Oscar Was a King

Oscar hated me when he first met me and with good reason because I was going to uproot him, steal his thunder, take the woman and him far, far away.


Oscar was a king in a world of pawns, pets, foolish, slobbering idiots running around the ground as he surveyed everything from his perch high above. He sipped Grand Marnier and smoked cigarettes and dreamt of the days when he used to box in the gym on Rue Ligne. Oscar was a fighter, Oscar never stopped fighting.


Oscar was a French mulatto and always carried that chip on his shoulders, both of his mixed heritage and his Frenchness.

Oscar liked drugs. Oscar was a great fiend, a great friend too but mostly a great fiend. He’d run the streets with feral cats looking for a score, anything to get him hopping and high and he’d fight, Goddamn would he fight those other cats. They were usually bigger. He took his lumps, sure, and I remember the first time Becca brought him home with drains in his claws from fighting some Maryland wildlife and I helped her dress them and change them and nurse him back to health and from that point on we had a truce.


He endured a miserably sunny summer but for his last days he made it gray and cloudy, like he liked it, like he always felt inside. He was disgruntled but in the nicest way possible.

In heaven he’s the size of a lion, with razor claws and a whole universe of Stevie dogs he can torment. And he’s met back up with Marley, the one that got away, the only dame he ever loved, who ran off and he never loved any dame again. In heaven she apologizes to him and tells him she always loved him but she just had to go.


The one time he flew cross-country he ran up to first class while Becca and I slept off a hangover in coach. Eventually a flight attendant caught him, wild and crazy-eyed, and carried him back to us. “Ma’am, I believe this is yours,” she said and handed over the little bastard as he writhed and kneaded the air in desperation.


He wrote all of my books for me. I sat there and typed but he wrote them and goddamn is it going to be embarrassing when it turns out I can’t write anymore.

Oscar liked to stand like a gargoyle or a vulture, hunched over, watching the world below him, mocking it, judging it but unlike others he was fit to judge.


Becca bought him in downtown Baltimore. He was a kitten too young to be living like a surly hobo baby, perched on the shoulder of some vagrant spaced out on booze and crack. She offered the man 5 bucks for him. “Yeah, shit, I only like them when they’re kittens anyway.” She bottle fed him and hid him in her house. She was only 15, not even old enough to drive. He should have died in the streets. She had demons at home, yes, boozy spirits that made Oscar all the more loved by her, if not also instilling in him a derelict desire for the booze and the smoke. That would show up later, of course, as he wasn’t even at full stride in his life then. He was a baby. Strange to think that he was ever a baby. Christ.

Oscar was a grown-ass man by the time I came around. He didn’t like other men, walking around, puffing their chest, telling him they hated cats. He pawed me the first few times I saw him. I smacked him back. He was shocked. It meant respect, yes, finally somebody had enough respect to slap him back. That’s how he was, just a tough, stubborn old cuss who knew he deserved respect and only cared for you once you gave him his due.


Oscar, King of the Street Cats in Baltimore became Oscar, King of the Alleycats in Newport Beach, a beast running at his prime beneath the palm trees and the moon, sneaking off to shoot craps with Hannibal the oversized weakling and Salem the black feral ringleader. Sometimes Oscar’d have to fight Salem for dominance of the streets and they’d wail late into the night, in the crawlspace behind our apartment and the ex-addicts smoking on the porches of the halfway house next door would interrupt their heart-to-hearts about getting molested or whoring themselves out to yell at the cats and I’d jump through the window, hiss at Salem to back off and tell the ex-addicts I hoped they fell off the wagon. Nobody talked to my cat that way.


Oscar was always the one who was okay as the dogs got sick, had surgery, limped around, struggled. He’d get hurt a little more as time went on, going out took more recovery, but it was always small, never anything life-threatening, never any cause for true concern. He never asked for attention like them, never got jealous. He just wanted a goddamn ledge and if it could be outside, feeling the sun, smelling the breeze, yes, that was all he needed.


But sometimes he’d curl up next to us on the couch. He’d sit on the pillows over our shoulders as we watch TV. He’d jump on my lap when I tried to read, when I laid out the newspapers, the bastard loved newspapers, he loved to sleep on newspapers and walk on newspapers, to inhale the fresh ink and feel the crackle of fresh newsprint under his feet. He’d put his head under my hand, twist it so I hit his ears just right. By the end he’d rest his head on my arm while I typed and his body was in my lap, as if he was trying to keep his head up to make sure I was doing it right.


He loved to stick his nose in when we smoked, anything we smoked, and he’d cackle under the moon with the smoke running through his lungs. He loved to be around us when the drinks were flowing, loved to be a part of the party, hovering on the peripheral, sure, but always the most amusing in the room. The bastard loved catnip. He ate it like it was food, liked to feel high from the inside and the outside, he’d roll around and look like a kitten for a few minutes, then come over to rub his head against our hands before jumping around trying to grab a string before the foolishness of the endeavor dawned on him and he’d turn to run as if pretending he hadn’t just done that.

He purred like a goddamn muscle car churning down the line, a loug buzzsaw erupting whenever he was happy or content or feeling love that he hadn’t asked for but appreciated anyway.


He spoke like Sean Connery, with class and disdain for the tasteless bastards that plague this world. Even though he craved junk food most of all, he was still the classiest man I ever knew. He knew how to act and react with poise and empathy in every situation, a true sign of class if ever I’ve seen it.


We always thought he’d outlive all the others. He just never seemed to be weak like them. He was the toughest king ever, sure enough.

Oscar’s last week Becca was tied to him like some invisible umbilicus held them together; she poured her heart, her soul into him. He’d been losing weight for a while. He missed his jumps more and more, would skulk away embarrassed and if we tried to lift him to the ledge he was trying to get he’d just hiss at us. He couldn’t breathe after the thyroid surgery so they gave him a stoma and a tube. We had to do an emergency tracheostomy again at 2:30 in the AM, after drinks and dinner, driving like a maniac for Becca’s animal hospital as she gave him mouth to mouth and the car careened down Santa Monica. We got him stable with drugs and the breathing tube, Becca barefoot and myself bare-chested in the operating room. 

Oscar’s last day he spent hopped up on morphine, relaxing with his family, sitting on his perch in the Las Palmas house, smelling the breeze coming up from our garden below. It was fitting he went out on a drug high. He’d always loved his drugs.


His last day we spent crying and hugging him and telling stories and looking at old pictures and taking new ones. He lay down on the bed where he liked to lie down, he sat by the door where he liked to sit.


He drank his Grand Marnier and read the newspaper. He twitched and stared us down, stared long and hard at the world, soaking in every last minute, every last feeling of this life. He was fighting to hold on. He was suffering if he wasn’t on enough morphine. It was time. We all knew it. Death hung muted in the air above us. His lungs would start constricting and we knew that soon he’d start throwing up, like before, so we kept him pumped full of morphine to enjoy his last day of life, like he enjoyed all of his days of life, even the rotten ones, maybe especially the rotten ones.


His was a good but tough road. He’d been along from the lows to the highs, dirty back alleys and dingy basement apartments; high porches where the sun always shone and he could stare out to the ocean. He’s had a woman who’s loved him his whole life. He’s had adventures. He’s written books. He’s had more than most, in less time, yes, the great tragic beautiful life of a king of cats. At the end he fought. He would’ve fought longer if Becca had made him. He would’ve suffered for as long as she wanted. She loved him too much to make him do that, though.

He was always Becca’s first love. He always will be. I’m fine with that.


He was my brother and my best friend and my wife's son. I'm not sure what that made him to me. That made him family, that's what it made him, goddammit. That made him family.


Rest in peace, good friend. We love you. The world will be having a drink in your honor tonight, old boy.

Oscar was a twisted four-pawed fighter with the scars and the stories to show for it, with a love of all things literary and an equal love of smoke and drink and drugs, with a voice like a muscle car engine and the poise of a goddamn ninja, with the confidence and the strut of a king, the surliness of a loveable asshole, with a way of making you feel it was okay to relax and take a nap, with a way of making you feel everything you did was okay, with a way of curling his head so you scratched him where he wanted, who liked it when you rubbed under his jaw when he stuck his head up and flattened it out, who loved to sit on your chest while you relaxed and feel your heart and your warmth and purr like the world really was a beautiful and just place.

Oscar was a king in a world of mere boys. Oscar will be missed.