Loss of something familiar

If I had gone before, I could have remembered

Lilacs and green after-noons of May;

(From Sara Teasdale, ‘Late October’)

It is now feeling slightly autumnal writing this; spring has very much bloomed and gone, we have endured summer’s colours wilting over what has been a concerningly parching summer.

Four months now since Cali left us, and for the first time in fourteen years, there was nobody sleeping beneath the lilac this time, where a small indentation of her remains in the grass.

‘What greater gift than the love of a cat?’ asks Dickens, and as someone who has grown up always with at least one nearby, I naturally agree. The love of a cat is one built from patience, trust, and is quietly earned. It is one appreciated on the worst of days, and sometimes when there really is nothing or no-one else.

When we collected a very small kitten-Cali, she was actually watching Coronation Street. She could fit in the palm of my dad’s hand, and I remember printing a picture of her from the computer that weekend to bring into school. I can’t remember exactly which one, but it may well have been similar to the one below.

Cali was something of a good luck charm for me (not just with her calicoed associations), a familiar, often my nurse, therapist, muse, companion and confidante. She saw me through life from eleven to twenty-five – from just before my year six SATs, all my time in secondary school, to beyond – sitting in on my online (lockdown) university exams and waiting at home during my first job. She helped me through many firsts.

It was only towards the end that our roles switched and I was, instead, her nurse. During what was a generally low year of my life, caring for her was one of the only things on my calendar, and with how it/I was, it was a regular cycle of her improving, worsening again, and me convincing myself that each vet trip would be the last one.

A lot of this time was filled with a pre-emptive grief, I suppose, which is why there is a particular emptiness surrounding the actual loss. I often get sad over how I never got a ‘proper’ goodbye, yet I seem to have prepared myself for one on many occasions before.

And, at the same time, a guilt; a feeling I never fully honoured her, partly for how much of a close part of me she was. Like, why do I feel ashamed about spending time now with other cats? Why did it take me so long to write this all down? Am I worried I will forget her?

I’ve found part of my grief is a feeling that I simultaneously have nothing to remember her by, physically, or that there is no full closure, with how quickly it all happened in the end. However, since moving away I have realised I am actually surrounded by reminders of her and seemingly carry parts of her with me every day. Suddenly, the cat hairs on my clothes are no longer a nuisance, and the things I purchased or made with her in mind bear a new significance.

Yet, in the same sense, it is also those small things that crop up occasionally and tend to catch me unprepared, as I don’t think I’m quite used to her being gone. I always used to sign cards to family from me and her, I’ve caught myself still saying I have two cats. I sometimes still expect to see her when I visit home. There’s only one food bowl put out in the kitchen now.

Referring to her in the past tense is also something that still feels unnatural.

She loved to bask in the sun, especially when the garden patio tiles absorbed the heat, and when she needed some shade you would spot her either in the border or beneath the lilac. She was such a gentle, loving, often silly cat, who always knew exactly when you needed her company.

Her trips to the vets dealt her a fair share of battle scars and hairdos, for which we were often reminded of Bagpuss:

The most important
The most beautiful
The most magical
Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world

[…]

Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams
But Emily loved him

For all of the extra time that she gave us (years, weeks, days), I am so grateful.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully commemorate such a special (important, beautiful, magical) cat, but this is at least a start. Jules Verne (I believe) wrote that, ‘Cats come into your house to teach you about affection, they leave to teach you about the loss.’

I don’t think you can ever fully anticipate the feeling of losing a pet, but it does make you appreciate the time you have with them even more.