Ever since I’ve known my wife, I’ve been content to be the number two man in her life. Her first love, her true love, is a 76-year-old Texan with a white whisker, bad breath, an the sweetest disposition of anyone I’ve ever met. His name is Sage, and we were told this evening that he has advanced-stage cancer, spreading from his chest into his lungs. We looked at the X-rays of his long, lean body stretched across the film, the doctor pointing out the masses here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and each tap of her finger made my throat get tighter. This isn’t fair. The tough little bastard beat diabetes, for Christ’s sake. That bitch cancer took one good cat away, and now she’s come for another.

He spent the night at the cat hospital down the road, where an internist is going to perform an ultrasound this morning to confirm and isolate each of the masses. Hopefully then he can perform a biopsy and tell us exactly what Sage is dealing with.