"I Miss My Cat"
by Kit Knightly
"He was in a tree the first time I saw him. It wasn’t a big tree, but he wasn’t a big cat. Barely more than a kitten, really, stubby-tailed and squeaky. The branch was no more than three feet off the ground, but he was pretty sure he was stuck. In the end he figured it out. He was very brave.
The next time I saw him, I threw him a piece of ham. He was already my cat by then, I just didn’t know it yet. He was young enough and sleek enough and bright-eyed enough that I assumed he had an owner. A recent kitten just now being allowed out on his own and getting used to exploring his territory. I was wrong; he was a street-born cat looking for a home. And he’d found it.
By the third or fourth time he came around, I’d started putting milk or scraps in a saucer for him. One day, after placing his food bowl in the garden, I looked out the window and saw him sitting on the path staring at the back door, waiting for me. I went outside, he meowed loudly and led me back to his bowl. There was a large slug in it, eating his food. He sat, big eyes spilling concern, looking from me to the slug and back. He meowed again.
This was the first time he ever directly asked for my help. It might seem small but it lives large in my memory, because it shows the place I had taken up in his cat-mind. There were some problems – very, very few you understand – that cats can’t solve. That’s when you ask the giant. You can trust him to help.
Trust is the keyword with animals, I think. Maybe especially cats. When they trust you, you feel… honored. Duty-bound to respect the responsibility. To be clear, I didn’t consider myself to have a cat at this point. Owned or not, stray or not, he was just a neighbor I did favors for, not a pet. I didn’t want a pet. There were certain, definitive limitations designed to prevent his acquisition of pet status.
First iteration: He only ever ate in the garden, never in the house. But then it rained, and that was the end of rule one.
Second iteration: He could only eat in the back hall, and then only if it was raining. But then he followed me into the kitchen, and sat with patient green eyes the size of soccer balls glowing up at me while I put his food together. That was the end of rule two.
Third iteration: He was allowed in the house, but only in the kitchen…or, fine, only downstairs at absolute most. Then, one day, I walked into my bedroom and saw him asleep on my bed. A little black puddle curled up in the sun, not a care in the world. I tiptoed out of the room. I hadn’t even known he was in the house. I don’t know if it was the first time he’d slept there, but I suspect not. Anyway, that was the end of rule three.
Two days later, I found him asleep in an armchair in the living room. At this point, I still didn’t consider him to be my cat. I recognize, with hindsight, I was in denial.
We developed a routine. For a whole summer, I would get up early, go downstairs and open the back door. I could see the little black shape eagerly hopping down from his perch on the garden bench as soon as the keys jangled. A sinuous black blur through rippled glass. He would eat, then leave. The door would stay open all day, rain or shine, he would come and go as he wished. I would shut the door after dark, but only if he wasn’t around (because I didn’t want him to see me shut the door and take it as a rejection). He’d be waiting for me to open it the next morning, without fail.
Somehow, I still didn’t think he was my cat. It was the cat flap that sealed it, I think.October rolled around, and two days of shivering in the wind took leaving the back door open all day off the table. I had a cat flap installed, spent twenty minutes or so teaching him how to use it, and that was that. I had finally admitted what he had clearly known for some time and what any observing third party would have concluded in five minutes – he lived here now. This was his home.
After that his influence spread. Small blue mice appeared everywhere. Then jingly balls distributed themselves under all the furniture. He took ownership of many of my belongings. The table under the window quickly became “his table” in the parlance of the house. It was joined by “his blanket”, “his cushion” and “his chair”. The only items of furniture he seemed uninterested in possessing were those pieces bought specifically for his use, none of which he much cared for.
Not that he didn’t pull his weight, you understand. He was more than just a well-fed house guest, he paid his rent in regular contributions of very scared mice and very dead birds. I helped, his eyes would say. And he did. In lots of ways. He would often sit all day with any member of the family who fell ill. When I had surgery he sat on the couch with me for hours every day, donating energy to my healing.
If there were strangers or thunder or fireworks, he would take up a sentry position to guard the house. If it was a big threat he would enlist my help. We’d guard together. His ears twitching at every sound, my calm demeanour and open soduko belying how seriously I took the danger.
More seriously, he helped me work. Writing about the false reality of the modern media is not easy and it is not fun. You spend half your time feeling like a lunatic and the other feeling like a killjoy.
The “black pill” is a taint, not a choice. A syndrome whose symptoms worsen over time. A whispering at the back of the brain dropping grey filters over your eyes. You don’t want to be hopeless, but sometimes…
Sometimes being “awake” isn’t easy. I’ve been awake for a long time. I’m tired. My cat helped with that. You walk away from the computer, you sit in the sun and scratch his ears. He purrs and nuzzles. Restorative.
"Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.”
- Charles Bukowski, "On Cats"
It’s almost a cliché to say that animals ground you, but it’s true. They connect you to reality, not just physically but temporally. People spend a lot of time outside of now. Angry about what should be, sad about what could be, scared of what might be. Sit with a cat and that goes away; there’s only what is. He was my earth wire to the present.
Then, one day two months ago, he went out and didn’t come back. Yet, anyway. Because this isn’t an obituary. Underline that. I’m not grieving…I’m worrying. Cats come back. Browse the missing cat forums or Facebook groups and you’ll see plenty of cats just turning up after months or even years. That’s especially true of cats like mine. He’s a male, he’s not neutered. He could be off anywhere doing anything…or off anywhere doing one thing. When kitten season is over, he might just saunter in like nothing happened.
I looked over my shoulder at the cat flap as I wrote those words. I do that a lot. I’ve been out looking for him a lot, too. Walking fields and footpaths, shaking treats and clicking my tongue at bushes. I stopped worrying about looking eccentric about halfway through the second day.
I posted flyers with my phone number all over the neighbourhood and only got one crank call, a small miracle in itself. The neighbors are nice, many of them know him. Some used to feed him and gave him nicknames. They speak of him fondly and show me pictures they took of him playing in their gardens with their cats. There is a cat who lives near the church that looks a lot like mine. Two more by the river, another just across the road from them.
I get a lot of calls from people who saw them. It’s nice that they try to help. Everything is harder now. I worry. I feel resigned. I worry. I dream about him coming home and wake up in the middle of a gradual slide from relief into reality. Smile fading when I look over to the empty cushion where he used to sleep. His cushion. Waiting for him to come home, as long as it takes. I miss my cat."
This was originally posted on my SubStack, a new space for my non-OffG writing. I wanted to feature it here because maybe more people thinking about him will bring him home.
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