The Animal

My old cat. She is 18. She sits next to me while I am checking my phone. She is not asking for attention or saying anything. She just wants to be near. Maybe she knows something. When my eyes meet hers, I feel she does; but we have covered enough ground that we don't need to talk. Having her near is comforting.

She was born to a stray cat in my back yard, in a different house, in a different state, in a different life. I took the whole cat family to the local shelter and kept this one kitten. She was the most active of her little brothers and sisters. She caught my eye. I liked her.

When I brought her home, I soon realized that I had taken her away from her mother too early. She cried every night. They didn't tell me at the shelter. They didn't tell me at the vet's office. Little did I know.

But she ate. I fed her canned soft cat food. She was very resilient. And so she grew.

Her favorite things were to fish for small objects, like rubber bands, in the kitchen drawer, and to play with them, to push things off the counter, and to take cherries out of a bowl. She took them by the stem, one by one, and arranged them on the counter in some order that made sense only to her. Once, she took a grape out of a bowl, played with it, then put it back in the bowl, and walked away.

The first time she knocked the Christmas tree down was hilarious.
We moved from one place to another, changed cities and states. Her most active years were spent mostly outdoors, hunting for birds and frogs. One frog came into the house seeking shelter and hopped up the refrigerator like it was a tree. The cat was just as shocked as me. We looked at each other speechless.

I used to find dead lizards everywhere. The day we moved to another house, I started opening the boxes, and sure enough, those lizards were there, too.

Time went, we got older, me and especially the cat. I spent a lot of time living by myself, as mine was a commuter marriage. The cat was my only permanent companion. I told her my dreams in the morning. I don't know how much of that she remembers.

One night, she fell down three flights of stairs, straight onto a concrete floor. While falling, she hit her head, so she didn't land well. She was sick for a while after that and hid inside my spring box to avoid being given medication. I lifted the mattress, extracted her from the spring box, gave her the medication, and let her go back.

I had plenty of bite and scratch marks on my hands and arms over the years. Ours was a love and hate relationship. One time I yelled at her so bad that she ran away. I think it was when she chewed up my brand new trouser suit. Some hours later, I found her still hiding in the dark room. She looked so guilty. She said, "I am sorry." I said, "Me too."

Recently I was reading about a former Amazon engineer who is apparently developing a mobile app to translate cat meows into human language. I don't think I need one anymore. We understand each other just fine.

We don't talk much these days though. She is too old. She mostly sleeps and wakes up to eat and use the litter box. If she talks, it is mostly to complain. She is arthritic. Sometimes she asks to help her downstairs. I carry her down. She cannot really groom herself anymore, and my husband, the one true love of her life, brushes her until she shows that she had enough.

But in the evening, before bedtime, she comes to my side and sits near me, looking down, saying nothing. Her silence is so human. In those moments, I feel that I mean something in her life after all, and I hold my breath and try not to move. But no matter how careful I am, she eventually decides that she had enough of my company and leaves. After all these years, I still cannot keep her from doing whatever she wants. She is the queen. I hope she favors me, but I can never be sure.

I divorced, remarried, moved, traveled, changed jobs, lost people, found new friends, threw wild parties, spent cold winter nights alone, thought so many silly thoughts, wrote so many poems, even sillier, played the piano and sang, imagining an audience... She was always there. My old animal pal.

In fact, I nicknamed her "the animal." Even though her full name is Her Highness Helen of Norman, for Norman, Oklahoma, her birthplace.

Christmas is coming. I do not need to worry about the security of my Christmas tree this time. But she might enjoy looking at some of the ornaments. After all, they are for family.