YOU COULD HAVE IT ALL
MY EMPIRE OF DIRT
I WILL LET YOU DOWN
I WILL MAKE YOU HURT

Dog with Buggin' Out.
(Dog is on the right.)

This is the story of my cat named Dog.

Dog was the most kick-ass cat. Anybody who likes cats would have liked Dog. He wasn't exactly a "cat's cat", but as cats go, he was pretty bad ass...

It was around 1987 when I got Dog. I already had two female cats, Tomokato and The Grey Cat, who are both gone now. Maybe I'll tell their stories sometime. They were both kickass cats.

I went to a pet store in St. Petersburg Florida to check it out. I was in college then, studying Computer Science which, as I'm sure you all know, is a total waste of fucking time. I'm walking up to the pet store and there is this cage with about six kittens in it outside the front door of the Pet Shop with a sign that says "Free with any purchase."

"Free", indeed...

So I didn't have much money then, and after looking around the store for a few minutes, I say, "Look, I don't really have enough money to buy anything, but I'd like one of the kittens out front." I like cats and I thought since they're just trying to get rid of these kittens, I'd like one. The kid behind the counter says OK so we go out for me to pick one.

I'm looking in the cage. They all look healthy. But there's one in there that's climbing the fucking walls, meowing, trying to get through to bars to me. This kitten wanted OUTTA THERE. So I say, "I'll take *that* one." It's so odd in life that you can make a simple choice that seems to be so casual, and yet it can affect your life forever...

So I take the kitten home and name him Dog, because that seemed funny. It turned out in the long run that he really was very much like a Dog in several ways, so it was a lucky choice of name.

SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME
THE WORLD WAS GONNA ROLL ME
I AIN'T THE SHARPEST
TOOL IN THE SHED

Soon after, I got another cat, a boy, that somebody had thrown away in a dumpster behind a K-Mart or something. He was several months old, maybe three or four pounds, howling in the dumpster. I ended up naming him Buggin' Out because I had just recently seen Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing", and this cat was real skittish, kinda crazy, like the character in the movie. He had these huge paws, and I thought, "This cat is gonna grow up to be *big*."

Dog and Bug became like brothers. Two older female cats there in the house, and The Grey Cat was always such a bitch to everybody, bless her discarded heart, these two boys bonded closer than the two biologically brother cats I have now.

I met Janice, who I eventually married. She had Gabby a female, and Christopher, a male. So we had six cats in 1990. I did Unix System Administration for dogshit money for the USGS in St. Pete and Jani was a waitress. We did our share of acid back then. Our neighbors hated us. We were in our early twenties, and after getting away from my parents, I felt like I was gonna live forever.

WELL THE YEARS START COMIN AND THEY DON'T STOP COMIN'
FED TO THE RULES AND I HIT THE GROUND RUNNIN'
DIDN'T MAKE SENSE NOT TO LIVE FOR FUN
YOUR BRAIN GETS SMART BUT YOUR HEAD GETS DUMB
SO MUCH TO DO SO MUCH TO SEE
SO WHAT'S WRONG WITH TAKING THE BACK STREETS?
YOU'LL NEVER KNOW IF YOU DON'T GO
YOU'LL NEVER SHINE IF YOU DON'T GLOW

We lived in a series of low-rent places. My favorite was 3214 San Pedro in Tampa. We rented a house there. We nailed the kitchen window in place so the cats could come and go as they pleased. As usual in Florida, the fleas were a bitch, but with that window set that way, we didn't have to fuck around with litter boxes! Man, I can tell you, that was wonderful.

Bug turned out to be a big boy--eighteen pounds--and no fat on him. In the poorer (not poor, but like, upper lower class :-) neighborhood we lived in then, there were a lot of cats. Some pets, some strays, and they all lived in and outdoors. Once or twice a week, I'd be out in the yard working on our '69 VW bug and I'd hear a catfight down the street. Always, Bug would shoot out the front door like an orange/white streak of lightning, and tearass up the street.

*Always* less than sixty seconds later, the catfight sounds would stop, and a few minutes later, Bug would saunter back into the yard and plop down, all filthy from the fight next to my toolbox. Bug wasn't fucking around, and if there was *going to be* any fighting started in our neighborhood, *he* was going to finish it.

GO FOR THE MOON!

But Dog was a different kinda cat. We had bluejays with a nest in the next yard, and they would swoop and divebomb our cats when they were in the front yard. Every time Jani and I would pull up in the driveway and the cats would come out to greet us and those birds would start swooping, I would tell Jani that sooner or later those birds were gonna eat it. I mean, they would swoop inches above the cat's heads.

I used to hang out all the time back then by the record player in the living room, and there were always lizards and bugs and stuff, gifts from Dog, on the clear plastic cover of the record player when I would go to play a record, because Dog knew that's where I hung out, and he would leave me the food that he had caught. One day I go to play a record and there's one of those Blue Jays! I felt bad because I know what cats can do to bird populations (just look at the UK) but at the same time, I was so proud of my homeboy... those birds need to come up with a better strategy. They swooped a little too low over Dog just *once* too often...

One time, I heard a catfight in the front yard, and I knew that Dog was out there, so I run out with a broom to smack the shit out of whatever cat was fuckin' with my Pride, and Bug blitzes past me through the door. I'm standing there on the porch trying to figure out where the commotion is, and my eye follows Bug's blur, and I see Dog getting bitchslapped by some neighbor cat. Dog is on his back, crying in fear, and I see that he is peeing right there in the dirt--so afraid that he peed himself. But before I had time to feel bad for Dog, Bug is upon that stranger cat, and I saw something then that I never would have believed if I hadn't seen it.

We've all heard how cats always land on their feet. And most people have seen cats fight. The typical catfight involves high speed claw swiping, designed to sting and draw blood. But on this day, because this strange cat was fucking with his brother, Bug just ran full on and hit that cat right in the chest. No swipe, no claw, just FUCK YOU right to the chest, with all eighteen pounds of muscle behind it. For his size, Mike Tyson never hit so hard.

I've never seen a cat get knocked onto it's back before, or since, but that stranger cat was as surprised as any cat I've ever seen. BAM! Right onto his surprised-assed back! Limbs flailing ineffectually, trying to find purchase. That sorry ass motherfucker tore ass down the street with Bug following him in a blur. As usual, Bug came back in a few minutes, all dirty, and calmly sat down to clean himself off. And we never saw that little punkass motherfucker again. I looked for him too, but never did see him anywhere. He's probably still sitting in mommy's room, licking his wounds.

While Bug was off beating the shit out of that little asshole stranger cat who was intruding on our turf, I went over to Dog. He laid there on his side, still peeing as I walked up to him, a petrified, furry little yellow fountain. I thought to myself, "Man, this cat who is such an expert hunter, here he is peeing all over himself..." I felt bad for Dog, and talked quiet and calm to him and tried to pet him and make him less afraid. He hunkered down and shed a lot of fur on my hand as I pet him. Then he composed himself and went into the house. I never thought bad about him because of that. Everybody gets their ass kicked, and that's a fact. Ya'll out there who think you are a badass motherfucker, just give me a few days and I will find a bigger badass motherfucker who will make *you* pee *your* self...

We moved to Colorado, and then my wife and I separated several times. We've had a good life, and we love each other, but it ain't Ozzie and Harriet. At one point, I was so forlorn and down that me and Bug and Dog and The Grey Cat moved into my mom's living room. She had a house in Tampa, in a nice neighborhood with lots of lush plant life and a huge empty lot behind her house. My mom had three cats: a boy about four years old named "Little Boy" who was part Siamese, a Burmese female named "Coco" and a little longhaired grey female named "Shadow". I was totally imposing on moms, and I drank all day and night and walled off the living room with stuff from home depot. Her cats properly saw my cats as an unacceptable invasion of the home turf. I felt bad about that even at the time, through the haze of alcohol and suicidal misery.

IT'S A COOL PLACE
AND THEY SAY IT GETS COLDER
YOU'RE BUNDLED UP NOW
WAIT 'TIL YOU GET OLDER

But I was very glad that Dog and Bug had all that lush tropical vegetation and landscape to prowl and lose themselves in. I don't think I've ever seen those two boys as happy as they were back then. The Grey Cat would prowl too, but mostly hung out with me. Moms was so understanding about the cats and, more importantly me, that I can't believe it to this day.

But the biggest fights were between Little Boy and Dog or Bug. In the night I would hear fights in the kitchen or hallway, and in the morning I'd go to the bathroom and see a circle of fur where the fight had happened. I don't mean a few hairs, but big clumps of fur--these motherfuckers were *fighting*. I'd always try to clean up the fur--one less reason for me to look like an imposition!

BUT THE MEDIA MEN BEG TO DIFFER
JUDGING BY THE HOLE IN THE SATELLITE PICTURE
THE ICE WE SKATE IS GETTING PRETTY THIN
THE WATER'S WARM
WE MIGHT AS WELL SWIM

But one day, I was drinking out by the pool, listening to music on my little boombox, and Dog and Bug were hanging out with me by the pool. And Little Boy comes streaking around the pool and attacks Dog--as though to say, "Motherfucker! What are you doing on my turf!"--and then I saw another thing I never would have believed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Dog stands his ground and fights, and Little Boy fights back. I'm trying to leverage my fat drunken ass up off the recliner to separate them, and they are right by the pool so I'm thinking I'm gonna splash them from the water in the pool. But before I can even sit up fully and get on my feet, Bug is there in the mix. And here's the amazing part.

Normally Bug kicks the shit out of any strange cat that fucks with him. But in this case, he runs up and just hits Little Boy like he did with that other cat years ago. But this time, he didn't hit to knock across the yard, he just hit Little Boy onto his back, and then just held him down. He just put his full weight on Little Boy, and stood over him hissing and screaming and letting Dog beat the shit out of Little Boy. If you've ever tried to give a cat a bath, you wouldn't think you could just hold a cat down with your weight, even with your big monkey hands, but Bug was doing it that day.

They only had three or four seconds to team up like this before I ran up shouting deep and loud, startling all the cats, and Little Boy scrambled and ran. Bug and Dog didn't run from me. They just watched him leave for a few seconds, and then walked away ears slightly flat and with that, "Motherfucker, COME on back and fuck with us" look in their faces, and they walked away from where I was standing.

Brothers from other mothers...

I remember thinking this was uncharacteristic of Dog. He was always such a sweet boy. And soon, he began to be lethargic. He got cranky where he never had been that way before. The color of his fur faded, and his hair got stiff and hard and fell out.

And so, the Vet. He had myocardial prolapse or some fucking thing. His heart wasn't working right anymore. The doc gave me a blood thinner. Dog hated that shit because it had alcohol in it, and alcohol makes cats foam crazy at the mouth. They hate it.

He lasted awhile. He hung in there like a MADE motherfucker. But it got to where he didn't want to be around me and Bug and The Grey Cat. He wanted to go off and be by himself. I may be dumb, but I ain't *that* dumb. I knew what that meant.

There were these big fired clay planters with these shrubs in them by the pool, three of them. Dog spend all his time between the planters and the wall of the house next to the pool, breathing heavy, with his eyelids 3/4 shut, and he cried if you touched him, and he got thin. I let him go awhile, but then finally, I had seen enough. This lifeform was a better friend to me than most of the humans I have known in my life, or ever will know. I'll be GODdamned if I'm going to let my Pride suffer.

By this point, I'm drunk and miserable all the time, because my wife wants away from me, and *since* I'm drunk and miserable all the time, all my friends have bailed on me. My head is not in the right place to make this decision, and I know it. But the sorrow of losing Dog is even more misery, so I drink more. One night, I realize, staggering drunk, hazed judgement or not, it is time for Dog's pain to end. So I take one of the suntan rafts out of the garage, and put it down between the pool and the clay planters that Dog is sleeping behind. At this point, he has not come out from behind these planters even to eat or drink for several days. He just sits there breathing heavy with his eyes 3/4 closed. I fall asleep staring at him, wondering what I'm supposed to do.

The pool cleaner guy wakes me up. Hoses, noises, he's actually stepping over me, not waking me up, cleaning the pool around my passed out, hungover ass.

And they say service is dead in this country.

And I look over, and there's Dog sleeping on the air raft next to me. After days with no food or water, after weeks of self-imposed isolation, there he is, right next to me. For the first time in days and days, I can see that he is asleep.

Well, my children, that was the end for me. That was all I needed. My good friend Dog had suffered enough. I watched him take a few labored breaths, and helped him back, complaining, to his place behind the planters while I showered and dressed in my go-to-church clothes, and got Moms to help me out.

He died bitching feebly in my arms at the Vet as the potassium chloride stopped his heart. It took the doc three tries to hit the vein because his heart was too week to keep the veins full. I walked out of there in my Sunday finest, and I was lucky to make it out of there without crashing into anything, my eyes were so full of tears

it was like looking at the world
through a fishbowl
draining down
your cheeks.

I apologize to you in advance for saying this. But I have to say this. I would trade the life of you and all the other filthy, despicable shitass humans for one more hour with Dog. I've never met a human who had the quality of character that this lower animal had. When I was burying Dog, if somebody had walked up to me with The Button to launch the nuclear missiles to exterminate the human race and everything else, I would have pushed that button all the way down and smiled at the bearer with my compliments. My friend was dead, and I hated life. So you can all go fuck off into Hell.

---

I buried Dog in Moms backyard. I dug a pit, and wrapped him in lace Moms brought me, and filled the pit halfway with quikcrete, and put Dog in and fill the pit up. I hammered in nails in the hardening concrete to spell his name, and put a crown and a heart with the nails. I did it in my good clothes and screamed so much and so loud with the hateful music scorching the sky and air that the neighbors came to look over the wall to see what the fuck was going on. But they didn't call the cops, which is a good thing, because I wouldn't have gone without a fight.

i played this song by nine inch nails while i buried him. not the most gracious funeral dirge, but it was right.

i hurt myself today
to see if i still feel
i focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but i remember everything

what have i become?
my sweetest friend
everyone i know
goes away in the end
you could have it all
my empire of dirt
i will let you down
i will make you hurt

i wear this crown of shit
upon my liar's chair
full of broken thoughts
i cannot repair
beneath the stain of time
the feeling disappears
you are someone else
i am still right here

what have i become?
my sweetest friend
everyone i know
goes away in the end
you could have it all
my empire or dirt
i will let you down
i will make you hurt
if i could start again
a million miles away
i would keep myself
i would find a way

---

MY WORLDS ON FIRE
HOW ABOUT YOURS?
THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT AND I
NEVER GET BORED...

Moms has been involved in this divorce with this lowlife piece of shit called [name omitted], and years later, since he's such a cheap dishonorable piece of shit, the IRS repossessed her house. Moms filed for divorce in 1984. The divorce is still in the courts as of 2001. That's SEVENTEEN YEARS. Have you ever even HEARD of a divorce that lasted seventeen years?!!

As they said with OJ, "It's a rich man's justice."

So she lost the house. I worried many times about what landfill Dog's sarcophagi would end up in after the construction guys got through with it.

HEY NOW
YOU'RE AN ALL-STAR
GET YOUR GAME ON
GO PLAY
HEY NOW
YOU'RE A ROCK STAR
GET THE SHOW ON
GET PAID
ALL THE GLITTERS IS GOLD
ONLY SHOOTING STARS
BREAK THE MOLD

---

Fast-forward about seven years to this past April. I haven't been back to Tampa, the place where I grew up, since at least five years. Jani and I are back together. Her brother (who is ultra cool!) is getting married. We have to fly back to Tampa for the wedding. Moms loans me her car and we cruise around, checking out the old scene where I grew up. We see our old haunts, our place on Kansas, our place at 2001 Dekle where that evil bitch Pat Bastille fucked with us and also two of our cats disappeared (payment due, the check is in the mail Pat, one of these days I will look you in the eye), even passing by the place at 3214 San Pedro... long lost memories. It was great to be back in Florida after all these years. I really miss the rain. It never fucking rains here in Denver.

And we pass by Moms old house. It's a short cul-de-sac off the street, and we pull up around the circle. Some guy has pulled up in his truck, and he's getting out of his truck in Moms old driveway.

I say to Janice, "I should go ask him if the grave is still there."

She says, "Well, you have to decide that. Do you really think it will be worth it?"

"Yeah, I know..."

"Do you really want to know? What are you gonna do if it's gone?"

"Yeah, yeah I know..."

"That's up to you, you have to decide. Maybe it would be better not to know."

...and for one moment, I thought I'd rather not know.

But I just couldn't. So I jump out of the car, and Janice is right behind me. We approach the guy.

"Sir? Excuse me sir?"

"Yes?"

"My mom used to own your house, and I used to have a cat named 'Dog'..."

and he looks at me deadpan and says, "a cat named *Dog*?!..."

"right and..."

"here, come with me."

...and he leads us around the back, and I knew that I should be feeling the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, because he is leading us right to where Dog's grave was. But the hairs aren't standing up. I just feel hollow.

And he takes us through the gate, and there is Dog's grave, name, crown, heart and all. I felt like I shouldn't be able to breathe, but I could breathe OK. The guy was chattering about this and that and through it all, as I sigh and the breath goes out of my body and I reach down and put my hand on Dog's grave, I hear the guy saying,

"...and we were out here raking up the leaves and my wife was asking me, why don't we get rid of that thing, and I looked at it and I saw the crown and the heart and I knew that somebody was going to show up one day, and I said, no we'll just leave it here."

And I stood up, and thanked the man for keeping Dog's grave, and thanked God for letting Janice (and me) see Dog's grave.

And we left.

---

I still wanted to go see Westshore Mall where there used to be that hobby store and I used to hang out there all the time as a teenager, so we went there and parked in the covered parking garage that they didn't have when I was younger and I'm jabbering and drunk and upset and blabbering at Janice, trying to explain all the feelings I'm having, and it's all coming out wrong

and

smashmouth comes over the radio
with this fucking
hopeful
song

and i cried and cried. it was only a few minutes, but once again, i felt the desire for somebody to hand me the button...

SOMEBODY
ONCE ASKED
COULD I SPARE SOME CHANGE FOR GAS
I NEED TO GET MYSELF
AWAY FROM THIS PLACE
I SAID YEP
WHAT A CONCEPT
I COULD USE A LITTLE FUEL MYSELF
AND WE COULD ALL
USE A LITTLE
CHANGE

---

Dog was good, better than most people I know. And I don't want to press the button anymore.

What Dog taught me is that there are beautiful things in this life that you can't buy at any price.

It's not about pressing the button to punish the humans for all their stupid shit, not even [name omitted].

It's about spending your days and your effort in a way so that it is no longer necessary to *have* the button around in the first place.

For that lesson, I am thankful to my good friend who is dead who me and Janice and God know is named "Dog".

Copyright © Robert Holder
lyrics in CAPS by smashmouth
May 25, 2001