More than a legend passed. More than an age. An entire reality went over the Rainbow Bridge with Otis T. Cat.
This photo below, more than any other, gives you an idea of how long we’d had Otis T. Cat in our lives. Note the date stamp on the photo. Remember date stamps on photos? It was a late ‘90s thing that was already out of fashion by 2002. This was taken with our first digital camera, though, gifted to us the day before by Santa. We didn’t know any better.
Note the big, bulky CRT monitor on which Otis sleeps. Note the style of the software GUI on the screen. So far away, so long ago, in Anchorage, Alaska. One year after the September 11 attacks and two and one-half months away from the invasion of Iraq, the death of Saddam Hussein, all for “weapons of mass destruction” our forthright and brave media swore was there. Right there in the sweet spot. Quite literally—yes, literally, ‘twas another age. So far away, so long ago. My children still believed in Santa. My Jeep still had its new-car smell. We were still behind the curve on cell phones. We’d need another year for those.
At the time the photo was taken Otis had been with us almost nine months already. Otis would be with us for 17 more years and two months, until 3 March 2020. Another age, so far away, so long ago.
I had never appreciated how long one month shy of 18 years is until we had to put Otis down last year. Otis was old, ancient old, 18 years old being like 100+ for a human, and I still kick myself for not arranging his passage that previous autumn. It was well past his time to go by the time we called the veterinary hospital. But when Otis went, so did reality.
The years had been blurring for us until Otis passed. Now we see how much can change in one year.
Two weeks after Otis died everything was closed for what was then called the Chinese Coronavirus. And things never got better. Just more stupid and arbitrary. Aircraft could be packed to capacity but not restaurants. “Fifteen days to flatten the curve” became one mask-mandate renewal after another, month after month, until well past flu season.
A presidential election was stolen right before our eyes and the media and deranged haters of the incumbent are still going, “Nuh-uh! We didn’t see nothin’! You can’t prove it!” You can get thrown entirely off social media, if not the Internet, for asserting the election was anything but “free and fair.” Now gasoline is on its way to costing three bucks a gallon and more. And things are about to get even more stupid and arbitrary. The pandemic, like the Iraq War, like the Afghanistan War before it, will be forever. New mutations, new strains and so on, each more terrifying than the last. Wear two masks now. Dr. Seuss is a racist. Men are women. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.
On Wednesday, 3 March 2021 at 1405 MST, we completed Year One of the Post-Otis World. We live in a cruelly twisted reality where children play outside with disposable blue surgical masks on their faces because a fake pandemic bug might get them. Where movie theaters are going out of business, along with many landmark family-owned restaurants because of a globally driven panic whose numbers come nowhere near those of the last real pandemic, the 1918 Spanish Influenza.
Public health officials, public school teachers, elections officials and the courts have revealed themselves as corrupt, pernicious, sometimes even sadistic in the conduct of their business. Public trust is at an all-time low, especially with that quarter of the population disenfranchised by the blatant theft of the election. The news media, which at least pretended to be objective, is straight-up unabashed propaganda now. No one but a few loudmouthed fools actually believes the senile old perv who somehow forgot to make a State of the Union address (note how the media has ignored this) is really president. No one knows who is writing and putting these executive orders for him to sign, but we’re going along with it all anyway because what else can we do?
It was bad enough I had to lose that darn cat. It’s another world now. The Post-Otis/Post-America World, and we’re just doing the best we can with what’s left to us. After nearly two weeks abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, I’m plotting a small genocide of brain, liver, and lung cells sometime soon. Attention must be paid.