One of my mother’s cats passed away today—the eldest one. When I came back from Taiwan several years ago, we picked up him from the pound. He was scrawny and sick and never quite well but he was orange and had a white bib and white edges to his paws and home he went, to live with Isabel, the other cat, a crotchety black thing who came from the same place some years before that.
I was supposed to keep him but I had no job and no apartment yet and as time went on and my fortunes improved he ended up staying with my mother, as the conclusion was “he wouldn’t do well in the car”, and I think my mother was fond of him. She moved to a new apartment in the next town and he used to delight in escaping and hiding in the attic. We’d call and call and look for him everywhere and he would just hide quietly and revel in our searches with no intention of emerging.
I would knit him catnip mice, which he loved and slept over, like a greedy dragon, in his basket. Whenever he climbed out, there would be the passel of them underneath; perhaps he felt more secure in the keeping of them, maybe even cats like receiving gifts.
He always remembered me even as my visits became less frequent as the physical distance from home became greater and greater over the years. Cats hide their age well, he could have been three when we got him or much much older and now he is gone with no way to know his true number of years.
Sometimes I wonder why people like to keep pets—the inevitable torment of finding them cold in a corner…I wonder how that can that be worth it. Although I know he was sick and old, there is just something about the life of a cat that mirrors the life of the keeper. I didn’t cry until I thought of how even in his dotage and failing health he remembered how I used to bring him the catnip as he would knock the carton of it off the shelf when he saw me on my yearly visit. Maybe by human standards I am a terrible person or just an inconsequential one, but I suppose I made a difference to his life. Maybe that is why we keep pets after all, for someone to remember us no matter how small the size of the spirit within. It’s still a spirit. Small things still matter; if not, how else could we keep going on?
