Steve’s Goodness and My Search for Razzle-Dazzle

This is an article about my dead cat Steve.

It’s also about menopause hijacking my brain and how despair can scrape up against faith.

But mainly it’s about Steve.

Steve the cat was a perfect puffball of goodness. He was a very large puffball. Bending down to pick him up was like selecting a large, furry watermelon. In our household, a watermelon is a precious thing.

When my boys were little, they carried Steve around upside down. He often would look at me as if to say, “Well, here we are,” until whoever was lugging him around would alight somewhere, and Steve could smother him with his girth.

But the best thing about Steve was that he was my constant writing companion for over ten years.

As soon as I opened my laptop he would leap up onto the table with improbable grace and proceed to stare at me over the top of the screen. He would then attempt to lay his body across the keyboard while I typed, which was a bit awkward, and he seemed very apologetic about it. It was almost as if I could hear his thoughts: “Hi…I’m just gonna… excuse me, but let me just…I need to squeeze in here.” Then he would drape a large haunch across the “Z” row of the keys. I would gently move a paw and type around him. He thought all my writing was purrlitzer material. He was a very good boy.

For a cat so large, Steve had a wimpy purr that sounded like a dying squeaky toy. He would softly squeak as I cuddled him. When I got stuck on a word (or an entire paragraph), I would scritch his large, square head. By the time I resumed writing, we would both be covered in white fur.

Steve was a weighted blanket before weighted blankets were cool.

And then Steve got really sick and died.

It was liver failure and a whole lot of other things, and I don’t want to talk about it. The tension of trying to keep him alive, make him feel better, and then knowing on that last visit to the vet that he was done made my throat hurt. He stared at me, patiently gorgeous but now gaunt, his fur hanging off his large frame.

Steve was tired, and he gave me a look, like, “We had a good run, right?”

I write every day, and I miss him most when I write. Is it silly to miss a cat so much?

In his absence, I tussle with a new issue in my life: anxiety.

It looms because of menopause and a brain that sometimes seems to be set against me. Anxiety whispers that it’s too late to write another book, that I don’t have it in me. Anxiety unmoors me. I feel untethered and unsure, and I long for Steve’s paw to keep me from floating away.

It seems like everybody talks about anxiety these days. My college students mention it in essays, lobbing their mental health struggles over to me in casual references that make me want to invite them over for chicken dinner and pie and mothering. I hear about it constantly on social media, and I want to cook more chicken dinners and pies for all these people. All this makes me feel like I am stretching out my hands to others, but there’s no grasping hold. There’s no contact. I can type a heart emoji or lay my hand on an essay paper in prayer—but that’s it.

I used to bury my face in Steve’s fur when I was feeling overwhelmed, which happened more and more starting in 2020. I basically had Steve attached to my face about ten times a day. There was the pandemic, and also, I went into menopause at the same time, which makes menopause sound like the virus but it’s not nearly that serious. Yet for me, menopause meant the end of restful sleep. It meant a heart-pounding certainty that dread and gloom were all around. It meant that all the anxiety other people were talking about had now settled into my life.

I tried to fight it: I have Jesus! I’m sober! I’m recovery mom! I have a good life! I should be grateful! Dread, begone!

Anxiety shrugged and showed up anyway.

So I desperately lunged for Steve and gathered him in my arms. The ringing in my ears would be muffled by his large, smooshy tummy. I would breathe him in. It helped. Steve soothed me. I would even grab ahold of him while I was having a hot flash, which meant we’d both be covered in sweaty fluffs afterward, but whatever works.

Also, can I just say that I’m pretty sure the term “hot flash” was created by some doctor who never had menopause. “Hot flash” in my case was more like hours of feeling feverish and sick, but you have to just keep walking around like nothing is wrong. I would want to lie down on the floor, but it’s just menopause, and I really need to mop the floor first. There is no flash. Nothing about it is flashy. Flashy makes me think of jazz hands and razzle-dazzle. This is more like sticky dread.

Now Steve is gone and anxiety shoots through me. I feel like a flimsy paper shooting target, full of holes and red. I am adrift.

It’s a terrible nuisance, to try and do life while you feel nutty. All of this is completely messing up my life in a nuisancey way. I’m frustrated by how lifey life is. Menopause is not cancer, and I have numerous friends who are dealing with that firsthand. My goodness, it’s not Covid. It just feels like my life is going out with a whimper. With no flash, only sadness.

I have always wanted to live a Big Life, with big meaning and, yes, perhaps a bit of razzle-dazzle. Doesn’t the Bible say something about how God will bless us with more than we ever thought possible? With more than we even imagined? How did I get stuck here in all the sloggyness?

Steve is gone, and I am stuck.

This morning I walked into my living room and silently viewed a mess. My two teenagers had stayed up too late the night before watching The Mandalorian and strewing pudding cups around. My brain said, “Uh…no.” I wrote them a terse note about cleaning up and left.

I will lifey on. The headaches and anxiety persist, but with doctors’ visits they are better. We got a kitten, but she doesn’t like it when I grip onto her like a sad parasite muttering things like, “Let me looooove you.”

On my walk to the coffee shop, I talked to God about the slog. We were quiet together for a moment. And then I blurted, “But. I love you. This is just icky, but I love you. If it gets better or if it doesn’t. I love you. I will always and forever, love you.” I was kind of surprised with myself. It felt like a vow.

And right then, as I walked and muttered on that sidewalk, God spoke. It was a profound, healing truth, and there was a bit of razzle-dazzle. God said, The only way you are able to say these things to me was that I said them to you first. That’s abundance, Dana. You are my beloved and I’m so sorry. Hang on. I am here. Oh, and Steve is here too. He’s right here on my lap. You are right. He squeaks when he purrs, and yes, he is a very good boy.