Hopelessly Devoted To You

I continue to reel from the shocking reports out of Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka as the other side of the world begins the unimaginable task of recovering from the tsunami. Though the devastation caused by it is mindbogglingly horrific, as I grapple with assigning the news a locus on my schema it occurs to me that it is not as bad as the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Exponentially more people have died. The costs of rebuilding will be tens, hundreds, thousands of times greater. A dozen countries, not one, were victimized. Am I mad to say it's not as bad?

I don't think so.

In the days after September 11 there was nothing else on CNN. There was nothing else on any television network. All regular programming was pre-empted by news from New York. For days. I've been watching TV this week and the programming has been as regular as it ever is over the Christmas holidays, which is to say reruns of network shows at best, silly specials like Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure at worst. My friend AC reported no irregularities in his New Year's Day football orgy.

Last night CTV's correspondent in Banda Aceh, speaking with the camera framing no greater panorama than his upper body, said, "The carnage and destruction is difficult to convey, and the images too gruesome to show television viewers." In 2001, the news media in Europe were criticized by Americans for showing video and still pictures of people jumping from the burning towers. It was months before American television resumed broadcast of Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwartzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone movies.

True Lies was on TV last night. It's clear my evaluation of the newsworthiness of the tragedy in Indonesia is not only validated by NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox, but corroborated.

And so begins the posting of the pictures and the names of the missing on public walls and such lamp posts as remain standing.

Those of us watching television reports of this behaviour understand the futility of it, but will not admit it aloud, even to ourselves, because to say so would be uncharitable, verging on cruel. And, besides, what do we know, sitting in our comfortable, warm, living rooms, drinking vanilla bean hot chocolate, safe in the knowledge that though a blizzard may be raging outside our windows, there's nothing that can happen to us that can even begin to come near to possibly getting close to some sort of an empathic understanding of what those shattered souls in Banda Aceh are going through.

It's like in the story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce: Though it seems incredibly improbable that the rope would break at just that moment, allowing the prisoner to escape, we nonetheless suspend our disbelief because we're sympathetic to him, because we want him to make it home, and because, well, it is possible that that could happen. We get so wrapped up in the excitement of his flight that when finally the rope snaps taut and we realize we were experiencing vicariously a hope fantasy, the truth is all the more shocking and horrible.

When Sandy Olsen sings that she's hopelessly devoted to Danny Zuko, what she means is that she can't stop loving him, even though he has rejected her. We've all been there, we can relate, hence the decades-long popularity of Grease in all its forms.
The homeless survivors and orphaned loved ones on the circumference of the Indian Ocean are devoted to the hopeless notion that the missing will be found alive. And we can't even begin to relate.

I'll begin, anyway. This is my story of hopeless hope. I'll never forget the lesson it taught me.

When I was in university I lived for a year on the 13th floor of an apartment building on the corner of Girouard and Sherbrooke. It was a tiny bachelor apartment, one room with an alcove for the bedroom, and a door in the north-facing wall that opened to a very small balcony. To the right of the door was a narrow window, the boundary of which barely overlapped, by only a few inches, the railing of the balcony.

Because of the close quarters of our living arrangements and the necessity of cats to have a litter box, my cat Beaker's little boy's room, during the summer months, was the balcony. Beaker was a black cat with white paws and tummy, adopted from a neighbour's litter two years earlier, and named after the character in The Muppet Show because the baby-cat squeaking sounds that so endeared me to my pet reminded me of the non-verbal exclamations of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's assistant.

Beaker liked to sit on the balcony and monitor the traffic on the Decarie Expressway thirteen floors below. My neighbour to the right, a corpulent gentleman given to shirtless tanning, was fond of the same activity. The two of them would be out there for hours, not exactly together, but nonetheless not far apart, as my neighbour's balcony also edged against the opposite boundary of the previously mentioned narrow window.

One fine day in June I was sitting on the sofa watching TV when suddenly Beaker glided through the window from the outside like a Flying Wallenda and alighted gracefully on the far end of the sofa. Such cat acrobatics, while mightily impressive, nearly stopped my heart — it's thirteen floors up without a net.

Ever try to stop a cat from doing something once it's learned how?

I tried not letting him out for days at a time, but the pathetic meowing and relentless scratching on the door eventually caused me to give in. But I'd only let him out when I was home, and then I'd leave the door wide open. Why would he try to jump back in through the window when there was a perfectly functional and far more convenient doorway to walk through, I reasoned.

Later that summer my boyfriend, Norman, dropped by with a carload of something or other that required my help in unloading. He buzzed from the lobby, and I went downstairs to meet him. Twenty minutes later we were back in my apartment. I was pouring us a drink when I noticed that Beaker hadn't come to greet us. When you come through the door carrying rustling packages and your cat doesn't snake around your ankles in hopes of a treat, you know something's wrong.

I called kitty, kitty. I looked out on the balcony. Under the sofa. Then, though I was feeling just the tiniest hint of panic way down deep in my stomach, but just the tiniest hint, I calmly and methodically opened every cupboard and container in the place. It didn't take long; this was a very small apartment.

No Beaker.

But he must be here somewhere, I reasoned again.

I went back out onto the balcony. My neighbour wasn't tanning, but his balcony door was open. His railing wasn't a foot from mine, and if Beaker could jump up onto my railing and pounce from there in through the window, surely he could pounce onto the next railing if he wanted to. That was it; he must be in my neighbour's apartment.

"He's next door," I exclaimed with relief to Norman, "Let's go get him."

"Did your neighbour say he's got him?"

"No, but he must be over there. Buddy's door's open; Beaker must have jumped over there and gone in."

He must have.

We knocked on the neighbour's door, but there was no answer.

"That's odd," I said, "His balcony door's open. I guess he must have gone out. Beaker must have gotten into the hallway somehow."

I called for Beaker, and made a circumference of the corridor. A couple of neighbours heard me and opened their doors to ask what was wrong. "Oh, my cat seems to have gotten out somehow. Have you seen him?"

They hadn't.

I came around full circle, back to my door, then went around again for good measure. On the second pass I fixed on the door to the stairwell.

"He must have gotten into the stairwell! Poor Beaker; he must be so frightened by this time!"

Norman said nothing, but followed me as I walked slowly down thirteen flights of stairs, calling for my cat.

We reached the lobby, and still no Beaker. Now I was truly puzzled. Where could he be? The lobby was small, with no place for a kitty to hide. Unless he had escaped out the door and into the street! Oh no! Beaker had never been outside! He might be lost!

I grabbed Norman and was pulling him toward Girouard Avenue when we literally ran into the building's caretaker. He was a big guy, so I didn't quite knock him down.

"Did you see a cat out there?" I asked hurriedly, in lieu of an apology.

"Oh..." he paused. "Which apartment you're in?"

"1314."

He made that sound my father makes sometimes, by sucking air through closed teeth, lips only slightly open. I knew what that sound meant.

"Big black cat?"

"With white paws!"

"He's on the balcony, 315. They call me jus' now."

I heard the words. I comprehended the English, even through the heavy French accent. I'd been in Montreal for three years, I was used to communicating this way. But I didn't understand what he was telling me. Norman did, though. He put his arm around me and turned me toward the elevator. I don't remember what happened after that.

Today, in memory of Beaker, and in the spirit of Hope, I went to the Web site of the Canadian Red Cross and made a donation to the tsunami relief fund. You can donate online with your credit card, and they'll email you a tax receipt in PDF format.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass gets three Christmas presents. More than twenty years after Beaker went parachuting without a parachute, Sass will lose another beloved cat.