My Son, the Cat Killer

Cats . . . Dogs . . . Kittens . . . Puppies . . . Makes no difference to him -- he kills 'em all. Then he burns ‘em to a crisp.

* * *

My oldest son, DJ, is a sensitive. I mean by that that he’s incredibly sensitive to the needs and feelings of others. You hear people say, “I’d die for the love of my life!” DJ actually would -- if it ever came to that.

If you saw him, you might take that last statement as hyperbole. He comes across as utterly unphased by virtually anything.

Physically, he’s big.

Used to be a bouncer in a nudie bar -- that kind of big.

Six foot two, nearly 300 pounds -- most of it muscle.

He can be crass . . .

He once thought very seriously of creating a website for toilet bowl selfies.

You know how people are always seeing things in a slice of burnt toast or on the side of a cow? His idea was to create a place for people who saw things in their -- how can I put this -- droppings?

As his proud parent, I was silently pleased when he moved on to other pursuits . . .

Maybe what toughened him up was getting beat up every afternoon by kids as he walked home from public school in the Washington, D.C. area. He never once mentioned it. Always made up plausible excuses for scrapes and bruises.

Saved his younger brother, Pete, from almost certain death when he pulled him out of a stream where Pete lay face down after running his brand new bike over a wall designed to keep people from doing precisely that. Doctors at Children’s Hospital took eight hours removing a square inch of skull that had been pushed into his Pete’s brain. Thankfully it hadn’t penetrated the fragile barrier in his head.

Smart as a whip . . . I encouraged DJ to learn to program video games rather than rant about how whoever designed them was all screwed up because some brick did or didn’t do something DJ thought it should or shouldn’t do when he hit it.

When it came to game playing, he was relentless. He once stayed up three days in a row until he conquered the first video game that had memory -- Zelda. Came in a gold cartridge.

I really don’t know where he came by his programming skills. He certainly didn’t get them from me.

One time I had to be out of town for a few weeks. DJ completely rewrote a program I had been working on for more than a year. Invented his own language. Called it REL -- for Real Easy Language. And it was! With REL we could make changes to the program literally a hundred times faster than in C — at least he could.

His code simply took English statements like, “Answer the phone” and converted them to the hundreds of lines of C code that it took to accomplish that particular task.

So how is it that as a teenager, he positioned himself to become the dog and cat slayer of Kauai?

* * *

As I understand it, he ran into the guy who was the previous slayer of stray cats and dogs. This fellow relished his kills, took great pleasure in causing pain -- couldn’t believe he actually got paid for doing it! -- by none other than the Humane Society!

When DJ heard these horror stories trotted out like something to be proud of -- when he saw the reaction of the other kids who seemed to envy this moron -- he felt he had to do something.

So he did.

He hitched a ride to the recently-built Humane Society building on Kauai, offering to be their slayer -- for free. That’s prob’ly what clenched the deal.

He took his time. First he’d calm the animal down, holding it in his arms. He’d play with it if it was up for that. Feed it its favorite treats. Then, when the animal was distracted, DJ would drive the needle with the blue liquid directly into its heart, affecting a quick and painless -- or at least as painless as he could -- death. Often he would sit there with the animal still in his lap, holding it until he could compose himself.

His predecessor used to carelessly throw the carcasses into the furnace like so much rubbish -- sometimes stacking them up so thick they wouldn’t completely burn. DJ gently placed each one on the scoop of a shovel and as respectfully as he knew how, would ease them into the flames, saying a few words over each one, hoping they would end up in some pet heaven in the sky.

One would think killing dozens of animals a week -- sometimes dozens in a single day -- would callous a person, making him less sensitive somehow. Didn’t happen. DJ stayed the course for three years. Finally even he couldn’t take it anymore.

* * *

He’s still a sensitive soul.

You still wouldn’t know it by looking at him.

He’s gruff and tough by all appearances.

His sensitivity is shown in the little things . . .

Like marrying a shy introvert, thinking he could be the one to make her blossom, to help her come out of her shell . . .

Like for more than a year sending money to me, in a federal prison, that he really couldn’t afford . . .

Like remembering his first love -- a girl in the neighborhood when neither of them was old enough to be thinking about spending the rest of their lives together. I suppose in that regard he does live with her for the rest of his life … if only in his mind.

* * *

I often wonder if volunteering to end the lives of hundreds or thousands of strays is more than a teenager should be allowed to volunteer for. I suppose when you’ve got a heart the size of DJ’s, you’ll know when it’s time to quit.