All sleep does it play tricks on me. In the afternoons it craves my attention
and pulls at my eyelids, a needy child, but at night it hides in the shadows and
just when I think I can glimpse it in the corner of my eye it slips away like silk
through fingers.
The mornings are the worst, when I first wake up and for a brief, glorious
moment everything is as it was. But then I remember, and instead of your
insistent, hungry yowl there is an out of key nothingness. I go out into the
conservatory and bury my face in the radiator bed you favoured and come
away with your smell in my nose and your fur on my lashes.
Your fur. It’s everywhere. I pluck it from my clothes and where before I would
get frustrated, your tortoiseshell and white mix proving victorious against any
outfit, now I can’t bear the thought that one day I will stop finding it. I want
to gather it all together, and hold it close to my heart, to feel some weight of
you in my hands again.
I watch the birds in the garden and remember the brightness in your eyes
when you spotted them, that scratchy, indignant sound you would make from
the back of your throat as they mocked you from the tops of the fence panels.
I’m so glad that we took you for that last walk in the garden so that you could
warm your aching joints on the paving slabs and fill your belly with one last
glut of grass. I used to worry about what the neighbours would think, seeing
me walk my cat in the garden, but now I would take a lifetime of jeering if I
could do it just once more.
More time. More time. No matter how much we had it was never going to
be enough. I used the last six weeks with you greedily. I followed you around
the house the way you used to follow me in a strange role reversal. I scooped
you up when you walked past, placed my cheek against your warm body, your
purr vibrating so that it felt like it was coming from my own throat (perhaps
it was) and told myself ‘Remember this moment, remember how this feels’
because I knew our time was limited. But even now, just two weeks later,
those memories are fading and I want to grab on to them so that they will
stop me from drowning in my grief.
Just a cat. You were just a cat. Except you weren’t. You were our family. You
made us whole. Without you, I feel like I’m suffocating. I feel like something
fundamental has shifted, an end of innocence, and that I’m entering into a
chapter of my life that will be full of sadness and loss.
I’m afraid.
But this morning, you threw me a life jacket. I found a white feather on the
armchair in the conservatory, the one I bought to read on but which you
claimed as yours like most of the seats in the house. I’m not a believer of gods
or angels, but I will take this gift that squeezed its way through the slightest of gaps in the skylights and interpret it in the way I need to help me survive this new existence. I will keep it by my bedside, and try to tempt sleep to touch the soft downy barbs with their promise of dreams.