My Strongest Memory of Aston

When I was in 7th grade, my old cat, Pepper, started to get sick. I remember it was in 7th grade because the last time I saw her was when my mom picked me up from an Aston soccer practice, and I was only with Aston during 7th grade.

I remember the practices were held on some school campus that I thought was absolutely huge, and it was quite a drive for me, especially compared to BYC where I used to play (and could walk to if I asked). Our coach was Scottish, the father of Bill Randall, and the team was full of misfits but we were all friends. I remember there were two kids named Ed and Kevin who were rough around the edges, but best friends, and really easy to get along with. They're the kind of kids who would see a friend getting in a fight in a street and beat the crap out of the other kid even if they didn't know why anyone was fighting, because they would just assume their friend was right and that was all there was to it. There was also another kid named Ian who I remember pretty clearly because he was good at soccer, sort of strange, sort of pale, sort of small, pretty fast though. He had a little sister who looked way too much like him. There might have been a red-headed kid named Michael Conway on that team, too, but I can't remember. Pat MacCullough was also on the team. He was goofy, and got kicked in the kidney once and peed blood.

Anyway.

I remember practices were always really pretty. I don't know why, but I don't have any memories of practices at night or in storms. They're all at sunset in a large open field, and all very beautiful. I remember we had a practice on September 11th, 2001, and we saw a plane go across the sky and we were all worried. I think that's the only way I could figure out that I was actually on the team during 7th grade, not 6th.

Like I was saying, my cat Pepper was very sick at the time. I think she was just about as old at me, so probably 12 or 13 years old at that point. She had congestive heart failure, I think. She was on some medicines for it that my mom had to painfully force feed her or trick her into eating every day, but it didn't look like anything was helping.

Pepper started retaining fluid. She got really really bloated, and my dad would jokingly call her a basketball with ears (which didn't make sense because she was not orange). I remember that you could feel the liquid inside of her if you put a little pressure on her skin, and you could feel from her matte that she wasn't washing herself anymore. She looked sad, I remember thinking. I think one time my parents actually had the vet remove whatever fluid was building up in her, but it came back very quickly.

My parents inevitably had to deal with issue of euthenasia. My dad thought it was the right thing to do because he believed we were just making the cat suffer, and she wasn't enjoying life anymore, she was just in pain. My mom, I think, was too emotionally attached to Pepper, so she thought putting her to sleep was simply out of the picture. I remember they talked a couple times about some talk show in California that wanted to talk to couples that were having such issues, but I think they wanted them to bring Pepper to the filming of the show, and that was just ridiculous, so of course they would never do that.

One day, Tuesday or Thursday, after soccer practice in Aston - I think it was still light out, so it must have been pretty early in the season - my mom came to pick me up in whichever van we had at the time. I got in the back seat (couldn't ride passenger seat for some reason) and I saw Pepper next to me in the backseat, laying in a box. She wasn't moving much, and she was much bigger than any cat should be and way bigger than she had ever been when she was healthy. I didn't know what was going on, and I remember being kind of confused and worried. My mom told me we were taking her to the vet to put her to sleep, and she thought she would bring Pepper to practice so I could see her one more time and say goodbye. I can't remember if I cried right then or not. I loved that cat, and I still miss her.

We drove to the vet on the way home, and my mom asked me if I wanted to go in with her or not. I knew I would never be able to see something like that, so I waited in the car and my mom took the box with Pepper inside it into the building. I'm pretty positive I was crying by then, since that was the last time I would ever have seen Pepper alive. She came back out a little bit later. I can't remember if she had her body or not, because I know we had a funeral for Pepper but I think I would have been creeped out if she had brought the body back.

I asked Mom how Pepper looked when she was dying, and she said she just looked like she was going to sleep and that she looked happy. I believed her at the time, but I'm not so sure I can believe that anymore.

I don't remember the ride home. I remember that I cried a lot that night and I'm pretty sure my mom asked if I wanted to skip school the next day. I didn't skip, but I'm pretty sure I was a wreck the next night, too.

We didn't have very many good pictures of Pepper. The best one I think we could find, I think, is the one my mom framed and gave to me. It's a picture of Pepper sitting on two paws in front of the glass sliding door in the kitchen at our Brookside house, looking towards the camera with her green eyes. You can see that she doesn't have a tail, and you can see from her mix of brown and black fur that she was very much a mutt. There was still some sort of construction in our backyard at the time, so you could see hunter's orange wirefence in the background. My mom also gave me the last collar Pepper ever wore - it's old and yellow and beaten up and it's hanging on the frame of that picture in my room on my bedstand. I remember the first time I touched it, I just lost it. I've gotten a little better since then, but not much.

And of all the things I remember about my year with Aston, this is the strongest.

Peace out.