I lost a friend yesterday.
He was the sweetest little guy--affectionate, friendly, undemanding. Truly one of those friends you remember fondly and never the opposite way--there weren't any bad days with this friend, ever. Of course, he wasn't human.
His name was Mickey. He was half Maine Coon cat, half something else, maybe a lot of somethings else. It didn't matter. He bore the characteristics of the Maine Coon--the gentle temperament, the gurgling meow, the softest, thickest fur you've ever touched, and a tail that was almost as big as his body. He had huge paws that gently tapped your face or leg when he wanted affection, and that was a lot. He had intelligent green eyes that looked right at your face. And when he was sitting on your lap, he would stare at your face. If you said "give me a kiss," he'd bend his big soft head toward your lips and give the tiniest little lick--every single time.
Unfortunately, he also shared another characteristic of the Maine Coon: a tendency toward heart problems. When I found him, it looked like he was sleeping. There wasn't a mark on him, not a hair out of place. His ears were still perked--his whiskers still alert and pointed. His mouth was closed, and his eyes slightly open, but the pupils were fixed and dilated, and he was cold and stiff already.
Death had come in the night and taken my friend, suddenly, and without warning.
I buried him wrapped in a crocheted afghan made by a friend for my wedding. Mickey had outlasted that marriage, three houses, the loss of other friends, and much of my sorrow; until his death, he'd never even been sick a day in his life. He was my rock, and my soft, sweet buddy--when he laid on my bed with me, he took up half the room.
He's not the first cat I've lost. My first, an all-black, declawed male, by the name of Iago, died in 1990. I had Iago for seventeen years. He became ill, was in great pain, and I had to have him put down to end his horrible suffering. I won't ever forget that day--my grief over his loss is still fresh. But I could not let him go on dying by degrees; he could not eat, or drink, and he moaned constantly. The kindest thing to do was to help him go, yet I still feel guilty and ashamed that I had to be the instrument of his demise. Mickey had none of that suffering, and his death is a mystery to me. Why him? Why now? I will never know. Both Iago and Mickey were with me a long time. They became my friends, they became my family. They outlasted both. And they gave far more than they ever took. I have nothing but good memories from them, but that's all I have.
Then there was Burgess. Burgess came to me as a kitten someone had thrown from a car. His nose was broken, his tooth was loose, he had ear mites so bad his ears were hard and solid from the debris. It took me days of gentle bathing, with this tiny ginger kitten asleep on my shoulder, and many Q-tips soaked in baby oil and medicine to get rid of his mites. After that, because it was such a soothing treatment I gave him, he loved the bathroom, and warm water, and would often play in the sink, perhaps remembering his rescue and the quiet times we had as I treated him. He would purr gently when I stroked his ears, as if to thank me. But that's probably just my own vanity talking.
Burgess was an adventurous, intelligent, and quirky cat. He didn't see the use of screens for doors or windows, because they kept him inside and disallowed his re-entry. So he would systematically reduce any screen I put in to shreds, so he could come and go as he pleased. I finally had to put hardware cloth, strong steel, over my screens to keep them from letting in all of Nature. Burgess, of course, saw nothing wrong with that--and so we clashed constantly. But I loved him anyway. He and Mickey used to raid the catnip container. I found both of them, once, dead drunk on the floor in the middle of the living room. Burgess had discovered a way to get the top off the plastic container, and had enlisted Mickey's help, and the two of them had gone through an entire carton of catnip themselves. The empty container and the two insensible addicts were asleep on the floor when I found them. All I could do was laugh. They barely blinked.
Mickey never lost his taste for catnip, either. Every night at ten o'clock PM, he would find the jar of catnip, knock it to the ground from wherever I had put it (thinking in my folly he wouldn't notice it high on that shelf!) and then meow in his little gurgling way until I opened it for him. Without Burgess's strong claws and skill at breaking and entering, he could not do it for himself.
Burgess is gone now, too. Disappeared in the care of another human, not wise enough to his roaming ways, or maybe he was and just couldn't prevent Burgess's defection. I couldn't blame anyone for losing him--I knew him well enough to know he was too curious and too adventurous to keep indoors. He had walked the Wild Road too many times to be caged. I hope he's having just as much fun as he always did when he stayed with me.
Then there was Koschka. He was only two when a heart attack claimed him too, one July morning in the front garden. Unlike Mickey, he'd had a strange "attack" the day before--became very still and wouldn't respond to my calling him, or touching him. It was odd--I had to pick him up before he would move, and I didn't understand what had happened; after I put him down in the house, he began acting normally again, but he didn't want to eat--very unusual for him. Next morning when I called him to breakfast, he crawled out from under the front porch, laid down among the marigolds, and died. That fast. That suddenly. The thread of his life cut with sharp scissors, and blown away on the summer breeze. I'd barely gotten to know him--he was with me such a short while--but I miss him anyway.
Iago, intellent and loyal. Burgess, free-spirited and quirky. Koschka, talky little baby, not yet finished. Mickey, soft, sweet and affectionate.
Their soft paws and their sleek fur and their intelligent eyes and their sweet, plaintive meows are still in my mind. They are all still alive in my heart. Somewhere, along the Wild Road, they roam, hunting small mammals or birds, sniffing at the breeze that brings news from afar. Their ears are forward, listening. Their green and gold eyes narrow and widen, and their whiskers twitch in anticipation of some new adventure or some fresh idea. The wind carries their cries to me at night, when I lay down to sleep, and I imagine I am stroking their fur, spooning out their food, rubbing my finger under the lines of their jaws as they mark me as their property; they have claimed sovereignity over my heart.
I will leave the door open, the screen can stay shredded, and there is catnip growing in my garden next to the tulips. I will plant forget-me-nots over the mounds of earth in my yard, marked with stones upon which names are scratched, beneath the weeping willow tree and the lilac. I will tend to the survivors, my other cats Sammy and Ash, and my elderly, blind dog Echo. And I will never get over wondering why such joy and such unconditional happiness is only given to us for such a short span of time.
Goodbye my friends. Hunt well. Be happy. Be alive somewhere, even if only in my memories.
I will not forget.
Photos from top to bottom: Burgess and Mickey, Koschka and Ash, Echo and Sammy. Photos of Iago do not exist digitally, since he left us before the technology arrived.
