His shelter name was Tommy, but that didn’t work because my at-the-time boyfriend’s dead dad was named Tommy and it just felt weird. I tried to call him, ugh, Morrissey. Yeah, it was 2001, the year after I did not graduate from high school. I had just moved into my first apartment, a roach and flea infested dump on the furthest edge of town. It was dreadful, but the promise of adulthood and freedom were gloriously at my back. I was an adult! I lived on my own! I have forgotten so many things about my young adulthood I wish I could remember, but I will never forget the day I got him. I was at the San Diego County Animal Shelter and this gray giant, far bigger than any other cat I’d ever seen, was standing up in his cage on his hind legs, front claws drawn all the way out and attached to the metal door, screaming at me for attention. He was terrifying. I came in hoping to get a black cat, but they all seemed disdainfully uninterested in me. I circled the room a few times, waiting to feel a glimmer of connection with any of them and the huge gray cat continued to scream and holler his perfectly snaggle-toothed hollers, flexing his claws. I have always made terrible decisions, so I asked to see him. He was hyper and scary and incredibly sweet. I loved his wildness. I took him home.
That first week, he never once responded to Morrissey and, here in my mid-thirties, I couldn’t be more relieved. Listen, I will love The Smiths forever, but Morrissey is such a dick. I began calling him the nickname my boyfriend and I threw round at the time, Chicken. It stuck.
A few weeks ago, I had to say goodbye to this beloved companion of sixteen years. Sixteen years is a long time. Sixteen years is a really long time when you’re only thirty-five. Those years contain so many lifetimes and he was with me through all of them. I’ve hardly told anyone about Chicken’s passing and as a typical millennial over-sharer, this strikes me funny. I even had a small gathering of friends over to my apartment recently for my birthday and a few of them asked where he was and I had to finally tell them. How weird that I haven’t told all of my loved ones. I did this when my mom had cancer, too, and it was especially weird then because every single day, I’d wake up and immediately barf up some oversharing garbage on Facebook about my crushing depression and the earth shattering dramas I can’t even remember. Some things are too real for social media. Or, maybe it’s that it’s so personal and while it affects me profoundly, it isn’t exactly about me. It’s about someone I love so much more than social media can contain. It’s also really ok to keep some things private.
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