The Cat and I Grieve Together

The cat will close her eyes around you only when she trusts you. It means she’s relaxed and happy. I enjoy being part of personal, private moments with her, such as when she grooms herself on my bed, drinks from my glass, or sits with her rear right in my face. As I pluck the fur out of my mouth in the mornings, I remind myself that she does these things around me because she trusts me. There are times when she follows me into the bathroom. There, ,she watches me, in varying states of modesty, as I wash up, brush my hair, of otherwise conduct my business. It doesn’t bother me, because I trust her too. We just do things, and the other is just there.

When a cat is hunting, she will at times chitter in a way that imitates the sound of her prey. Today I joined the cat when she chirped through the window at the twittering birds.

It used to be she would chirp with her sister through the polished windows. When they were kittens, she was more demure. Soft-spoken. Her sister was bombastic: she zoomed around, explored the house, and constantly tried to get her to play. A few times a day she would give in and lose herself in play. For the most part, however, she almost never meowed, and preferred to observe rather than engage. As an older sister myself, I understood the fun of watching my sister bouncing off the walls. It’s soothing. Other times, the two could be found curled up together on the couch, a perfect yin-yang kissed by a beam of sunlight coming through the window behind them after a hard afternoon of playing tag. Her sister was an explorer, and an adventurer. It is as the saying goes, and so too did her curiosity get the best of her.

The first week after it happened, she searched all over the house for her sister. That previously soft-spoken little lady hardly ever stopped meowing. At last, she had found her voice, but it was only to ask over and over: “Where are you? Where have you gone?”

How many times did she have to repeat herself before hide-and-seek would finally end? There was no way for us to explain to her that there would have no winner this time. We could only watch and comfort her in the quiet moments when she grew tired and lay down. Which was worse, I cannot say; her cries and her silence were both unbearable. Things were sad for a while.

As time passed, she began to lean on her people more. She settled into the middle of who she and her sister used to be. She would play with us more, and cuddle on our laps when she wouldn’t have bothered before. She let us give her our love. I think that was her way of making peace with the tragedy.

She likes to sit in my room on the second story of the house, which has a good vantage on the power-line highways for birds and fat squirrels. When I got the news, she lay curled up beside me on my bed. She bore silent witness to my grief, curled behind my knees and at my back. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference if we could have explained things to her. I had known what to expect from old age, yet that did nothing to ease my anguish. Absence, not confusion, causes the pain. When I cried, she came to me. Her heft, her warmth, and her purr tethered me when I wanted to surrender to the void.

Scientists say that cats can smell human stress hormones— maybe she comforted me because she caught the grief in the air. Or perhaps she remembers her pain, and knew what I was feeling. It could be that a cat’s understanding of grief runs deeper than the nose. Whatever the truth may be, we found solace in one another when we endured the ravages of loss.

One night, as she slept beside me, I had a vivid dream. In the room, a tree of light grew from the ceiling. A soft tinkling of bells sounded as a flurry of fuchsia petals occluded my vision. Then, she was there. I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her in the room, right beside me. She was at peace. I felt awash with serenity.

I looked at the cat. She was awake. Her ears perked up and aimed right at the tree. Her whiskers twitched as she hesitated. She was watching so intently. Neither of us made a sound. The cat hopped from the bed onto the windowsill. Her tail switched lazily, and then curled around something I could not see. The room was warm. Everything felt right. They came to tell us that they were with the angels.

The next morning, my lungs felt full of air. The heavy vise constricting my heart had melted away, and I for the first time since it happened, my head was clear. I looked at the cat- she gave a yawn and stretched her paws out. She arched back into a “u” shape on the comforter, and then turned onto her belly to groom her face. I stroked her back for a while as she cleaned herself up. When nature called for me, she stopped her bath and watched me depart the bed. She darted in right as the bathroom door closed. I did some grooming of my own, which she observed from a throne of pristine green hand towels.

The cat let me carry her down the stairs. I pressed my face into her fur and breathed her in. She nibbled at my damp hair. I greeted the family and poured myself a cup of coffee, still carrying her with one arm and a hip. The sky was clear outside, and the leaves on the apple tree were greener than on the day before. I moved to the living room to spend a quiet morning. As I stopped before the soft, tan couch, she hopped down from my arms to take the seat I was after. I sat down beside her, with her tucked against my leg. Together we sat for that morning hour, basking in a golden sunbeam that shone through the window behind us.