A Precious Cat

A Precious Cat 

 I’ve lived for several decades. During that time, I’ve shared my homes with a 

number of cats. Don’t think that because there have been quite a few that they were 

disposable cats I used up and threw away. Heavens no! The majority of my feline 

companions have lived long, happy lives - nine or maybe more, such as in the case of 

Bizowis. His nineteen years are another story, however, plus he may have been part 

human so maybe shouldn’t be counted among cat tales. And oh, by the way, his name meant ‘cat’ in the Penobscot language, which I think has died out by now.

 When you have always lived in a multi-cat household, the number adds up 

over the years. Anyway, having lived with, and really, really loved numerous cats, you 

might think I would have had a hard time selecting one who taught me an important 

lesson. Which one would be different? Which one could possibly manage to stand 

out? Although most of my felines have been wise and have shared their knowledge 

with me in one way or another, one actually does stand out: Amethyst. That was her 

real name. Precious, like the birthstone. She was also the cat with whom I spent the shortest time.

Free cat day at the local shelter. 

Senior cats are free. 

(Translation: They’re old and nobody wants them. They aren’t playful, like kittens. They just sleep all day. We don’t want them here. Please, take one home. They are free. Takw two, if you like.)

That day you stared, then walked gingerly about on your spindly legs. You wanted nothing to do with any humans. You were done with humans.

Dear Amethyst. It seems you lost your home with your original person. I think 

she had just died or was dying. You never really told me the whole story of your life. 

(I’m old, but I’m neither stupid nor senile. I could tell you if I wanted to, but you’d have to know how to listen.)

Your mystery was part of your lesson, of course. You just found yourself suddenly at the 

local shelter when the owner’s son dumped you there. You seemed to know right 

away that everybody preferred kittens, with their personality and energy. You didn’t 

have either of these characteristics, but still you stood tall and serene, with dignity. 

You surveyed the room you’d suddenly been assigned. You looked around, intensely. 

(That place was a disaster. Very noisy, full of rejects, smelly, homesickness. Of course it was a horrible experience. I thought I was going to lose my mind there, so I just acted aloof.)

You were seventeen, they said. As you watched the walls, all new to you, I watched 

you, and you were not new. To life, at least. 

(Stop thinking about my age. Can you not see how elegant and slender - not gaunt - I am? I have a lovely profile and my ears stick up in perfect salute. My fur is full of sparkles of white and beige.)

 Your stiffness was not in your bones, Amethyst, because you could move with surprising 

agility. Your pacing showed me that clearly the shelter was confusing and you were 

responding by perusing everything in it, the signs, the stripes on the blankets in the cages, moving or not. You emitted an occasional taut mew, semi-Siamese in sound, and wore your cindery tortoise fur proudly. So slender, on tall legs. The essence of cat. I had stopped by for some reason - perhaps to volunteer or perhaps it was one of those days when I get to feeling sorry for my aging self. That was when someone nondescript pointed you out. 

(Of course they did. Remember? Senior cats. A real bargain. Old, no fun, on the edge, often cranky, and for a good reason: we’re free, and we know it. Nobody wants us, so I didn’t want anybody either.)

You were definitely a senior cat. You were definitely not nondescript, even though you wouldn’t play with the kittens. You were free for the taking, they said. You weren’t one they could sell. Yet you were priceless. I took you because I understood aging, because my mother had taught me a few years before. Because I’m not getting any younger myself and I don’t want to get a cat who will outlive me. It would end up in a shelter.

Immediately you thanked me with your expression. Your eyes were like goldfish 

swimming valiantly upstream, trying not to lose track of the light. I loved you 

immediately, too, and told you so, knowing I’d have to love fast, but I was determined to do 

so. 

After all, you were seventeen. 

 You turned out to be toothless and pretty deaf. That was something I hadn’t noticed amid the chaos of the shelter, where lots of meows and growls were in the air of the tiny rooms where potential adopters went. You never explained to me how that had been allowed to happen. Humans think animals, especially cats, don’t need any special care. I was concerned that you might have been in pain for years. That would make anybody yowl.

Suddenly I was angry, because you were a warrior goddess of a cat. Still and all, your pitiful condition - matched by, or echoed in, your Siamese wail - had not made you hate all humans, even the new ones who came into your world. Right off, you installed yourself on the pillow next to mine. It became your throne overnight. You rarely moved from there, and became my furred, glittery shadow. Because you didn’t hiss or spit, I took it to mean you weren’t in any serious discomfort, and the shelter had approved your coming home with me.

(Of course they did. Remember? I’m a senior cat. I’m free. I’m a bargain. You couldn’t resist.)

You weren’t delicate at all, Amethyst. 

(Silly you to have thought that.) 

No, the truth is you were a vortex of wisdom every day we spent together. The vortex image is my own interpretation, but I couldn’t help feeling you really were a high-energy feline. Tense, coiled, resonant, alive. Very alive, just as your seventeen years had taught you to be.Whenever I left the bedroom, you wailed for me. I felt wanted, needed, loved. I also felt guilty. You deserved people’s attention and you demanded it. Whenever I returned to the bedroom, you would start humming and watching me. Constantly. Those big, golden eyes, outsized for your slender body, were forever focused on me. Duller by day, luminescent orbs by night, those eyes offered a gift I was almost terrified to receive: your trust. If I ever felt uneasy around you, I got over it. You were not going to release your secrets like krakens.

(Of course not. I was creating new secrets, ones you had to hear. I wasn’t about to repeat all those years just for your benefit. You have bought me - for free, remember - and all that past stayed at the shelter. You were signing on to me, but you got fresh things, not old rehashed stuff.)

 This was our life together for a year. However, a vet visit some months later revealed a tumor in your stomach area. You were eighteen. Were you really my cat? After all, you hadn’t been with me for very long. But of course you were - there was no doubt about that. Fortunately, the 

cancer was the good kind, meaning it was fairly contained and could be removed. We could save you at eighteen, Amethyst, and the cost be damned. Selfish human that I am, I needed your trust and glow in my life. 

(This is getting overly sentimental. You and I both know we have to realistic. You care about me, but am I worth it? You never knew me as a kitten, and maybe all my life I’ve been rebellious, a complainer. Am I worth it, I ask you?)

 You came through like a trooper, Amethyst, just as I knew you would. You came after a night in the vet, and you occupied the pillow to my left once again.This is how, for over two years, you and I contemplated the world together. Two older, or aging, females who shared a bedroom, One of us no longer heard the world and meowed to see if that would help her recover it. Every meow was a wrenching sound, every meow creaked and begged for somebody to bring back your hearing, your teeth, your years. Every meow was an ache deep within. Not within you, within me. I’d drape an arm around you, not putting any weight on your bony back, and focus on bringing back your purr. You thanked me, I’m sure.

After you turned nineteen, the cancer came back after all. It wasn’t supposed to, because the vet had called it the good kind, the kind that could be removed and you’d be good as new. Well, I had thought he meant good as new, and was ready to celebrate birthday number twenty with you in February.

It was devastating news. You were now very gaunt by now and seemed to be asking me to give up the fight; it was your decision. This is the part that hurts more than anything else. There was the option to operate a second time, but I was afraid your tiny legs might snap if anybody picked you up wrong. Every vertebra was visible. You spoke in our language, the one we’d started speaking that day at the shelter.

I was with you at the end, in the same position I’d assumed with my mother. I stood, albeit hunched forward, looking into the golden gems that were your eyes, holding your front paws, sobbing like one of the autumn rains in southern Maine. You were leaving, leaving me behind. 

I wasn’t so young, either. You were leaving first, though, and I was losing a part of my life: two rapid, loved years that would never return.

 Your ashes are in a pretty tin box, Amethyst, concealed on a shelf behind the 

couch. 

(That is not morbid. You really cared about me. I know that.) 

There’s a little more information needed to set this story right. Because your name - Amethyst, so lovely - is the February birthstone and my mother had been born on February 28, I had assigned you the same birthday: the 28th of that month. Because I was mourning your untimely, unfair loss so much, I also planted a baby lilac - purple, of course - outside my bedroom window. It’s just a few steps away from where you laid on my second pillow for two years and helped me figure out the world, or if not that, then you helped me learn a little better how to face it. I want it to be clear that this is not a lilac of mourning but rather one that honors and remembers a cat of nineteen. A cat I loved as fast as is humanly possible. 

After all, who are we without memories? And how could I forget the lilacs in the back yard, by the barn, of my childhood home? You were black with beige and white smudges, but your memories, the ones you brought with you and never revealed, were lavender. Like the precious stone of your name.

Speaking of memories, secret and told: Since her passing, I have always worn my mother’s large amethyst ring. It was one of the few items of value not stolen by so-called family when she died. It is a deeply rooted 

(I think you’ve deliberately chosen that phrase, haven’t you?)

remembrance of her birth, years before my own, and now also of an old, deaf, toothless, ferociously intelligent tortoise shell cat who brought seventeen years of being into my life, seventeen I could never know, of course, but worked to puzzle out. You then added two more to it, two more that were our lifetime together. The time when you taught me to watch and listen, to consider the weight of wisdom.

Amethyst, you truly did teach me how to love fast. After all, there’s the cliché about how life is too short to do otherwise. Whether we are cats or humans, the years we live bring the wisdom of knowing we must, we really must, remember what being here means and what ties us to others. You and I were so closely bound up in each other’s late-in-life world that I learned from you how little teeth, ears, cancer, and years matter when one has something more, when a young lilac tree with delicate, precious clusters of blossoms, is growing in our back yard.

(I hope somebody plants a lilac tree for you.)