Charlie Understood
In Memory of Charlie
October 24, 2011 – October 17, 2026
Your Honor, members of the Jury:
I plead guilty to the charge of first degree felicide.
Premeditated.
This is my testimony,
This is my confession,
Here are the facts,
And I will try not to weep.
It started when Charlie went pear-shaped.
We thought that kitty was just turning fat
But his ribs and spine stuck out,
His belly bulged with fluid,
He looked like both Santa and Gollum.
He looked pregnant with death.
He hated the drive to the vet, he always did.
There the vet withdrew blood
And 400 milliliters of clear fluid.
When the veterinarian met me, she leaned upon the wall,
She slipped down, she wrapped arms around her knees
And she told me the bad news that I half expected.
Heart failing, kidneys failing, thyroid failing.
Any drug for one would make the others worse.
There was nothing to be done.
No medical miracle despite all our human magic.
No cure, except the cure for everything.
Euthanasia, we humans call it.
Mercy killing, we call it.
For I loved him, and I love him still
Though I, his killer,
Have a strange way of showing it.
For I am a jealous human.
How dare his body conspire to kill him?
That’s my job.
You want Charlie stories? Here, then:
I took him on a leash once.
Halfway down the block a dog barked
So he broke loose and ran home.
One stormy midnight, he jumped onto my bed
So I said, “Ain’t it great, Charlie?
Out there it’s cold and wet and windy
But in here it is warm and dry and still.
Ain’t it great to be here in my house?”
He sat up and gave me a look
As if to say,
“Your house?”
After the vet’s diagnosis, I spoke to him.
I told him that he was dying, soon.
I told him about euthanasia,
The fine print on the cat-human contract.
I asked him if that was okay.
He gave me a fierce and weary look, as if to say
“I’ve had enough. Do what you will.”
For Charlie understood.
He was a Cat.
On Monday I called for a home visit
On Saturday, a week before his 15th birthday.
I considered waiting that extra week
Just to be neat, but that’s human thinking, not cat
And he was suffering, and so were we.
The lady who came was calm and gentle. So was he.
Your Honor, I paid her 830 dollars.
500 for the killing, 300 for the cremation, 30 for the urn:
The price of a cat’s life.
His death was as good as death ever is.
My daughter held him and I fed him from a tube
To distract him from the bite of the needle.
First ketamine for the little sleep
Then phenobarbital for the big sleep.
He drifted off lapping churru.
He died with cat yogurt on his chin
And his tongue blebbing out.
He looked beautiful, regal, and goofy.
He died as he lived.
Your Honor, members of the Jury:
Of course I mourn.
Of course I weep.
Here are my tears.
But I do not regret. I would do it again.
I am sorry only that I am not sorry.
So I throw myself upon the mercy of the Court.
