"What's going on in here?" she said.

My sobbing began quickly and intensely.

"I . . . I . . . I came on Gabby!"

"You what?"

"She was between my legs, and I had a wet dream!"

Then Regina laughed, not just giggling, either, and not kindly. But it wasn't funny to me. Not at all.

That was the night I became a dog person.

The years drifted by, as years do. We got a Boston terrier, who we named Hercules. He freaked Zimmy out and she started peeing on the couch. Then Regina got pregnant, and we realized poor Zimmy wouldn't be able to handle a baby. We moved to Austin, Texas, and gave her up for adoption to a little girl who, we hope, let her sit on a pillow in the window for the rest of her years.

Gabby got along great with the dog and with the baby. She was still up in my face all the time, wanting to snuggle, to get on my shoulders, to lick my ears. I was more likely to fling her off than not, saying terribly abusive stuff like "Leave me alone, you little b.i.t.c.h." She loved me anyway, and I felt guilty, and also somehow blamed her for instigating the whole mess.

We moved the animals across a thousand miles again, this time to Los Angeles, and Gabby kept on trucking. In fact, she seemed happier than ever. This may have been because we finally, after years of begging on her part, let Gabby go outside. Did it occur to us that we were now living in the second-largest city in the country, and that it might be dangerous to the cat? Apparently not.

One Monday in November, around 6:30 p.m., I went outside to move the car from the street into the driveway. When I was done, I saw a cat lying on her side, on the lawn. I walked closer.

It was Gabby. She wasn't moving.

"Gabby?" I said. Then, I said, louder, "GABBY?"

As I knelt beside the cat, Regina flung open the door.

"What's wrong with Gabby?" she said.

"She's dead," I said.

Regina ran outside and felt for a heartbeat.

"Oh my G.o.d, Neal! She is is dead!" dead!"

Our son Elijah, four years old now, ran outside, screaming, "Gabby's dead! Gabby's dead! Oh, no! Gabby's dead!"

We looked at the body. There didn't appear to be any major injuries. A thin trickle of blood had leaked from her mouth, and she'd urinated on the spot where she'd pa.s.sed.

"No," I said.

At that moment, an extremely tattooed man came walking up our driveway, heading toward the house behind us. I noticed that his earlobes had been elongated. Black discs hung down from both of them. With him was a woman carrying a long-haired little boy. They were going to visit our neighbors.

"How's it going?" he said.

"Not so good," I said. "Our cat just died."

"WHAT?" he said.

He rushed to Gabby's side and felt her.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

He placed a hand on my chest and gazed at me with deep sincerity. It wasn't creepy at all, but because I'm not used to deep sincerity, I thought it was at the time.

"She's a blessing to you," he said, "and she's in a better place now."

"We lost a cat a year ago," said the woman. "We'd just moved to Florida and she was our guiding spirit."

They were weird, but also very kind.

"I had her since 1995," I said. "I've known her, or knew her, longer than my wife."

"Cats are sent here to protect us from evil," he said.

I wanted to reply, "I don't know about that," but I wasn't in the mood to get into a theological argument with a helpful hippie. Instead, Regina said, "I think she was. .h.i.t by a car."

"She died loving you," said the man.

"No doubt," I said, not wanting to say, "Yeah, and one time I came all over her!"

The next hour is a bit of a muddle in my memory. Our neighbors behind us provided me with a shovel and a large s...o...b..x. I put Gabby in the box and went into our backyard, where I started digging a hole under the big banana tree. My movements were laconic at best. I was thinking about how Gabby would always drape herself over my shoulders while I was typing, and about how she wasn't going to do that anymore. I also remembered how she shredded my roommate's favorite plant the day I adopted her, setting the stage for many years of naughty behavior. For a while, I had a black plastic stick with a feather on the end. I'd wriggle it in front of Gabby's face, and she'd lunge for it. Then I'd whirl it around in a circle, and she'd lay chase. Then, I'd wriggle it again, just below her chin, and then suddenly whip it up several feet in the air. Gabby would leap high in the air, providing amus.e.m.e.nt for many years' worth of stoned partygoers. She hadn't done that for years, but she still had a pretty good vertical leap.

From behind me I heard, "Let me help you."

It was the hippie.

"Huh?" I said.

"I'm a professional," he said.

I wanted to say, "What? You're a professional grave digger?" But, again, he was very helpful, so I didn't.

He took the shovel from me and began attacking the ground with a jackhammer motion. His body type (lanky), level of tattooedness (high), and general speed of motion (spastic) called to mind Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He attacked my cat's grave as though he were performing a lunatic encore at the Wiltern.

He handed me the shovel silently. I tried to place Gabby's box into the hole. It didn't quite fit. So I poked the shovel around the edges to create a few extra inches of room. From behind me, I heard, "Hey, Neal, you need a drink?"

"I'm cool," I said.

"You need some bud?"

"h.e.l.l, yeah!" I said, and I started to dig faster. Gabby would have wanted me to get stoned at her funeral.

A few minutes later, I scooped the last shovelful of dirt onto my cat's grave, and patted it down. Less than one hour before, she'd been alive. Now she was in a box in my backyard. Life went away that quickly. Man.

The smoke could wait. My family needed me now. Or I needed them. I went into the house where Elijah was watching an episode of Curious George Curious George on TiVo, sat down beside him on the couch, and immediately broke down sobbing. on TiVo, sat down beside him on the couch, and immediately broke down sobbing.

Regina rushed me out of the room.

"Get a grip on yourself," she said.

"How can I?" I said. "My kitty is dead!"

"You need to be strong for your son."

"You f.u.c.king Protestants and your repressed emotion!"

"This has nothing to do with me being a Protestant. I just don't want you upsetting Elijah."

"Fair enough."

A few minutes on the bed calmed me. Then we switched our focus. We were concerned, at first, that it would be tough to get Elijah through Gabby's death. But he moved quickly through several odd stages of four-year-old grief.

1. Lying in bed at night, listing all the family members who are still alive. 1. Lying in bed at night, listing all the family members who are still alive. 2. Asking what Gabby is doing in heaven. Asking what a soul is when we tell him that only Gabby's soul is in heaven. 2. Asking what Gabby is doing in heaven. Asking what a soul is when we tell him that only Gabby's soul is in heaven. 3. Asking how Gabby can eat underground. 3. Asking how Gabby can eat underground. 4. p.r.o.nouncing "We have a dead cat!" upon entering the schoolyard the day after Gabby's death. 4. p.r.o.nouncing "We have a dead cat!" upon entering the schoolyard the day after Gabby's death. 5. Less than a week later, asking if we can eat "Gabby stew" for dinner. 5. Less than a week later, asking if we can eat "Gabby stew" for dinner.

I think the kid will be fine.

As for me, I miss my little Gabby. She was a good companion in the days when I didn't have permanent female company. She saw me through the writing of four books, the editing of another, and the composition of countless newspaper and magazine articles. She moved with me from Chicago to Philadelphia to Austin to Los Angeles. She also left little pools of barf everywhere and consistently tore holes in my clothing with her claws. Basically, she was a cat. But she was a sweet cat, and she was mine, and there's a hole in my life without her, even though I now have to do a little less cleaning.

But I also feel like, in some ways, her death was my fault. They say you cut several years off a cat's life when you let them go outside. So why did I let her, in a congested urban neighborhood? In some ways, I was still trying to make up for how I treated her after the "incident," and to show that I still loved her in the pre-incident way. I now realize, and for some reason didn't realize it then, that pets don't really have memories. They respond to how they're being treated at the moment, and that years of kindness and loyalty can erase a couple of nasty afternoons or weird, semiperverted nights. Yes, you should live every moment like it's your last, and all that, but pets are around for even less time, and we should appreciate them fully before they're gone.

Gabby used to sit on my laptop. Sometimes, I'd leave it open, and she'd sit on the keyboard and really screw things up for me. For eleven years, I made it a habit of running into my office and making sure my laptop was okay. It still occasionally occurs to me that I should check.

But she isn't there.

Lesson#7

Technology Can Be Friend and Foe

"The Internet may not be he best way to meet guys, but it sure is a fantastic way to break up with them."

Lesson#8

Eggs Must Be Broken . . .

by Tom Shillue

On Sundays I take the baby out to the park. It is all daddies on cell phones pushing strollers. We look at each other and smile-gosh darn it if we aren't the coolest guys in New York City-in our baseball caps, with a Starbucks in the cup holder. Most of the dads look like Moby. A few look like Wayne Gretzky. But we're all equal in the park.

"Give your wife the morning off?"

"Yep, sure did. Told her to relax, get a pedicure."

"Nice."

I always like to help out with the baby. A car seat has to be adjusted or a whole new larger car seat has to be installed or perhaps the same one has to be turned to face the opposite direction. So I do that.

I help with bath time. Not in a useful sense, but I am there for support, and if my wife has to go get a washcloth, I make sure the baby doesn't drown. I also lean over and make faces so the baby looks straight up while she gets her hair rinsed. That is a big help.

But more importantly I make sure I am always available for date night with my wife. We get a sitter and go out to dinner, just the two of us at a nice restaurant. I'm sure my wife appreciates this-and it's not just because several Web sites have confirmed this is something that should be done-I like doing it, too.

So I'm the perfect husband. And everything is as it should be. But it wasn't always this way. If one pulls back the blinds and peers out into the yard of my past, you'll find the rusting carca.s.ses of many failed relationships, right there, up on blocks. I'm not hiding them-they are out there for everyone to see. But were they really failures? Or did they all have meaning? Serve a higher purpose? Did they all briefly run, and then die, so my current, blissful family life could purr like a . . . I don't know . . . is GTO a car? Whatever car runs really well. That.

To put it in more academic terms, those carca.s.ses/girlfriends couldn't have known it then, but they were a prestigious prep school for Happy Marriage University, where I am currently enrolled. Or rather, each was a prep school that I got kicked out of, before finally being accepted at HMU, which, I'll have you know, was in no way a safety school.

Without a doubt, the two-year relationship, or "fake marriage," is the perfect place to prepare for real marriage. It provides a man all the trappings and pleasures of marriage, but requires no more commitment than that of a softball league or car lease.

Here's how it works: Somewhere early in the two-year relationship, the guy will do something bad. Not bad enough to get dumped, but just bad enough to breach confidence. He will offer an apology of sorts-something along the lines of "Sorry, but that's just the way I am"-which will leave the relationship in a state of limbo. This is the "commitment sweet spot" for a guy. Trust is shattered, but s.e.x continues and the bathroom still smells good.

For those wondering how that breaks down into a formula, it is this:

Happy Fake Marriage->Callous Behavior->Half Apology->Detente

The relationship will slowly play itself out, and eventually end, unremarkably. But don't be fooled-these relationships are far from meaningless. (I had nine of them!) They prepare a man for a successful long-term relationship by providing a "what not to do" template he will be able to follow in the future.

In a fake marriage, you will get away with things a wife would simply not allow. For example-men don't like to plan ahead. Women do. In one of my fake marriages, with Alison, I insisted no plans be made more than forty-eight hours out. I would say, "Honey, where I am in my life right now, I need flexible scheduling."

This annoyed Alison, but I held firm. And it worked. I got just what I wanted-no planning ahead. (Alison eventually dumped me with no warning whatsoever. What could I do, besides nod my head and appreciate her lacerating use of irony?) Now, with my wife, I know this sort of thing would be unacceptable, so I don't even try it. I have loosened up my "spontaneous living" demands, and it has worked out just fine. I am willing to pencil in appointments, vacations . . . all sorts of things-weeks, and sometimes months, in advance. I do this for her, but it helps me, too. I actually like knowing we will be renting a house on Cape Cod for the last two weeks of August 2011. In fact, I'm very much looking forward to it!

Let me use a more vivid example with a different fake wife, Betsy. I did not call Betsy after she went in for surgery.

Betsy and I were about six months into our two-year relationship when, right on schedule, I firmly committed to the callous behavior as noted in step two of my formula. I was heading to Los Angeles for a while, and after several days I realized I had not yet spoken to my girlfriend. I wonder how she is doing? I wonder how she is doing? I thought to myself one day. I thought to myself one day. I'll have to call her . . . I'll have to call her . . .

This was really not out of the ordinary in the midnineties. Some people forget what long-distance communication was like in the early Clinton years. Not everyone had a cell phone, and making a call required some complicated steps: coins, phone cards, a pay phone not not covered in a mucouslike substance. So, we simply hadn't spoken-for what turned out to be eight days. I would have thought it was a little less than that, but it turns out it was indeed eight. covered in a mucouslike substance. So, we simply hadn't spoken-for what turned out to be eight days. I would have thought it was a little less than that, but it turns out it was indeed eight.

I picked up the phone and gave her a ring. What the heck, What the heck, I thought, I thought, I will surprise her with my thoughtfulness. I will surprise her with my thoughtfulness.

"Hi, Bets . . . it's me. How ya doing!"