The cat is ill. We, the cat, myself, and a friend with a car, have been to the emergency vet because cats are always ill on Sundays. The fifteen minute consultation cost £240. There were antibiotics, painkillers, and instructions. I nodded and kept my voice steady. I had prepared for the worst. It wasn’t the worst, at least not the first part.
The cat is now wearing a cone of shame. The cat, a fourteen year old tabby, is struggling with the cone. She is off balance, out of kilter. She walks along the edges of walls and gets trapped by skirting boards, the corner of a bench, the edge of a filing cabinet. She sticks there until something within her prompts her to reverse.
There is a mouse deep within the kitchen cupboard. The cupboard with the gap in the kickboard. The cat knows the mouse is there. The cat is trying to get through the half inch gap in the kickboard while wearing the cone of shame.
The cat will not lie down. To lie down is to admit defeat. When the cat is not at the kitchen cupboard, the cat is sitting in the hall, staring at a blank wall. The cone of shame is rimmed with Gourmet Gold cat food. The cat will not allow me to clean the cone.
The cat is learning to eat Gourmet Gold off a saucer in the cone of shame. The cone hooks onto the saucer and the cat arches her neck, pulls. The cat licks the food to the edge of the saucer. I sit on the floor beside the cat and push the food under the cone with a clean finger.
The cat must wear the cone of shame for seven days. Or maybe ten.
The cat is not normally permitted Gourmet Gold. Or Gourmet anything. But the cat has lost a half a kilo in weight. The cat has not been eating as she should. The cat did not want Felix for two days so the cat is having Gourmet Gold. When old cats lose weight, it can mean their kidneys are failing. The cat will have bloods taken on Thursday to check for this. I cannot imagine life without this cat.
The cat and I go way back. 2007. There were four of us at the beginning. Myself and my partner, this cat and another cat. They were kittens, only seven weeks old. We went to Broxburn to collect them in a City Car Club. We picked out the black first one, (we named him Jack) from half a dozen that all looked the same. He had Tipp-Ex on a paw. They all had Tipp-Ex on different parts of their anatomy.
That’s how I tell them apart, the woman said. The woman said she went round the local farms, asked farmers if there were any kittens that they were about to drown and then offered £5 each for them. She then sold them on for £40. Was that true? Who knows. There were certainly feral when we got them home.
We went for one and came back with two in a cardboard box. Our pirates, we said to each other laughing.
This cat is called Betty. When she was wee her ears were as big as her face. She was more pixie than cat. She was always brighter than Jack. Always one step ahead. Three weeks ahead in developmental terms. And always in better health. When they were big enough to go out, they would trot downstairs to the back green, and climb the trees that overlooked the Forth. There they hunched, tight in the wind, staring out to sea.
Our pirates.
In summer evenings, Betty would leap for moths in amongst the bushes between our garden and the promenade. Jack was never much of a leaper. He was pliable and prone to falling and stealing.
I can’t remember which came first. The chopping down of the trees or the end of the relationship. Either way, at some point it was just the three of us and the cats didn’t fancy the garden without the trees, so they hung about inside, and occasionally got out the windows and strolled along the guttering four storeys up.
The cats were there after I was run over by the lorry. The cats were there when I was stuying Spanish with the Open University. The cats were there after a bad day at work, a good day at work, a long cycle, the death of a friend, another death of a friend. The death of my father.
Cat sitters came and went, cat illnesses came and went, and a lump appeared on Jack’s back. It was small, the size of an acorn. But I knew. I was in bed when I found it, the cat on my knees, and I cried for days. I couldn’t bear to lose that cat. The vet was kind and pragmatic. We decided that treatment, aggressive and probably pointless, wasn’t fair. I can’t remember how long he lived after that. Perhaps a year, maybe more. The lump grew so big that he was lopsided when he ran. He was a hunchback of a cat. It never bothered him and I got used to it. Until the tumour burst and it was over in a matter of days.
I wasn’t brave enough to manage the death of that cat. My mother did it and I wept and wept in a cheap hotel in Bolivia. The cat was put down in the room I’m sitting in now. Even years later, there are tears over that cat. The vet and the nurse took him away and later my mother picked up his ashes. A small plain cardboard box with a posy of dried flowers in a pretty bow. It was two years before the neighbour’s children and I scattered the ashes in the shared garden and planted a peony tree above him.
Then we were two. The cat and I. Me and the cat. Betty didn’t seem to miss Jack. He’d bullied her for ten years. Jumping on her in the litter tray. Stealing her food. Pushing her off a favourite cushion. Demanding my lap (no room for two). It was domestic violence, feline style and, although I’d done my best, I was unable to stop all of it. I was complicit in his abuse.
I fall apart when the cat is ill. I catastrophise (no pun intended). I follow the cat around studying every move. I imagine cancer, kidney failure, bladder problems. I pet, I stroke, I massage with the Zoom Groom. And yet, this time, I allowed the cat to get too thin. Why didn’t I spot this? Why did I not do something when I noticed her waist getting more and more pronounced?
The cat has cheered up. She has eaten two tins of Gourmet Gold. She runs towards me when I wave the purple Zoom Groom. But on Thursday we will go to the vet. We will talk about her weight. I will pay for the bloods. And I will wait for the results. And cry. Because the cat cannot live forever.
I am far too attached to the cat.
SANDERLINGS 