i lost my darling cat on Xmas day, 2002.

i miss him: black and white fur. pink nose. white whiskers. demanding yowl. soft fur that roughened with age and disease.

a quiet purr. he thought he was a human. he thought he was our baby. we treated him that way.

he trusted me completely. sometimes he’d fall asleep with his head cupped in my hand.

a taste for fruit. his favorite — mango. strawberries a close second.

he had diabetes. diagnosed at age 8. passed away at nearly 13. toward the end the muscle melted away from his hips. the sharp hip bones, you could feel them. i think it was an effort for him to climb our stairs and jump onto the bed. it was hard to let him go. still is.
i know what the “rainbow bridge” is, but can’t bring myself to think about grief in those terms. too maudlin.

we buried him under a mandarin orange tree, his very own. it has flowers buds now and new leaf growth.

when i pass by, i pet the leaves.
the house isn’t a home without a cat. even a napping cat displaces emptiness. animates a space.

we’ll be adopting two kittens soon. they have to be old enough and weigh enough to spay. then we can take them home.

in the meantime it’s hard being catless. i surf the web looking at other people’s pictures of kittens. it’s vaguely pornographic, sort of “am i hot or not” of the feline world. it cheers me up but makes me restless for my own at the same time.
things about a cat that give pleasure:

• a sleeping cat curled on itself like a shrimp. or with limbs tucked under: catloaf. yes, all that sleeping.
• the way the sun shines through the ears and illuminates the veins.
• a fat whisker shed on a wooden floor.
• fur-covered webbing between the toes.
• when young, jackknife dives for string toys.
• watching a cat head slowly loll forward until, asleep, nose presses into the covers.
• cat eyebrows.
• the sound paws make jumping onto a down comforter — the rustle of cotton and then tramping down a spot to sleep.

things about a cat that puzzle:

• midnight yowls. dark nights of the soul? they have them too?
• the third eyelid. i know what it’s for and how it works. but why does it only close halfway sometimes?
• weird chemicals. tears become tar-like and collect in the corner of an eye. saliva turns brown on white fur when exposed to sunlight.
• exactly where in the throat the purr comes from.
• a maroon backlighting to the eyes sometimes, instead of fluorescent glow.