, was an extremely hot day, and I had a lot of trouble moving around. So I did not find it strange that Tigger didn't feel like moving around much either. I went out for a few hours in the evening, and came home to find Tigger curled up on a sofa chair and resting or sleeping.

I eventually went to bed myself and slept for a few hours, awaking at about 5:30 AM. I went to look in on Tigger, expecting him to have gone out onto the balcony when it became daylight. He was not on the balcony. I eventually found him sprawled on the floor near the sofa chair where I had last seen him. I had at first not noticed him in the still-darkened living room. I picked him up and sat in the sofa chair for a while with him. I was already crying, although I was not sure why. Eventually, he started to squirm around, and I put him down on the floor.

I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I went again to check on Tigger. He was sitting on the floor in the same place, but he seemed more alert and was lookin around.

I went to sleep for a few more hours. When I awoke, Tigger was no longer in the living room, and had apparently gone onto the balcony. I started to make myself breakfast, and then I saw Tigger stumbling into the living room. There was blood on the side of his face which had bled two months earlier, and there was also blood on his paw. I could not figure out what had happened. I am on the fourth floor, and the balcony is not attached to a fire escape. Could Tigger have been attacked by a crow?

The veterinary clinic where I had gone previously is open on Saturday mornings, but I did not know if the veterinarian herself was in that day. I had also been planning to go out that morning. I then remembered the instructions I had received on using cold compresses on Tigger. I used a cold compress, and then cradled Tigger for a while until he started to squirm. I put him down on the floor, and then noticed how he would try to stand up and then flop down on one side. He still seemed to be able to move around, as I started to daydream and then suddenly noticed that he was now several feet away from me.

He was now resting comfortably, so I decided to go away for a few hours and administer the cold compress when I got back. I would probably have to bring him to see the vet on Monday, as the clinic is not open on Sundays.

I went out, and immediately felt the heat outdoors. I felt that I had probably made the right decision in not attempting to bring him to the vet on such a hot day.

I arrived home around 2:30 PM. Tigger had now moved onto the balcony. He was on his side and breathing rapidly.

I had no idea what to do. I went indoors to drink some water. Before I could do anything, the phone rang. It was some idiot telemarketer trying to sell me something called "Solo". I screamed at the telemarketer and hung up. Within a minute, the phone rang again. I let the answering machine take it. It was obviously the same idiot, as he did not leave a message.

By that point, I felt that the best thing to do was to bring Tigger indoors and try to get him to drink water, even if I had to hold him up over the bowl to do so. I went back onto the balcony. Tigger had stopped panting, but he did not seem to be breathing. The flies were buzzing around his head, but he exhibhited no reaction to them. I brought him indoors, but there was no longer any movement from him. Tigger was gone.

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A few hours later, I spoke with a friend on the phone. She had had experience in dealing with another cat in his final hours. She felt that Tigger must have been having a series of mini strokes over the last few weeks. His falling off the wall unit and the table had probably occured because he had lost his sense of balance due to the mini strokes. The bleeding on the balcony may also been caused by a stroke rather than by an injury. And one last stroke probably killed him just as I was getting home. I am not a doctor or a veterinarian, so I don't know whether or not this conclusion makes any sense. And it is not feasible to autopsy a dead cat.

Farewell, sweet Tigger. In pacem, requies.

 

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Sinéad O'Connor: The Pope's Apology for Sex Abuse in Ireland Seems Hollow



Sinéad O'Connor
The Washington Post
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 06:00 EDT

Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer and voice of conscience



When I was a child, Ireland was a Catholic theocracy. If a bishop came walking down the street, people would move to make a path for him. If a bishop attended a national sporting event, the team would kneel to kiss his ring. If someone made a mistake, instead of saying, "Nobody's perfect," we said, "Ah sure, it could happen to a bishop."

The expression was more accurate than we knew. This month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology -- of sorts -- to Ireland to atone for decades of sexual abuse of minors by priests whom those children were supposed to trust. To many people in my homeland, the pope's letter is an insult not only to our intelligence, but to our faith and to our country. To understand why, one must realize that we Irish endured a brutal brand of Catholicism that revolved around the humiliation of children.

I experienced this personally. When I was a young girl, my mother -- an abusive, less-than-perfect parent -- encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored "Magdalene laundries," which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests' clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.

An Grianán was a product of the Irish government's relationship with the Vatican -- the church had a "special position" codified in our constitution until 1972. As recently as 2007, 98 percent of Irish schools were run by the Catholic Church. But schools for troubled youth have been rife with barbaric corporal punishments, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. In October 2005, a report sponsored by the Irish government identified more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Ferns, a small town 70 miles south of Dublin, between 1962 and 2002. Accused priests weren't investigated by police; they were deemed to be suffering a "moral" problem. In 2009, a similar report implicated Dublin archbishops in hiding sexual abuse scandals between 1975 and 2004.

Why was such criminal behavior tolerated? The "very prominent role which the Church has played in Irish life is the very reason why abuses by a minority of its members were allowed to go unchecked," the 2009 report said.

Despite the church's long entanglement with the Irish government, Pope Benedict's so-called apology takes no responsibility for the transgressions of Irish priests. His letter states that "the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children." What about the Vatican's complicity in those sins?

Benedict's apology gives the impression that he heard about abuse only recently, and it presents him as a fellow victim: "I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them." But Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence."

Benedict, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was a cardinal when he wrote that letter. Now that he sits in Saint Peter's chair, are we to believe that his position has changed? And are we to take comfort in last week's revelations that, in 1996, he declined to defrock a priest who may have molested as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin?

Benedict's apology states that his concern is "above all, to bring healing to the victims." Yet he denies them the one thing that might bring them healing -- a full confession from the Vatican that it has covered up abuse and is now trying to cover up the cover up. Astonishingly, he invites Catholics "to offer up your fasting, your prayer, your reading of Scripture and your works of mercy in order to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland." Even more astonishing, he suggests that Ireland's victims can find healing by getting closer to the church -- the same church that has demanded oaths of silence from molested children, as occurred in 1975 in the case of Father Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest later jailed for repeated sexual offenses. After we stopped laughing, many of us in Ireland recognized the idea that we needed the church to get closer to Jesus as blasphemy.

To Irish Catholics, Benedict's implication -- Irish sexual abuse is an Irish problem -- is both arrogant and blasphemous. The Vatican is acting as though it doesn't believe in a God who watches. The very people who say they are the keepers of the Holy Spirit are stamping all over everything the Holy Spirit truly is. Benedict criminally misrepresents the God we adore. We all know in our bones that the Holy Spirit is truth. That's how we can tell that Christ is not with these people who so frequently invoke Him.

Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and in a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.

Almost 18 years ago, I tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on an episode of Saturday Night Live. Many people did not understand the protest -- the next week, the show's guest host, actor Joe Pesci, commented that, had he been there, "I would have gave her such a smack." I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist. All I regretted was that people assumed I didn't believe in God. That's not the case at all. I'm Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation.

As Ireland withstands Rome's offensive apology while an Irish bishop resigns, I ask Americans to understand why an Irish Catholic woman who survived child abuse would want to rip up the pope's picture. And whether Irish Catholics, because we daren't say "we deserve better," should be treated as though we deserve less.

Sinead O'Connor, a musician and mother of four, lives in Dublin.