The day before I found out that my father was dying, a dead cat appeared on the bottom step of the staircase in the apartment building where I was staying. It was late July, and I had rented a summer place in Fethiye, a town on Turkey’s southwestern coast where I had been a regular visitor since 2004.
Fearing that this was probably some sort of apocalyptic omen relating to my own life, I fought the urge to google “what it means when you see a dead cat”. When I finally did, it seemed there were a couple of possibilities. Seeing a dead cat could be “a symbol of death and rebirth”, Google said. Or it could be an apocalyptic omen.
The next day, my mother called to inform me that my dad had commenced in-home hospice care in Washington, DC, and that the end was near. His doctors at the hospital had been dispensed with, having shown themselves to be irremediably committed to the American way of pursuing profit at the expense of human wellbeing. My father’s final two chemotherapy treatments, which he had been reluctant to undergo, had done nothing to deter his prostate cancer and everything to ensure that his remaining moments on earth were spent in pure agony.