Second-Hand Cats

I was the first to walk into the hospital room, the first to see the rise of my mother's feet under the grey blanket that covered them. I didn't want to go any further into the room. I didn't want to see her lying there, pale and lifeless, as I had never seen her before. But my feet moved forward almost on their own, my sisters and my Dad following close behind. Her face came into view, and I saw her, tired and weary, her thin gray hair smoothed back no doubt by the hand of one of the nurses who probably loved her. This was a woman who would apologize for inconveniencing anyone while she was having a heart attack.

I felt a bite of anger at the unfairness of how much of her life she had missed because of this damned body. Each time I visited her at home, I was more and more surprised at how much her body had slowed. Everything was a struggle. Walking from room to room would exhaust her, and climbing the stairs was a monumental task. I looked at her beautiful face, lined and aged. It looked so unlike her, the woman I knew her to be. This discarded garment had carried a rare spirit. One that cared for the little creatures and plants, one that wrote novels and poetry, one that could bake bread and clear brush with a chainsaw and carry a half frozen 50 lb. dog probably a kilometer through the bush in knee-deep snow, the trap still hanging from his foot because she couldn't pry it loose. She had torn it out of the frozen ground instead.

No. This body wasn't her.

She had passed away in her sleep. Peacefully. Quietly. No pain, no fear, no struggle. After over 20 years of fighting to stay in a body that seemed determined to squeeze her soul out of it, it was a small gift. It was done. I expect someone came to her that night as she slept, and said 'you can stay and keep going on this merry-go-round of blood tests, and dialysis, and a heart that won't work right...or you can come home with us tonight.'

'What about John? He needs me...' Always thinking of someone else. Of him. She took care of him; it gave her momentum and purpose.

'He will always need you. There will never be a good time for you to leave.' the voice will have said, 'He has his girls. They'll take care of him. He'll be alright, and he'll be home soon, too.' And so she left. And I am happy for her.

But that is her story. My Dad's story just imploded.

I watched him weakly stumble to her bedside and collapse in the chair, sobbing like a child. His callused hands, blackened with decades of engine oil embedded in them, holding his face. We packed up her things, touched her face, and held her hands. My sisters went to deal with the paperwork while I waited outside her room, letting Dad spend some time alone with her. I wasn't sure how it would do much good to ease his pain; what little can five or ten minutes do when you're trying to make peace with the fact that you've just been ripped in half? And there lies this other half that had been with you for 52 years, still and silent on a hospital bed.

The car ride home was a blur. We stopped at the funeral home on the way. Dad sat quietly off to the side. We went over the catalogue of caskets. I saw the simple one in pine, in a medium colonial stain. It was plain, serviceable, affordable, and yet perfectly respectable and nice. Mom would have wanted this one. Instead, my sisters wanted the one with the bronze crosses on the corners, and the plaques portraying the Last Supper. It was very grand and ornate, and a fitting resting place for the body that had carried such a beautiful soul for 71 years. I agreed with them, knowing Mom would not have wanted such extravagance. But funerals aren't really about the deceased, are they? They are for the ones who are left here.

I stayed with Dad for about a week or so. Kleenex boxes were kept all over the house; you never knew when the pain would hit you. You would just ride the waves, let it pass, take a deep breath, and blow your nose. It was like labour pains.

His pain was all-consuming, and he was utterly lost. Watching my father cry was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. He was so deep in his anguish that he cared nothing at all for what the congregation thought as he stood beside her casket wracked with grief, saying a final goodbye before they closed the lid. This was a man whom I had never seen cry in all my 46 years on this earth. To see him this broken and vulnerable was painful beyond expression. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone love someone before with that much devotion. Or purity. In his grief, all pretense was washed away. What was left was an innocent spirit who looked to you for answers, wanting to know why, and just wanting her back.

He talked to me about her. Showed me on Google Maps the places they used to live. We cried together, and I would wrap my arms over him. He confessed he worried that he wouldn't be good enough to get to the place where she was. I prayed so hard for him, for peace and healing. I took advantage of the times he would leave the house for a while, and I would pour out all the pain I could, and cry out loud. During one particularly low spell, I remember feeling warmth on my legs. I looked up and saw that just for a few moments the sun had broken through the dense overcast sky. It warmed her plants there by the window. It felt like a hug.

I tried to keep Dad's routine as much as possible. I fed the woodstove in the cosy living room where Mom spent so much of her time, reading, studying her bible, warming her feet which were always cold, her lap serving as a perch for one of her cats. I cooked him his breakfast in the crusty, well seasoned cast iron pan - bacon and eggs with toast and fried potatoes - like Mom would do for him every morning. Until she went to the hospital a month and half ago. When Dad was sad when he discovered some stale, uneaten cookies left in the cookie jar - the last batch she ever made just for him, out of love, because she was diabetic and couldn't eat such things - I made him another batch, following her recipe as exactly as I could. I would put on her raggedy red plaid shawl with the fringes, and a pair of boots to go out and feed her flock of pigeons. Dad told her not to feed those 'shit-hawks' or she'd never get rid of them. And now here we are. The one with the white feathers on his head and tail is still there every morning.

I put Dad's pills in the cup by the coffee maker for him in the mornings. I sorted out their tax papers, feeling a little ashamed at how Mom regularly tithed her full 10% to her church, even on a fixed income. I called insurance companies, banks, credit card companies, pharmacies and the vet. The receptionist at the vet made me cry when I told her that Mom had passed away. She was very upset. I had called to get a refill of Holly Berry's thyroid medication.

My Dad heartily dislikes this inconvenient cat. He's allergic to cats. And yet I think the record number that Mom ever had at once was 13. Love Mom, love her cats. Her love of all animals, particularly the hard luck cases, was part of the package with her. Stray dogs had a way of finding her doorstep, and they were brought in and fed. If an owner wasn't found, then she had a new dog. That was all there was to it. She couldn't bear sending any animal to a shelter and an uncertain future. She would feed the feral cat colonies behind the shop in the village, or at the township dump, freezing rain or blistering heat. She never missed a day, because they counted on her. Until someone eventually either poisoned or shot them. In any case, they all suddenly disappeared.

I've never bought a cat before. Our cats were always second-hand. Some were adorable, and others...not so much. Bobby the half-feral dump cat would claw you as soon as look at you. Which was a shame because he was a gorgeous Maine coon type that looked like a giant teddy bear. Mitty, Cowboy and Bearcat were polydactyls. Six-toed cats. I thought that was something quite magical until the vet explained that it was likely due to inbreeding.

"He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer," she said of Bearcat, "But he sure is a lovey-dovey."

Thomas was a cat that we apparently "stole" from one of my schoolmates. He was a stray that they fed, but I guess he liked Mom's cooking better, so he stayed with us. That was in high school. He was a handsome big tom, an orange tabby with puffy cheeks. I believe he lived to over 25 years old. I'd come back to visit Mom with the kids and hear a god-awful 'MRREAAAARW' at my feet. "Thomas!" I'd say, "Oh my god, you're still alive!?" He truly was a decrepit-looking train wreck in his advanced age - unkempt fur, skinny, sagging skin and sunken eyes. But Mom insisted he was fine; he still ate like a horse. He was sometimes confused, but that's what happens when you get old. You don't give up on an animal just because they get old, she said, or because things get hard.

And then there was Josie. Mom found her as a kitten among the other feral cats, badly injured with injuries to her face and skull. The vet said she probably had been hit by a car. The vet took her in free of charge to treat her, which I thought was very good of them. Her treatment required surgery, which Mom couldn't afford. When she was healing well enough to go home, Mom's house was the obvious choice. Who else would want a cat with a face like that? She couldn't close her mouth all the way, her tongue always hung out, she drooled, and her fractured skull had shifted her eye socket, making her cockeyed, so that she had to turn her head to look at you. She snored when she slept, and snorted as she ate. Her sense of balance had been badly affected, so she staggered a lot, and was confused most of the time. But she was healthy, and purred loudly when you petted her. She was so full of love.

The vet had nicknamed her Jaws, because of her appearance. Mom was a pretty indignant at that. She thought that was awful to name this beautiful little soul with a disparaging reference to her accident. So she renamed her Josie.

I could write volumes about all of the pets who have passed through our doors. The ones I mentioned are all gone now. Sitting on Mom's lap as we speak no doubt. But her house was never without animals in it. Dad doesn't need the added stress of taking care of the animals, particularly the cats. He's keeping the two dogs. My youngest sister took Kirby, her holy terror of a cat. He belonged to her anyway. My middle sister took Fatty home with her. Again, it was originally her cat, too.

That left Holly Berry. I haven't brought her home with me yet, but apparently this is now my cat. This is what happens when you don't call dibs on one of the non-defective cats first. My husband is not a fan of cats either. Mostly just not a fan of having a box of animal feces in the house. We're spoiled with our current cat, because he thinks he's a dog and goes outside via the dog door. To shit in my vegetable garden. But the reality was becoming inescapable: I was about to get another cat.

Mom had gotten Holly Berry and her mother Babe while Holly was just a kitten. They lived in an old shed across from the public school. We suspect the school kids must've gotten hold of her and mauled her to the point of traumatizing her. She was always skittish and avoided being touched as though it was almost painful. She has hyperthyroid, and has to be given her pill twice a day in her food, and only feed her small amounts or she just yaks it back up. Loudly. Speaking of loud, while this cat is alive, I will never sleep in again a day in my life. She gets up at daybreak and starts howling to be fed. I mean actual screaming and howling. If Holly Berry was a human, she would sound like Fran Drescher, or maybe Gilbert Gottfried. And like her mother Babe, she is beginning to show signs of dementia. She will become afraid and confused at night, screaming loudly because she thinks she's all alone. Perhaps she's afraid of the dark.

Dad tolerates her, but constantly berates her.

"I don't know why your mother put up with that stupid thing." he said. "What a useless unit that cat is." Then he'd carry on complaining about her litter box and her howling, saying he ought to just do away with her.

"Right." I said, "And you'd better be ready for an earful when you see Mom next, because she's not expecting that cat to show up for quite a while yet. You know what she would say." I squared my gaze at him like she would: "That's a perfectly good cat. There's nothing wrong with that cat, you just leave her be."

As the week wore on, and our routines became more settled, I found myself trying on Mom's life. In her absence, I can no longer ask her about her life; all I can do is sit in her chair, wear her shawl, cook in her kitchen, and interact with her animals. Holly was happier, now that Kirby was no longer there to torment her constantly. She would even play occasionally, late at night. Shredding paper or batting at the houseplants. She would come close while I was feeding her and I would sneak in a pet or two.

I would sit on the kitchen floor beside her as she ate, waiting until she was finished. When she looked up at me, I held out my finger towards her. To my amazement, she butted her head against it, enjoying the attention.

I didn't want to ruin this by overdoing things. I gave her a light, gentle scratch on top of the head and walked away, leaving her purring. So I kept it up. I talked to her, cooing at her what a lovely good girl she is, how she's just misunderstood. I began to see what my Mom saw in Holly Berry, this otherwise horribly inconvenient antique cat. She's very much a senior cat, and likely won't be with me for very long. But as I rambled about the house as Mom would, talking to her animals the way she always did, holding whole conversations with them, I suddenly understood where the depth of her compassion came from.

She probably considered herself to be a horribly inconvenient person, holding Dad back from being able to travel or take better jobs because he needed to be there to take care of her dialysis. Constant trips back and forth to appointments. Long days in hospital emergency department waiting rooms. An endless avalanche of pills.

She knew what it was like to be inconvenient. She knew that it wasn't her fault. I think at some level, loving and appreciating Holly Berry was a way of loving herself. Of forgiving herself for "taking up so much space" in our lives. I know it's absurd, because we all know better: there is no way that Mom was ever a burden, and my father considered it an honour to care for her every need. But this was inside her own world, where the doubts grow.

So she showered Holly with as much love as she would tolerate. She took her to the vet faithfully, getting her the right medications, dutifully changing her litter and cleaning up any barf. Because to do this for this faultless, sweet little creature - annoying as she might be - was to ritually appreciate and love and forgive herself.

Now Holly and I have become pretty good friends. She still won't sleep on the bed with me, and she won't sit on my lap. But she does enjoy being gently petted now - a real breakthrough - and even tolerates being picked up and snuggled. Gently. Briefly. I'll scoop her up and bury my face in her soft black and brown fur. I'll smooth my hand over her narrow, frail shoulders. I look into her beautiful green eyes, lined in white. I listen to her purr loudly. And I hear her meow at me with those fingernail-on-a-chalkboard pipes of hers.

And my heart swells and breaks a little for her. And for Mom. So I will take good care of Holly, and love her as much anyone can love a cat, as a way to continue loving my Mom.

Because she's a perfectly good cat.