My Simon, my white ghost, my sun-seeking companion left this world Monday afternoon. As always, my heart breaks more viscerally when my cats die – than even the humans who’ve lighted my way. In their last days, especially in their last moments, I am desperate to speak “cat” and to tell them of my love, thank them for theirs, ask forgiveness for all the times I didn’t divine what they most needed. I know only to employ human words to share my heart. And tears and touch.
I can never really fathom how any nonhuman species accepts us, moves into our lives and trusts us with theirs. It is the stuff of miracles. And so so often, we abuse that trust with our conviction that we are owed the lives of other beings. That they exist for our comfort, our hunger, our curiosity, our experiments, our loneliness.
Simon spent the first decade of his life in another family’s home. Relinquished ostensibly in the face of allergies. But already named. And so I began our time together wanting cat words so that Simon could tell me his routines, his preferences, his troubles. To know what he was experiencing. From a home to a room full of cages and a series of humans sizing him up for possible adoption. Vulnerable, scared.
Whatever the look of quiet desperation in his eyes—there at the Humane Society—Simon made his fear and displeasure known ever so loudly the moment I put him in his carrier. As we crossed through the building and settled him in the car, the vet tech kept murmuring, “nothing wrong, just a cat going home” to keep other employees from rushing over. Simon yowled until I opened the carrier here – where he could run free.
At which point, he made a beeline for me. I’d collapsed on the sofa to take a breath. And for the next 30 minutes or so, Simon climbed across my lap again and again – hunting for a fist, an elbow, my nose, anything solid to head butt. Purring loudly. I took all that to mean that he appreciated his new home, that he felt safe.
But then, after a couple laps around the house, he unerringly found the back of the closet and a little footstool that my dad had made in high school shop class – and curled up beneath it. Short of regular litter box trips, the occasional midnight run, and eating, he never emerged for a couple months. I took his food and water to the closet.
Those odd midnight runs were reconnaissance missions. I’d find fur in unusual spots – newly clawed chairs. And ultimately, Simon’s arrival on my bed. In fact, for a few nights, he’d burrow under the covers to sleep on top of me. Then, a couple nights later, next to me, above the blankets. During the day, he resumed his spot in the closet. Finally, I began moving his food and water out from the closet – a little at a time – toward the kitchen. And so he followed his nourishment into the rest of the house. Except when any one came to visit: friends, family, the vet. Once he realized I was on to him, his next ingenious hidey hole was the inside of the recliner. Not a whisker showing.
The shyness, the fear persisted except for a few visiting voices. When company left, he’d run from wherever he was hiding to find me shutting the front door. But Simon’s idiosyncrasies kept evolving. He always treasured water: fresh bowls of it. Ice cubes added. Any glass that I was drinking from. Dirty dishes soaking in the sink. Then the toilet. And in this last week, a full bowl of freshly run water in the bathroom sink. And he didn’t have either kidney disease or diabetes.
He was not a traditional cuddler. As in that first afternoon, Simon showed his affection by walking to and fro across my lap. Gentle head butts. Discreetly staying in my vicinity. Joining me—every single time that just the two of us were here—in the bathroom. In the morning, once I was up, he’d dash from the bedroom to the living room and flop over on his side for belly and back rubs. In the evening, he’d reverse the process by hopping up on the bed for the same massages. And at night, most special of all, once the lights were out, he’d come for a while to stretch out along my leg, with my hand underneath his warm belly.
He hated the vacuum and even the IRobot. He was skeptical about Zoom and where those unknown folks were. He despised the volume being up too high on computer or TV programs. And I think he disliked most of the music I liked on YouTube: good country, Queen, Americana, Tchaikovsky.
Once the sun was up, Simon hoped—fervently—that I’d get up. A preference he indicated by sitting at the top of the pillow and stretching his claws out toward any available flesh. He was very inventive about finding open skin. But if I pulled the covers over my head completely—even though he knew I was still there—he’d hop off the bed to watch again for some signs of my emergence.
Simon used his paws as hands more than any other cat I’ve known. And he was ambidextrous. If I’d scratched between his ears too long, his paw would snake up to bat my fingers away. Those little pink and white feet seemed almost as effective as opposable thumbs.
However lousy Simon was feeling this last week, he remained a sun-seeking spirit. This was a good time of year for him, as patches of light angled across the carpet early—often just his size. Of so much that I hope for him as he moves into the universe, I wish him sunlit hours most of all and a memory of how much I loved him. ©
