Author: Graeme McMillan

When I got rid of the old phone after mumbles quietly seven years or so, one of the last things I did before I erased it was save the few photos I’d taken on there. They weren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, anything special in terms of photographic beauty or the like, but the few — literally, just three — that weren’t of Gus and Ernie are all particular moments that I wanted to record for no particular reason.

This was taken shortly after moving to Portland, if I’m remembering correctly. It was a cold winter night, and I was struck by the way the light outside the local Fred Meyer looked; it felt so different from San Francisco, where I’d spent the last few years, and looked so different from what had been my everyday that I wanted to keep it.

I’m not sure why I love this as much as I do; I think it’s the weird pixelation effect as much as the sunset. It wasn’t a particularly good day when I took this, but I loved how orange the world turned, and the fuzziness of the final image feels particularly appropriate.

There’s a corner in the neighborhood which always has weird, enjoyable, graffiti; I saw this one day and it felt particularly appropriate for the time, and this was… 2018, maybe? Long before the hellscape that we’re currently living in.

Frank was the first of Chloe’s cats to really take to me, and the feeling was mutual. He was the cat that she warned me about, although that’s far too harsh a way of putting it; it was less a warning, per se, and more of a, he’s a grumpy old cat that doesn’t really like people, so beware. He liked me, and I took that as a compliment, if not a badge of honor.

He looked like an archetypal cat, when I first met him; if someone asked you to imagine a ginger cat, he would be exactly what you’d picture. That didn’t last long. Within weeks of our meeting, one of his ears ballooned up in size and then collapsed into a wrinkled, folded mess; the other would follow suit within a year. He could still hear fine, but his bold, iconic cat look was gone; now he looked more like what I imagined Peter Falk would look like, had he been transformed into a ginger cat.

Nonetheless, Frank was happy. Well, as happy as a curmudgeonly cat that desperately didn’t want to be an inside cat could be — you couldn’t leave the door to outside open for too long or he’d run outside, and he was one of the fastest cats you could imagine, when he wanted to be; if it wasn’t for the fact that he also didn’t want to run too far outside, he would have vanished more than once.

He and I bonded; the joke was that he was “my cat,” because he’d chosen me. I was, am, more than fine with that. I loved when he’d climb on top of me and sit on my chest, purring. I’d love to rub his chin, stroke his fur while he made rrrrrrrrr noises, gently and insistently.

We noticed something was wrong with him a little more than a month ago, and it was quickly diagnosed as a tumor in his mouth that was too big, growing too fast, to do anything about. We were warned he’d likely have only a few weeks left before his quality of life would be impacted, and that we should make plans.

Today, more or less around the time this publishes, there’s an appointment to put Frank to sleep. The only thing I can really say is that I’m heartbroken, and that I’m going to miss my little friend.

I finally have a new phone, after only… more months than I care to admit without a working one.

The first time I knew that my phone was in trouble was last December, on the plane to Brazil; I took it out my pocket after the flight took off, and realized that the screen seemed to be separating from the rest of the phone. I was temporarily nervous about what this might mean, considering that I was flying to another country and suspected that I really might need my phone to get around, but as it turned out, I was wrong on two counts: The phone was working fine, despite the screen lifting slightly, and I didn’t need it nearly as much as I’d suspected.

I didn’t really think that much about why the screen was lifting. The phone was, after all, about seven or so years old by that point and had been through the wars. I put it down to my probably having done something to it while it was in my pocket; maybe I sat down weirdly, or bumped it, or something. It was, I told myself, no big deal.

Months later, as the screen continued to lift away from the rest of the phone seemingly by itself, I decided to Google why that might be happening; the answer, as it turned out, was that the battery in the phone was off-gassing and in danger of turning into a bomb. Upon learning this admittedly disturbing fact, I did the most obvious thing: I turned the phone off and decided to get myself a new phone as soon as possible.

That was… at some point at the start of the summer, I think…? I can’t remember. Suffice to say, I didn’t actually get myself a new phone as soon as possible; instead, I accidentally started an experiment called, “Do I really need a phone, anyway?” (The answer is, kind of, but I did okay using Google Voice for the most part.)

Nonetheless, I now have a new phone, and I feel remarkably, stupidly excited and fancy about this turn of events. Next big thing: actually using it.