Little Deaths

It seems disrespectful, diminishing to call it this way, but that’s how it occurred to me, this morning.

It’s a little death.

I am thinking of Taí, my sister, who wrote to tell us that she had put her treasured cat—Sajo—to sleep. We scrambled to find her number, Raf called Charisse, then Taí called.

Suffering, of course. She’s a woman who loves animals, and is very, very good with them. When she is here, the food bowls get put in various places, and Taí assumes the role of lunchroom monitor—Loquito has to eat out of everyone’s dish. And he will attack Herrick—not seriously, but certainly not amiably.

Herrick, of course, weighs twice as much as Loquito. He could easily send Loquito flying—and in fact has. I’ve seen it, and cheered Herrick on. Doña Taí, however, puts up with no nonsense from the cat world. “Oh, gosh,” she will say, and fly out of her chair in the dining room to investigate suspicious feline sounds. 

And she is of the belief that yes, cats can be trained. 

My take?

Errr…no.

But who knows? What I do know is that there is something peculiarly bad about a little death. The big deaths—a parent, a spouse, a child—those are agonizing. The death of a pet?

Also agonizing.

As I write this, Loquito is ten feet away. I am writing, he is snoozing—very much what cats do. And the moment I get up?

He’ll fly into action. He’ll follow me wherever I go. I, of course, will be scolding him.

“Don’t wag your tail! Wagging your tail is prohibited! Strictly prohibited! Ridiculous!”

Why do I tell him this?

Because he pays absolutely no attention. In fact, his whole body language is screaming…

…fuck you!

Which amuses me. I was a nervous, inward child—the nerd who never misbehaved, never even whispered, when the teacher left the room. Loquito? The kid who jumped up and started writing obscenities on the blackboard.

Loquito is also my creator spirit. The person who writes, who plays the cello?

Loquito.

Irrepressible, intractable, fearless, silly—whatever I do creatively is felinized (can’t be personified, can it?) by Loquito. And so in those months when I was struggling, it was Loquito who got me through, showed me the way.

Taí—of course, was worrying in Tobago. I felt her love coming through. Raf was frantic but working in Hato Rey.  He was, and is, the constant in my life. But Loquito?

He was making me laugh. I’d watch him under Raf’s computer table, playing with cables. He’d be knocking the clumps of kitty litter out of the scooper as I cleaned the pans. He’d be crouching behind a picture resting against the wall—waiting for something, anything, to pounce on.

And he would ALWAYS be there. 

That, I think, is what makes the little deaths so hard. Yes, I loved my mother. It was definitely a big death. But she lived and died three thousand miles away. I called her every morning and most afternoons, those last years. The moment a vexing grammatical point presented itself, I thought to ask her, and could not.

But she wasn’t woven into the warp and weft of my life—as Loquito is.

As animals are.

“Cloudy!” called John once, when I visited him in New York. He was calling my mother’s cat, now a New Yorker. “Mr. New is going to work, honey! He’ll be back! Mr. New will be back at seven, honey!”

Mr. New?

“He does this every morning,” reported Jeanne.

John shot me a nervous look as he walked out the door. Mr. New was wearing a three-piece suit and carrying an elegant leather briefcase. He’ll make his calls and write his emails and scream at other people’s attorneys—if he has to—and then come home. 

Home to a cat who—trust me—has not missed him. The work clothes will be shed, dinner started, the TV turned on. Cloudy will jump into his lap, be stroked, patted, caressed, addressed. She will be a cat.

Why do I think it’s our animals that make us human?