3 posts tagged “cat”

I miss Meggs. The house still seems somehow empty without him.

Mum doesn't want to get another cat, because what would happen to him once me and Viv move out?

She said, maybe we can get a dog. For her, so she won't be alone when I move overseas and take my little munchkins with me.

That would be nice, I think.

I don't think I hear him purring when I walk down the hallway at night anymore.
I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
The dogs are finally eating well and not being depressed. But every time I reach into the cupboard to get their dinner, I find cans of cat food that are never going to be eaten ...

"Wake up Steph. Please. The cat's unconscious, and he's dying."
Tears sliding down her face. Cold shiver down my spine.
He lay on the sofa like he always does. Did. Left wrist curled under his head, right arm stretched out in front. I knelt down beside him, quietly. He didn't move. Mum fondled his ears, just like we always d... did.
He didn't notice. He didn't move. "His heartbeat is so faint ..." Her heartbroken whisper broke something in me and I cried then, as I stroked that familiar line; across his forehead, over his ear, down his neck. Just the way I did every day, walking down the drive to find him waiting patiently for me. Every soft hair ingrained indelibly on my memory.
I checked his chest one last time; there was no familiar beat there now. For an almost frantic second I waited, waited ...
"Is he gone?"
And I had to nod. And we held each other, and we wept so hard and so long that the world changed. How could there even be a world for us without him in it? He was one of us, you know. One of the family. Even as I type this, I can hardly see the keyboard for the tears, because I can't imagine life without him, and now I have to live through it.
It wont be the same.
It will never be the same without his comfortable presence.
Mum stroked his ears one last time and they sprang back into place, neatly, just as they had before. She let out an involuntary whimper. "I keep thinking I can see him breathing ..." And I could to, a trick of our minds so unwilling to say goodbye. So we stayed with him for a while, just sat there, wrapped him in a blanket and wrapped ourselves in memories.
We first saw him in the vet clinic up the road. We had just mentioned that we were looking for a cat, and the nurse hesitated then said "...well, there's a cat who's just come in for his shots, and they said just now that they might think of rehoming him ... would you like to come and see him?" The question that would shape our lives. 
He had a quiet dignity about him. He didn't throw himself at us, but when we picked him up and held him he just melted into our laps - he was so big that my sister and I had to sit side-by-side so he could lie across us - and he purred, louder and louder.
I still hear it, echoing in my ears.
It was two weeks before we could take him home, because we went to central Australia. When we went to their house, he was huddled in the corner, miserable. My heart broke to see such a noble spirit reduced to that.
He had been a wild cat, they told us. They already had two cats, so it wasn't too much trouble to put out a bowl of food for him too. It had taken a whole year before he trusted them enough to come inside. After he was desexed, though, he settled down so much that he was an almost perfect housecat - except that he hated their other cats, and the other cats liked him only in the way that a bully likes flushing the head of a little kid in the toilet.
Not that they were nasty cats. In fact, they were very sweet with people. And I love them, because it was because of them that we met Meggs, because of them that we took him home.
He walked straight into his box, even though, as we discovered later, he had a phobia against them. He wanted to be rescued. He wanted to be our cat.

Everybody admired him. "Oh!" they would cry. "He's such a handsome cat." And so he was.
He was beautiful.

I love the lines around his eyes. We said it was his make-up, as if he was vain ... but he never was.
I love his eyebrow-whiskers.
I love the patterns on his face, and his soft fur, and his round feet.
When you looked into his eyes at night, they shone red and green both at once, deep swirling mysteries of eyes, as if you were looking into infinity. You could drown in eyes like that. Perhaps I did.

He liked to help us with the gardening. Whenever we went outside, he would follow, murmuring pleasantly under his breath. We didn't garden as much as he liked, so he took himself out and made hollows in the grass under the flowering trees, so that he could watch the birds come and go. He never caught them, though. He only wanted to watch. When the trees weren't in bloom, he would sit in the kitchen and watch the quail in the aviary for hour apon hour. Occasionally they got too tempting, and he leapt at them. It made a very distinctive crash, and entertained our dinner guests immensely, but he never learned.

He slept on the foot of my bed most nights. My sister and I shared a bunk bed. I slept on the bottom for a while, but then dad built a set of steps so that I could have my own top bed back and he could still get up and down. The house was his, and we were his, and so (within a fairly short space of time) were the neighbours.
We discovered a few years later exactly how wide his range was - three houses down the street, two houses up the street, and even the blocks over our back fence. All of them knew his name (how, I will never know) and most of them fed him. No wonder he never lost weight! Our big fat garfield cat... 

He treated the arrival of Merry the way he treated most things - with stoic tolerance and the seemingly infinite patience (except when dinner was concerned!) which we loved him for. And he needed it, because she changed a lot of things. Merry shared my room, so Meggs had to sleep on Viv's bed from then on, and so he became her cat. He had to yowl really loud for dinner from then on! But she loved him to bits, maybe even more than me and mum did - and that's saying a lot. He was the object of endless sketches and countless hundreds of photos. She scratched him in just the right spots, and she called him Master, the Ruler of the Universe and Everything.
I just called him Cat. He didn't seem to mind too much.

We had always known he was as much like a dog as a cat, but with competition I think he sometimes felt he had something to prove. He would follow us on walks sometimes, right up to the edge of his territory, and when I trained the dogs he would come to watch, so I taught him some tricks to stop him feeling left out. He secretly loved it, even came and asked me to train him, but if he ever thought I was getting too happy with him he would quickly stop and walk away, just to put me in my place.

My grandpa loved him. They shared a soul, I think. Calm, loving, and rather fond of good food.
Is it wrong that I cried more over my cat than my grandpa?
I loved my grandpa so, so much, but Meggs was more than family. He did what no-one had been able to do for me before - he was there. Always, without fail. I knew that when I came home from school he would be there. I knew that when I was sad I could hold him and he would be there with me all night, a warm and fluffy ward against the monsters who hide in the dark. And I would trip over him in the kitchen, and in the coridoor, and when I walked into the door, because he always wanted to be right there with us.

Mum had to go to school for a meeting. Viv didn't know yet.
So I went with her. I found her, sitting on a bench with her folder on her lap. And I took her in my arms, and I just held her.
Her face went deathly pale, her eyes wide and searching desperately.
"Meggs passed away this morning in his sleep."
She turned, reached into her folder, and pulled out a page - one last picture of the Master.
And slowly, slowly, she crumbled. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and the girl who never cries sat there and wept, and wept.
And we cried together on the cold wooden bench, and we watched the magpies and wondered how they dared to go on when the world had just broken.
But somehow, it was right. Life moving onwards, always onwards.
He loved to watch the birds.
We buried him in his favourite spot, and planted flowers all around his grave, so the birds will still go to visit him.
Mum asked if we wanted to say anything, but we were all crying too hard.
Finally, I spoke.
"He was a good cat," I said.
And somehow, that was enough ...

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