The day the vet came to our house, I held my old cat, and hugged her on the floor, while we killed her as kindly as we could.
I could feel the bones of her spine and her chest under softest black fur. Charcoal black – her name in Japanese. The tiniest scattering of salt, a whisker, a hair here and there.
21 years of my life, were hers too.
My husband, played with her in her kittenhood. His big feet and her tiny paws thundering around our two-up-two-down with bits of string, ribbon, feathers. He would poke string through boxes, trail it provocatively around the bannisters, coax her from under the bed with it- cat-fishing until she would collapse and sleep as only kittens can sleep. Deeply and snuggled between us, her stomach puffing in and out with her breath.
My long-legged lover, 6”2 or 3’ whose feet stuck out the end of the duvet. The first time he tangled in bed with me, she bit down hard on his toes. He yelped, then laughed, and I knew he was a good ‘un.
My boy’s father, who sneezed as his eyes closed-up red but promised me he did like cats as I offered him antihistamine? Not a good sign, thinking back.
She was constant. Always close. Familiar.
In her old age she sabotaged my boy’s first efforts at walking. He talked before he walked. When he finally got round to making the effort, my elderly cat stretched herself from zen-like-communion with the sofa, and transformed into NINJA CAT, darting lightening-quick between his legs.
“Ohhhhh CAT!”, he would say with an upward lilt in his voice as he pointed his finger and wobbled off balance. Then “OWWW” his face crumpling as he landed hard on his bottom. Ninja-Cat darting out of reach.
The day before, when I had phoned the vet and made arrangements, I tried to tempt her with a little boiled chicken and rice. I held out scraps in the flat of my hand and she took a few, scraping my palm with her sandpaper tongue. Our last communion.
We had a long history of chicken and rice. Plain boiled chicken and rice kept her alive when ten years earlier the vet said in all seriousness, your cat cannot tolerate cereal. Cats are not designed to eat wheat. She was way ahead of the whole Paleo-food-thing.
There were plenty of other things she could not tolerate as well as cheap wheat-bulked cat food: My toddler-nephew’s attentions included. His poor podgy arm punctured with her claws when he poked it through the back of the chair where she sat, looking sleepy and furry- Ohhh CAT! Then bang bang bang three times with her claws and HOOOOOWL.
“Nasty Cat” it said on a subsequent, vet’s notes. I had taken her because she was chewing the fur off her stomach. The Vet left the room to get something, leaving his computer on, so I read his notes. We changed to a different vet. Thinking back, perhaps it wasn’t accidental. Another few weeks of boiled chicken and rice improved her stomach and her temper.
The next vet wore a leather gauntlet. I had warned her apologetically, before cat changed from scared little hissy thing cowering in her basket, to satanic spidery clawed-thing, running up louvred blinds then upside-down across the ceiling.
So when Cat, needed a vet the last time, I spared us all the whole scene from The Exorcist and the vet came to our house. My boy played in the kitchen and I could hear him chatting, while I held my cat a last time and then put her sleeping her last sleep, the sleep only cats can sleep, back into her basket for a little while. She was stilll soft and warm, and it gave me time to say goodbye.
DSH – Black, it said in her vet-book. Domestic Short-Haired black cat.
Oh CAT! You were so much more to me than that.
e. leonaris 2018