October Saturday night, 1999. The Chicago wind blew hard down my street, wafting dead leaves through the gutters like some millennial wind. I was warm and alone in my two-bedroom. My friend, Ken, stopped by.
“Check this out. There’s this cat that keeps following me around. I get out of my van and there he is. Followed me right up to your door. And he keeps rubbing his face on my jeans, caterwauling and purring. I never seen anything like it.”
“Gee, Ken, sounds like pretty unusual behavior for a cat,” I said.
“No, it’s just he doesn’t even know me. It’s like he’s lost or something.”
We stepped outside to pilgrimage to the Walgreens, and there this street mammal stood at my front door—the cat with no name. A tabby male with gray tiger stripes I mistook for green. (I’m part color-blind). Set in his flat face were deep pools of turquoise curiosity bulls-eyed by black irises that waxed with the night. I read somewhere that all cats have a tear-drop stripe escaping the corner of each eye down the sides of their face, and this one held to the rule. He was a little less than full size, probably 10 months old.
We headed out in Ken’s battered old, red van. When we came back, there he was, a miniature temple lion on guard at my doorstep. He hadn’t budged an inch in a half-hour. His shimmery coat and dependent personality let me know he couldn’t have been an outdoor cat for more than a few hours. His ears weren’t serrated by the marring that befalls other Tom’s from their social scrapes. He seemed wholly lost in this prematurely snow-bitten city.
I carted my deodorant and assorted men’s Saturday night essentials upstairs. “If he’s still downstairs when we leave,” I said before we went out for the night, “I’ll bring him up.”
And when we came back downstairs, there he was, still. Still purring, still meowing, still scrubbing that jaw against our ankles like we were Aladdin’s lamps, wanting us to grant his unspoken wish, which seemed to be: “I’m cold and I’ll never make it out here, so . . . will ya take me in?”
“That’s it,” I said as I hoisted him up by the shoulders into that awkward cat’s pose that left his front paws spread eagle like Richard Nixon giving the peace sign. I don’t think I’d held a cat since we used to buy eggs at the Minhair’s farm on our way up to Bohner’s Lake when I was about eight. I dumped him in my spare bedroom, the one my brother had just moved out from so he could get married like a normal person. I slid in water and a can of tuna in twin cereal bowls, shut the door, and went out for a night I can no longer remember.
They say a cat chooses its person. I believe that now. I was a fully indoctrinated member of that half of humanity who never liked cats. Everybody likes dogs, but half don’t like cats. Too aloof, I always thought. Never do what they’re told. Arbitrary bastards.
My plan was to get rid of it. I never wanted a pet. I didn’t want the responsibility. So I made the rounds with the neighbors, strangers to me. Was anybody missing a cat? No. I thought about putting up one of those “Pet Found” signs in local supermarkets and on street light poles. But autumn settled in and I settled in in front of the cable. Nobody claimed him. He was too ordinary. I was stuck with him. And he with me.
Now, I am not used to living with anything besides a plant, and that usually ends with one of us dead. So for me, having a cat was like adopting a special needs child. He had a habit of running around the house at 3:00 in the morning. And I have a habit of wanting to sleep at 3:00 in the morning. So I’d chase him around the furniture. But he was fast, and cats have a tendency to hide under things people don’t want to stick their hands under. So I’d give up. Once, in a fitful rage at 4:00 a.m., I incarcerated him in the spare bedroom so he wouldn’t bother me. He “yeeouuwled” away as if he was stuck in there with only Paris Hilton to talk to. They sound so much like crying babies when they do that, I swear. When I broke down and finally let him out, he jumped into my bed, installed his muzzle in my armpit and purred in near violent desperation. O the fear of abandonment.
“I never asked for you! I don’t want you!” I’d scream at him when he was a pain in the ass or when I needed someone to yell at. Single people have it rough that way. They usually never get to yell at anyone but the voice mail lady.
I took him to the vet and had him fixed. Had I waited, I learned, he would’ve begun sprainting every conceivable corner of my six rooms with an irredeemable odor. As things stood, he’d rub his jaw to mark his scent on any ankle that stood still for more than two seconds, on any new thing that came into the apartment, like he was saying: “Now you’re me. You belong to me now.” And so I did.
I settled in to the fact he would stay. And resignation begat tolerance, and tolerance laid the groundwork for something else. I began to love him.
My landlord was another matter. NO PETS, he’d scrawled across my lease. The only other condition was no drugs. So when I invited Mr. B upstairs to ask him whether I could keep the kitty who was no longer a kitty, I was, oh, apprehensive, I guess you could say. Mr. B liked me and was just about convinced to let my non-bipedal partner stay when the felid wrapped his 16 claws like a C-clamp around Mr. B’s brown, polyester slacks. What can I say: the cat was making an implicit fashion statement. The grimace in my landlord’s face suggested the deal was off. But Mr. B lived with two crazy daughters and a fishy wife downstairs, so any male companionship in the vicinity was a psychological necessity for him. The cat stayed.
His origins were important to me. I always wondered what kind of home he came, but it remained a mystery. I envisioned him as one of a large litter. And when he got a little too grown up, they may have dumped him. Or maybe he just lighted out the backdoor one night and became lost. But since I didn’t really know from where he came, I decided not to name him—an eccentric decision I was forever defending. I used to say that just because you didn’t put a name on something didn’t mean you didn’t love it. He became “Kitty” or “Kittyboy.” That’s how I would call him, together with a click click click of my tongue. And usually, all 19 pounds of him would come bounding up like a dog in cat’s skin.
I’d throw the ball, he’d run and grab it, walk it straight back to me, drop it before my feet, pant, and chase it again until he wound down like some magnificently complex automaton. Like most cats, he was fascinated with movement, with the robe sash that flitted around corners or toes that wiggled out from under bedcovers. He clawed the pink, five-headed dragon that snatched at his tail and defeated my bare hand with five hundred gnarrs and five hundred scratches. I didn’t play with him enough. I didn’t believe in play for grown-ups. Up until last Thursday, I only believed in responsibility.
Before my cat came to live with me, I had no appreciation for the little creatures. Spiders and flies were worthy only of the heel or the dreaded newspaper. But after he adopted me, tiny life took on new meaning. Overly multiple-legged creatures were no longer ugly. They were vulnerable little things housed in bodies they didn’t choose, trying to eke out a living the only way they knew how. The untouchables became revered. I found compassion for the unnoticed.
And I found fascination for cats. Spotted cats and striped cats. Cougars and caracals. Lions and leopards and lynx. I read books. Whether they prowl the Serengeti or the streets, their bodies, their hunting, their movements and their minds are almost always the same. A cat is a cat. But then again, it isn’t.
I learned to appreciate the unspeakable but almost always overlooked presence of the present moment, since he was content just to watch the world go by from his windowsill throne. For cats, it seems, there’s no future and very little past. He taught me to slow down, rest. Why worry? he said with his eyes when I’d threaten myself with the future. He taught me not to sweat decisions. He seemed arbitrary in his.
I owned dozens of ties, some from my Great Uncle Henry which he wore during the Great Depression. I foresaw their rise in style again one day. I mingled old and new together on a coat hanger that sagged in a tortured arc from the weight, like parakeets and pigeons on the same wire. One morning, in my usual get-ready-fast-because-I’m-late-and-I-got-it-down-to-the-nano-second-shit-shower-and-shave-and-I’m-outta-here,
I yanked a tie off my hanger and slammed the closet door. Boom. I’m gone.
That night when I got home, no cat smooching my hair-matted suit ankles. No meet-and-greet with muffled purrs. Just muted whines as I neared the rear of the apartment. I opened the closet door and there he sat, nested in a haystack of ties which he’d peed all over. Poor guy had been left to fend for himself against the bouquet of my leather shoes all day. He’d improvised and pulled a few dozen ties off the rack for a litter box. He peeked up at me and seemed to ask why I’d violated his parole. I felt for him. I could care less about the damned ties. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t have come back in style after all.
In our first months as mammal mates, my New Year’s resolve against the melancholy dried and shriveled in the February cold. Most of it was a madrigal I’d write and sing for my audience of one, hankie in hand. I’d toss a glance at him on the ottoman as I drowned in cable TV and I’d tell him I wish he’d just go away and not come back. Then one Sunday, some roofers working on the pitched roof of the bungalow next door scared the cat into hiding. I’d left the front door open as I hauled in a cache of groceries. Cat didn’t come to inundate my grocery bags for make-believe carrion. I looked under the couch. I cat-called. I even rattled the box of cat food, a sure invitation to instant feline presence. I poured myself under furniture and inside closets, inhaled a warren a dust bunnies under the bed and desk.
I dragnetted the neighborhood to the extent you can have a dragnet with one man looking. After hours of spot searches, I surrendered to the fact he was lost in the monstrous, no-hearted city. And I concluded he’d never survive on his own. I plopped down on my living room floor and bawled.
Mew, I heard. Then the soft nudge of his shimmering guard hairs as he stretched a civet’s neck out from under the couch; the first place I’d (over)looked. He crawled into a donut in my lap and my arms swallowed him whole. My tears dried in his warm, winter coat. I was hooked. Codependency to the death. A few months later, I’d contemplated moving to England but I’d have to quarantine him for six months. No way.
I did move, though – out to the suburbs. Cat took awhile before he moved out along with me, from behind the washing machine of my new place. But one day he ventured out from the laundry room, sat by the patio door, watched the squirrels flit and hop, and sunned himself. Back in the city, he’d sit on the living room windowsill, watch the squirrels flit and hop, and sun himself. Nothing like a change in scene to change your habits, I guess.
Yet one thing I knew he didn’t settle into was being alone. I’m a loner by trade and temperament, although I’m also out most of the time. I’d come home and he’d yowl like I’d plugged his tail into the vacuum cleaner hose and turned it. Those “where-the-hell-were-you” caterwauls struck through me like slow lightning. And like other people, I sometimes find it helpful to my sanity to take a vacation. When I’d abandon town for more than a few days, the guilt racked up like beads on an abacus. I’d picture what it must be like to be alone for days in a row in a row of dark townhouses. Having someone come in to feed him and spend a few minutes listening to his motor purr wasn’t subtracting guilt from the liability column.
So I decided on a companion. A girl, I felt, would be best. I wanted a mistress. Maybe he did, too. Only later did I learn that two toms make a tom-tom, but a tom and a girl don’t combine to make a harmonious tomgirl.
I let my friend’s sister, who ran a ‘No Kill’ animal shelter, pick one out for me. A big mistake. She selected a female half the size of my male, a female who’d mothered a full street litter before she was full grown.
She loved people. She hated cats. Especially my cat. Can’t say I blamed her. If I had to raise myself in the alleys and I’d been knocked up before I was fully grown, I’d be wary of guys too. When I finally let them mix it was World War IV (World War III had been fought when I tried to give Mr. Kitty his first bath).
He liked her, but if he came within a foot of her barbs, she’d rev up a low frequency, closed-mouth growl and take a swipe at his schnozzle. This was not in her best interests, as he had at least an inch reach on her, and he swiped back in defense. She was the one who ended up with the scars on the tip of her nose. That taught me a lesson right there. It was the perceived need to defend myself that gave me most of my scars. I swiped at others, and they swung back.
As time went on, the war worsened. He might start it off with a recreational ambush. He was playing, but that’s not the way she saw it. And then his personality changed, slowly.
I only saw him go after her with sure evil once. He’d lie in front of the patio door and watch the world go by, achieving near sexual peeks when the flocks of cowbirds scoured my patio for morning seeds. It was his way of watching TV. But sometimes, old Sherlock would amble by and bore his stare straight through the glass. Sherlock was a skinny old tom who used to belong to my house, but whose owners had sold out to me. And once in his whiles, Sherlock would pilgrimage to his old home just to check out the new tenants. My male was a very gentle creature. I can’t remember a hiss or a bared fang he ever insinuated my way. But he shrieked like he’d been mooned by a dog whenever Sherlock pranced by.
One summer day, Sherlock nudged up to the glass. He taunted my male with his deadpan stare.
Your ass is on the wrong side of the glass, Sherlock said.
Why don’t you come in here and say that, bitch? my male said.
Guess whose piss it smells like out here.
“YYYOOWWWWWW!” This particular time, my male saw my female and went for her. Transferred aggression. I broke it up before he could do her serious damage.
The situation had become something the UN couldn’t fix. It wasn’t fair to Mrs. Kitty, who’d just as soon be Ms. Kitty. So I reluctantly began the process of finding her a new cat house. A neighbor with a little girl just lost their dog. They took my female and named her Pumpkin. I almost called Animal Control when they did that. Periodic reports indicate she has a good home, besides a touch of corpulence. Now, it was just me and the old man again in our bachelor pad. His foray into cohabitation had failed. I knew all about that. We commiserated.
He didn’t seem to mind. He jumped right back into his old cockpit on the coach, submerged his square snout into my armpit, and stuck his legs out like battleship guns. He helped co-captained my sofa to the far-strewn lands to which only the Discovery Channel can fly, and he became my live teddy bear again. Upon him I showered 10,000 hugs and kisses, not to mention a few grand in ear rubbings, too. We enjoyed the obscurity that a lonely man has with his animal. I often wished at least one other person knew him as I knew him.
As a housecat, he had a warm home, two litter boxes, wet cat food, wet water, and the medical care which only a hypochondriac owner can provide. And he had my affection. Some nights, I would endlessly scratch just below his eyes on the sides of his jaw, and he would purr just as endlessly.
Reacting to bumps on his ears as if they were land mines, I carted him to the vet, calming his agonized yowls with a finger through the cat carrier mesh coupled with classical music while we drove the unendurable five miles to the clinic, only to learn that he had ear bumps.
My bed was his bed as he curled up to me each night, sometimes under the covers. The kitchen counter tops were his mid-rise domain. He could ruin practically any article of clothing without fear of karmic retribution. He usually tried. I never said a word, for he’d forged his image somewhere inside and I’d never get him out. I loved him in the way only a sole soul knows another sole soul.
But there was a dark side to my treatment of all living things. I would sweep him off my bed when I was in a bad mood. I would bark at him without cause. How was he supposed to know not to sleep on my manuscript when he had free reign to roll all over the New York Times? I never beat him or searched him out to vent my aggressions. Yet he was a convenient target for a swat or a “get outta here!” due to a minor violation. I think at these times he was afraid of me. Was it because I was just a noisy elephant to his lion or did he see me as an inescapable tyrant to this powerless peasant? I’ll never know. I do know that I weighed almost ten times more than he did. I was, after all, the only lord this little piece of love ever knew. I was his only bit of heaven, and nearly the sole source of his adversity.
Still, I’d like to think that my kindness outweighed my petty cruelties. Except for last Thursday. See, I’d started grad school and I worked full time. I hated the 16-hour days, the endless homework, the interference with my free time, the stress to get straight A’s.
A week off for Spring Break didn’t offer much respite. A few dozen ‘to do’s’ called at me to get checked off like a cat wanting his back scratched.. And contractors crawled all over the house punching in new windows, and my car to fix, and me to the eye doctor, and taxes, which meant trips to the bank. So I threw the boy into the attic, letting him down at night when the contractors had finished bludgeoning nails and smashing glass for the day. He always loved the attic and it was the only reasonable place for him now.
* * *
I’m back in school. And my damned roommate gets this infection in his mouth. Nothing serious. He’s just drooling a little bit. An abscess. But I’m pissed with everything else. He jumps up on my bed one night, and I toss him off because he’ll disturb my sleep. Besides, I don’t want him drooling all over my pillow. So he jumps on the chair where I threw the nice black jeans I wear to work. I shove him off the chair with a holler. Doesn’t he know he’ll get hair all over them!? Never mind I didn’t bother to hang the pants up.
The next day, he’s meowing in a weird, muted way. I doze in front of the TV, and he jumps up on the couch and makes the walk of trepidation to my armpit to see if I’ll let him stay. Angry, and knowing I’m mistreating him, I shove him off my body since he disturbed my disturbed slumber. I don’t want to be in school, remember? I know he’s sick, but he’s becoming a damned pest. And he smells funny.
The next night, I get home late from school and haven’t eaten all day and I discover I have these giant black ants in my kitchen so I spray the place by the microwave with Raid. Screw my compassion for little things. Roast the suckers now. The cat? He’s meowing all over the place. Hasn’t seen me all day. But he’s just a bother. He’ll get into the place where I sprayed the Raid. He’s drooling and he won’t let me eat in peace. So I put him in the dark utility room while I eat. I mean, I know he’s sick. I’m even a little worried he’s gone off his food the last couple days. But I’m hungry, damn it! Anyway, I’d scheduled the vet on Saturday. Damn sick cat. I don’t have time for this. I just had him to the vet last month for his shots. That night, I let him sleep with me, even though he’s drooling. I have such a great, big heart, I tell myself.
The next day after work, cat hasn’t touched his food. He’s still overstuffed with muted meows. It looks like he has pain when he eats, drool dangling a couple inches from his lip. I’ll reschedule the appointment for the vet now. I’ll take him in tomorrow. What a damned inconvenience! I’ve got studying to do. I call the vet. They can see him today. In half an hour.
Fine. I grab the cat carrier and try cramming the cat in. I used to gently ease him in, but now I’m in a hurry. I’ve got more important things to do and I’m tired of trekking him to the vet every time he has a hang claw.
So I don’t even try finesse. I wrestle him. He splays his legs against the sides of the door, but I try jamming him in, growling at him as I do. But he doesn’t want to go in. So I jam his head down and slam the little plastic door down so hard on top of him that it comes off its hinges. Now, he doesn’t fight me anymore. He’s the gentle cat giant he always has been. Never a hiss or a bite out of him, even now.
I cart him off to the car and race to the vet. I don’t hurry for him. Only for me. They tell me cats don’t like motion. But I’m in a hurry. I can’t stand the discomfort I feel with his pitiful yowls all the way there. Usually, I’ll poke my finger in and massage his temple, which calms him. Not this time. I don’t try comforting. I put on talk radio to drown out his talk. But he doesn’t cry much this time. He can’t talk too good. A couple futile attempts – that’s all I hear. I glance down on him. He’s just peeking out, helpless. Like this time it’s different.
I get him to the vet and race inside. I don’t even care about keeping the cage steady anymore. I’ve got to re-park my double-parked car, so I park him behind the reception desk. I whoosh back in and get dispatched to an examining room. I let him out of his cage while we wait behind closed doors for the evil man in white. The little guy’s very scared, as always. The other times, I spend my time comforting him. This time, it’s all routine. I’m too busy reading the poster about the origins of different dog breeds to do anything but give him an occasional absent scratch with my arm behind me.
Finally, I embrace him, kiss him on the top of the head as I’ve done uncountable times before. The vet tumbles in, an inexperienced boy scout. He takes my lad’s temperature in the anal manner. Even this won’t provoke my little boy into a snarl or a hiss.
The vet looks him over. Finally, he opens kitty boy’s mouth. Massive swelling underneath his tongue. It’s “foreign object intrusion.” The window contractors had left glass and nails all over. My cat loves to play with foreign objects for some reason, and I thought I saw him swallow a spider the other day. The young doctor weighs my cat and says he’ll do an exploratory this evening. I leave my cat without another word.
On the way home, I cry because I know I’ve mistreated him this past week and that it wasn’t fair to a creature that gave me nothing but comfort. In fact, he taught me the gift of love. He was a gift of love. I would qualify ‘love’ with ‘unconditional,’ but all love is unconditional. He would follow me from room to room, and lie down beside me (or plop down into the middle of whatever book or paperwork that absorbed me). And he never cared that I had orange carpeting or if I had bad breath. Probably because he had bad breath.
I’m back home. Right into my school-work. I mean, that’s what’s really important, isn’t it? My responsibilities. An hour later, the vet calls. No foreign object intrusion. Cancer. All over. He’d have to cut its tongue out to save him, and cats can’t live without tongues. He has to be put down. I want them to wait for me to come back so he can die with someone holding him, but the vet complains that he’s closing soon. And I don’t want to prolong my friend’s pain. So I give the go ahead and hang up.
One of the worst things in the world is to die alone. I don’t wish that on my enemies, much less someone I love. As I write this, I’m looking at a little photo of him I just put up, kind of a little cat shrine, encased in those one-size-fits-all plastic frames you pick up at the drug store. And I cry, because he wasn’t a one-size-fits-all cat. But no one will ever know that except me. As I cry, the sunlight pours through my room and I see my grimacing, red face, a sea of tears, in the reflection off that plastic picture frame.
That night, I find out what remorse really is. I’d only known regret before. Remorse is wishing with all your bones and your ache, with your whole soul, that you could go back in time and undo something you did. Or do something you ought have done. And that night I find out what bitter tears tasted like. And as I cry them, a thunderstorm rages. The lightning flashes as I wailed. The thunder blasts as I twist into a regressed pose in my bed. These aren’t tears of sadness. They aren’t because I miss him. It’s not about me for a change. They are because of the way I treated him before he died. It’s the way he’s gone out that makes me bitter. For years, I’d been given a precious gift, and I squandered it in days, in just these last few days. I’d been given love but thrown it away. It was all I’d ever wanted or asked for. It just hadn’t come in the predetermined shape or texture which I’d expected. I saw that, now that it was gone.
My cat was a gift, walking out of a mysterious past. At first and at last unappreciated and unaccepted, no matter what I gave him in between our rushed first meeting and our rushed departing.
Cats are soft all over. Like an octopus that has only one hard part, cats have only teeth and claws that are sharp. The rest is warm, smooth fur and soft, buzzing sound. Never has a predator seemed more like a rabbit. They say that in the Middle Ages, cats were hunted and slaughtered by the thousands. Their persecutors linked them with witches. My cat had its own Dark Age the last week of its life. And I was the inquisitor. I should have treated him with more kindness, but I guess you can only learn to love by starting with yourself.
I still haven’t cleaned up his toys, his little bowl, half with food. When I spy his droppings in the litter box, or a hair from his body on the seat of my car, the boy in me thinks he must still be alive, because these parts of him, this evidence that came from him, are still here. I keep spotting him darting around a corner out of the corner of my eye, seeing his reflection in the dark hue of an oven window. When I come home from work, I half-expect he’ll be at the front door to greet me with a couple dozen meows even though my head tells me he’s gone. When I sit at my desk, I still wait for him to hop on my lap, lift his little box nose with two dots for nostrils and sniff my breath for what the day brought. I hear him purr like a tractor and anticipate his snuggle against my chest.
He was my chosen companion for hundreds of lonely Saturday nights. He was the patrol officer who ridded my old apartment of mice and who stood as guardian over me when I was sick on the couch. When I wanted to do things that weren’t necessarily all that healthy to my self-esteem, he would jump up on my lap. I can’t tell you how many nights that stopped me. He slowed my pulse, taught me the meaning of gentleness and taking it easy. He tried to teach me the importance of play.
He was love. Yet, because I treated myself poorly, I sometimes treated love poorly. Because I thought myself second class, I gave love less good things. Because I kept myself alone, love was alone. Since I felt lonely, I perceived him as lonely. He was love. But maybe even love gets lonely without more of itself.
In the last week of his life, I traded that love away in favor of fear. With his diesel-engine purring, he could easily have been a balm for my worry, yet I chose against that. Through this, he taught me how I treat myself when there’s no one else around, and how I would treat the lover I wished for if she were here. He showed me how I’d treat others if there were no rules against mistreatment. In the last week of his life, I traded his love away in exchange for a pair of pristine, black jeans. I ended up throwing those jeans away a couple days later.
It’s the circumstances surrounding death that are sometimes more painful than death itself. The way someone dies often has as much meaning as the fact of death. Why did he have to die the week I was so rushed, and in such a shitty mood? ‘Why’ isn’t usually the right question surrounding death. But I think I have an answer.
In his dying, my cat remained my teacher. I needed to learn that what was important wasn’t grad school or new windows or a lousy pair of jeans, but those we love. They may be gone tomorrow. Lately, I’ve been feuding with my 74 year-old dad, who hasn’t been in the best of health for years. Last night, I called him up, had dinner with him and told him my story. Few of us get to choose the circumstances of our death. And, because we can even relegate acts of love to routine duties, even fewer of us fully appreciate the magnitude of our acts and words to those we love when they are still here.
As I write these words, I again weep those unquenchable tears. I know now the meaning of sorrow. Usually, I’m sorry because I’m afraid I’ve looked bad, or because I want something in return from the victim of my transgression, like an It’s okay. Well, what I did was not okay. In my mind, the image of the dome of my cat’s head as I slammed the cage door against it replays again and again. I treated a dying animal, my dying animal, like that. All because I’d been unwilling to give up my impatience, my quick fuse, my drive to succeed. Love became an inconvenience.
This may seem like an exercise in self-flagellation. God knows I’ve been accused of that before. And it may seem like a minor, even a tiny tragedy, when compared with the massive wars and horrific atrocities from which humanity hemorrhages. Yet this is a story about the quality of love. And you cannot judge quality with quantity. Is life any cheaper when it’s small? More economical when it’s one, as opposed to many? Is it less important when it’s furry than when it walks on two legs? The preciousness we find in life isn’t made of size and scale or measured by life’s capacity to reason. Reasoning minds have inflicted more damage on the unreasoning remainder of life than we can ever measure. To say we should mourn the loss of little life less than big life is to miss the point. If I can’t appreciate my cat, how will I ever be able to cherish a child? Life is life, and life is. It makes no distinctions, marks no degrees between one form of itself or another. Only people judge it by the kind of body it wears.
To say otherwise cheapens life itself, makes it less precious. Maybe that creates the wars and the suffering. So you can’t measure the pain experienced by the human heart when it loses one cat against the pain it feels when armies are lost. The object of a man’s love may be questioned, but the agony he feels when that thing is lost cannot be.
I write this as a warning.
“Someday you’ll die, but not today,” I whispered into his pimpled ears a couple weeks before he died. I’d whisper that to him often. My idea of his death was years. I didn’t know it would be days.
I think back to what I was doing the week before he died, a few days before, the day before, the hours before. I’d washed all his toys for him. Bought a book about cats. He just didn’t seem that sick. Animals don’t complain and they don’t seek revenge. They accept their lives and bear their pain with more integrity than people often do.
I looked for love in more pleasurable, glamorous sources, and when it didn’t come in that form, I felt unloved. But something was trying to show me the love I thought I was missing was always right here, right now. It was getting hair all over my slacks, calling out to me when I came home from work after a day that was too long. Love was right there in front of me. But I never knew what I had.
Was there any other way for me to learn these final lessons he taught me? Probably not. If he was still with me, I’d still be taking for granted the gift his silent, untroubled spirit would bring. And so my cat with no name died that I may learn. In his dying, he taught me to love the life around me while I still can, and to act on that love. What good is love unexpressed? That looks the same as no love at all. He taught me to treat with kindness all those whom I do love, for I never know whether a nasty word will be my final one. He taught me to spend time, and to spend it patiently, with people and things I love. Before, I was too busy. As the result of death, sometimes life grows closer together to fill the hole left by the love that has departed. Since he died, I’ve unbusied myself enough to reconnect to my family. And so my gentle cat, a giant of his kind, has taught me that unless you’re suffering from a clinical depression, mental health means to slow down.
Even months later now, I keep picking his hairs off my sweaters, off the afghan in the living room, from my car seat. That tri-colored, gray striped hair is unmistakable, surviving death. When I let those hairs go, I see which way the micro-currents take them. Mostly, they just drift away.
I remember when I was a boy, Mr. Brumlich would fill me a helium balloon from his store every time I bought new shoes there. I’d play with my balloon all afternoon, but somehow, towards supper-time, as the sun started down, I’d know it was time to let it go. What quadrant of heaven to which it returned, I didn’t know. But it did go somewhere. I’d release it, and know it wasn’t mine anymore. I’d watch it float away, becoming smaller, smaller . . . . Until it was just a dot in the sky. A smile, a mix of wonder and sadness and goodbye, would wrinkle on my lips. Then the balloon would just disappear. Once I took my eye off that speck in the sky for just a second, I could never find it again.
Memories are just a way to keep someone or something alive. But memories always fade. They were meant to, I suppose. That’s why we erect monuments and make Memorial Days. Yet as memory of someone recedes, so too does its personality. And after the memory’s gone, the only trace that remains is the love that flowed between you and them. Only the love you give remains. It’s the dew left over from an unexpected kindness.
Long after the last of his tiger-striped hairs have turned to house dust, even after the tinge of regret over my sin of indifference evaporates, it is the love he imparted to me, and that love which I shown back upon him, that will remain. He taught me that only this is forever.
* * *
There seems to be one more lesson, at least. I wrote everything above those three asterisks yesterday. Today was Day III without him. And the lessons seem to be different. A cold, gloomy April 11th rains down as I drive into the city to breakfast with a friend. Just then the sun burns through the clouds in one of those moments of glory that seem to be meant just for you. Then the sun lapsed back behind the gray. I could still see its bright circle dimly through the clouds. The sun still shone, I just couldn’t see it. My cat still lived, I just couldn’t experience him in the same way. Then I never lost my guy. I can’t lose him. Because love never dies. My cat, in my heart, still basks on a windowsill in a sun that never sets. That’s where I always wanted to place him, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him. If he still is, then he must be free from pain, securely enswathed in a brilliance that never burns.
My little cat was a symbol of love. Love, always seeking to join with the object of its desire, can never really be separated from itself. And so my cat and I are joined at the heart, or at least the hip. We’re Siamese cat twins, even though he was a gray tabby.
Death may give us the chance to be even closer to the ones we lose, because we’re no longer separated by bodies. We have the chance for more intimate communication than we ever had. Words are what we used before. But words are mere representations of experience, not experience itself. Haven’t you ever wanted to communicate something to someone very much, but the experience was just beyond words? That’s because experience is beyond words. And the lives we seek to share with those we love are nothing but experience. So now, the deceased beings from whom we seem to be separated may be closer than ever. Because our experiences, and not just our words, can be shared now with those we love. I used to feel my cat was so cute I wanted to eat him up, to put him in my heart forever. When someone dies, they may be that much closer to us. For how much closer can someone be than within our very hearts?
Even so, I keep going over it in my mind, to punish myself I suppose. It’s been five days now, and I’ve been slowing down a lot since this happened. All the stuff I hurried around for seemed so important, but it’s not. So today after work, I drove to the local forest preserve, stepped across a fallen tree, and ended up on a muddy island of picnic tables in the middle of the soggy, spring woods. I thought about what this has taught me so far.
I’ve forgiven my dad. For so many years, he was the one I blamed for all my pain, all my failures. If he hadn’t of been so hard on me. . . If he wouldn’t have been so damned angry . . . . But whatever he has given me, I own it now. What I decide to do with it is, at the tender age of 37, my responsibility. His own life may be too short to blame him, and I don’t want to go out the same way with him as I went out with my animal. So I forgave him, at dinner last Friday. And I forgave my brother. And a co-worker I’ve been resenting. And a neighbor who was a thorn in my side. Saw him the other day and actually had a few pleasant words for him. Let’s see. Who’s there left to forgive?
Well, there’s me: for the way I treated my cat the last week of his life. I’d been cruel, if mostly in my indifference. I suppose indifference is the most common, yet the most insidious, form of cruelty. And because of this perceived indifference, the world often looks cruel. But it’s me who cultivates indifference, and so the cruelty really comes from me, and not the world. How can I forgive myself for being so damned callous?
I thought about my animal. If, by some miracle, he came ambling up just now, through the middle of the forest, what would he do? How would he react? Would he claw me in revenge, like I want to do when someone snubs me? No. He wouldn’t hold what I did or did not do against me. His memory of the incidents, looming like mountain shadows in my own mind, would have already passed with the sun that set on the day of my petty indignities toward him. All this is a long-hand way of saying that he’d forgive me.
If he forgave me, who was I not to release myself? If we’re forgiven by others for our transgressions, to refuse to accept forgiveness for ourselves is really to refuse to accept the precious gift they offer us. That would be just one more indignity handed to the aggrieved. As the tears rolled down my face in that sunset forest, I forgave myself. The woods, with the first green, the first new life of April, chorused in the bitterless breeze. The water all around me bubbled with soft sun as ants danced in the mud. My cat was everywhere at once.
I left the woods a few moments later, lighter than light.