Until it’s gone…
Posted on May 29, 2008
Filed Under bat-ass crazy, pets | 16 Comments
We thought we were doing a good thing, giving one of our cats to a sweet and loving family, a family with little girls expert at cuddling and effusive adoration. This, after all, is a feline that has received little to no attention from the Madmarriage household for four years running.
It was nearly a week ago that we herded Julia into the cat carrier, suffering deep lacerations and puncture wounds, all in the interest of giving her a better life, simplifying our own existence and dramatically decreasing the pet hair accumulation beneath the piano and on the back of the arm chairs.
By all reports from her adoptive family she is adjusting well. She is lavished with attention and given wet food and allowed to send the nights sleeping on pillows, in the company of humans rather than relegated to the confines of our dark, cold attic. Julia’s life has improved dramatically. My life has been made a bit easier for one less obligation, one less beating heart to care for.
But then there’s Cato, our other cat, who preceded Julia in our home by eight years, who, by all observation did not care one bit for Julia and has hissed and growled his way through the past four years, barely enduring her presence. It would appear that even cats can suffer the old, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” scenario and now it appears that our remaining cat, our twelve year old, fat and grouchy cat, is actually heart broken.
Who knew that an independent, stand-offish feline could feel such agony? Never before have I witnessed acute animal longing. Cato prowls the house by day yowling, omni-present, underfoot and on top of key boards, all together fierce with a new need for attention. By night he cries from his place in the attic that has grown that much darker, that much colder and bleak without the presence of his female, feline friend. He is a shell of a cat, just patching it together. It turns out that he needed Julia in a deeply meaningful way and now that she is gone, he suffers.
It almost breaks my heart save for the fact that I am so pissed off after an entire night of listening to him wail from the attic that I ripped open the attic door and carried him to the back porch this morning, tossing him unlovingly to the elements, banishing him to the outside, desperate for just an hour of peace.
He now sits atop the grill, just below the kitchen window and mews to come in, crying with loneliness. His pain evident and outward and on the wind for all the neighborhood cats to hear. He has given up on pretense and pride. He is publicly ravaged. I feel like taking him aside and saying, “You know, Cato, I understand your regret, It’s always better to have said too much than to never have said what you need to say.” But in his cathood, he is inconsolable. And we can do nothing but weep right along with him.
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