My Cat and i

 

“My Cat and i”

 

Girls are simply the prettiest things 
My cat and i believe
And we’re always saddened
When it’s time for them to leave

We watch them titivating
(that often takes a while)
And though they keep us waiting
My cat & i just smile

We like to see them to the door
Say how sad it couldn’t last
Then my cat and i go back inside
And talk about the past  

by Roger McGough

 

The women being gone, man and cat returned to their companionable silence and their worshipful togetherness. Creatures of habit and ritual, the man was elegant in the blue silk smoking jacket that he wore while imbibing his port and smoking his meerschaum. The brilliantly white Turkish Angora was equally elegant as he savored his nightly caviar. The brothers enjoyed their companionable silence no less than they enjoyed the women’s words and laughter. But no matter how welcome their guests, the women remained guests. 

They were so very charming, though, that man wished he could keep one. Unfortunately, as a kitten, cat had been—to his later objection—neutered at man’s instigation, so anything more than friendship between man and a woman would have seemed unfair. So it was that man stuck to his bachelorhood while mumbling to himself, “A woman is a woman, but a cat is a cat.” When a buddy asked what man meant, man couldn’t bring himself to say that no mere woman could compare to a Turkish Angora.

The women wanted cat and man to visit them sometimes, but cat objected: “Why, oh man, should we go there when we are comfortable here?” When man repeated this to the women, they agreed that, for cat’s sake, the visiting would be one directional. Man felt badly about this, but he and the women realized that while cats are capable of noble deeds there’s not a single mention in recorded history of a cat having inconvenienced himself for the convenience of another.

Man also realized that cats are much like deities and that the first item on every deity’s to-do list is to demand sacrifice. One might think that, having everything, gods wouldn’t make demands, but cat deities do, especially at meal time. A veteran cat-lover, man had schooled himself to be okay with cat’s demands, but he wasn’t okay that cat’s advancing age was making him stiff and causing him to lose his balance. Cat had also observed these changes, but because nothing bad had ever happened to him, he tried to interpret them as a senescent growth spurt. 

For man, seeing cat’s meager jumps, slow runs, and poorly washed posterior was like seeing a runaway 18-wheeler in the rear-view mirror. Man knew that when the flame of cat’s life was extinguished, the flame of his own life would dim. This realization left him gasping for breath because cat was his life. He was thinking about this when he saw cat looking at him with question marks in his eyes. “Pardon me, cat, I must have a touch of indigestion.” When cat said nothing, their companionable silence turned cold and empty.

Death stood so big in man’s thoughts that he sometimes cried in the shower (a facility that cat studiously avoided) in anticipation of cat’s death. He wanted to keep his fear from cat, but this was becoming harder. A few weeks ago, one of the women had asked, “Did you know that ____ died?” It worried man that normally curious cat hadn’t asked what die means. He increasingly saw himself as a parent intent on protecting his child from the knowledge of a coming tragedy. A twelve-year-old cat might be the equivalent of a seventy-year-old human, but no cat has accumulated seventy years of knowledge and experience.

Man felt frantic to break the silence, so he said: “Hey, cat, remember the poem that goes,

“We like to see them to the door
Say how sad it couldn’t last
Then my cat and i go back inside
And talk about the past”?

When cat said nothing, man tried again.

“That’s us, Cat, and what a past it has been! I love you, brother.”