Cats And Flats

So, where I live now, I´m not allowed to have a cat, yet I still had the chance to bond with not just one, but two of them. As my girlfriend at the time said, I was their cat uncle. A title I still find comfort in whenever I miss having a cat of my own. And even though the connection with these two cats was brief, they will have a special place in my memory along with all the others I´ve grown up with, cared for, or seen growing up. I want to tell you their story. Maybe because of the events that followed after the last time I had seen them, or perhaps because I want to say goodbye to them in the same special way they did to me. Either way, this is a memory in honor of them.

I should start by telling where, or rather how I live. I live in a studio apartment in a typical Budapest-style building. All the apartments are connected by a gallery that wraps itself in a rectangular shape around a courtyard. In our case, the courtyard is basically made into a community garden where only the part in front of my direct neighbor is well-maintained. Every day when I´m smoking on the bench directly in front of my door I see her working on her flowers and plants while everything around it decays. Still, the garden is an excellent place for all our community's cats to roam freely. And roaming around they do. 

Most of them I admire from a distance as they are street cats who have no use for humans but I´ve always kept my hopes up. One night as I was sitting outside on my bench, smoking a cigarette I heard some noises coming from that wild garden. As I´ve said before, there are many animals who have made it their home, so it was nothing new, but this time it kept coming closer until it stopped right behind me. I tried not to react too much. From my time as a desperate cat chaser, I had learned that too much enthusiasm scares them away, so I let it be and see what would happen. Eventually, I heard one loud sneeze, followed by another coming from a slightly different direction. When I finally looked back I saw two pairs of glowing green eyes staring at me. The moment I stood up there was just the ruffling of plants and the eyes disappeared back into the night.

Life always throws second chances at those who are patient, or as in my case, just smoke a lot. And so it happened that the next day I got to know the faces behind those mysterious eyes. It started with a sneeze that made me look up. I found myself being watched by a little tabby cat who had taken my spot on the bench. He looked at me, challenging me almost. A bit further away by the stairs, ready to make a run for it sat another white, spotted cat. It was immediately clear to me that the tabby one was sent ahead of the troops to see if it was safe.  

¨So, I hope you had some nice adventures last night and you must be exhausted, but I´m going to need to sit there,¨ I said to the cheeky one who remained unmoved. 

¨Well okay then, I guess we can share.¨

Once I sat down he sniffed my hand, sneezed on it, and then instantly climbed on my lap. He immediately settled down like he had known no other lap his entire life. His sister watched, fascinated but still a bit hesitantly and also sneezing every now and then. That´s how the three of us sat there on our first real introduction until the voice of their owner echoed through the courtyard and the both of them immediately jumped up and ran to where the voice was coming from.

From that day on I could hear their sneezes echo through the staircase whenever I closed the door behind me to smoke outside. I named the cheeky one Maci (something I just felt fitted him, but incidentally happened to mean Little Bear Hungarian) and the other one I called Doortje (a typical Dutch name that somehow always turns out to belong to the type of girl who´s nearly invisible but then makes sure that nobody´s birthday in the office goes by unnoticed) The ritual was always more or less the same. I would come outside and first Maci would loudly meow to get on my lap and after he had his share, Doortje would timidly come closer until she would make the final jump and lay down all relaxed and purring. Me working from home meant that I had plenty of time to cuddle them before they went back home to their owners. 

Deep down inside I had always known that they were ill. Cats shouldn´t sneeze and especially not in spring and summer. I always comforted myself with the idea that it was just the flu, something that would pass. But as spring became summer, and summer become autumn I noticed that their collars were getting looser and looser around their necks and I started to feel their bones through their skins while petting them. They nearly crawled inside me while on my lap, shivering all the way through. It was around the end of September that their coughs started and in early October they stopped coming altogether. I had opened and closed my door and sat down already, looking around slightly surprised, but no sneezes or cat feet followed. It was that afternoon that I smoked my cigarette alone again. 

The next evening someone rang my doorbell. A muscled man with big earrings and tattoos on his neck stood in front of me. He held two shot glasses full of Palinka (the Hungarian drink of choice) and his eyes were red and teary. He took a deep breath and gave me one of the glasses. He imitated a seizure and then made gestures imitating a syringe. Even with my very limited Hungarian, I understood what he meant. He held up his glass and we drank together in silence. A moment of grief was shared in the gallery of a Hungarian flat. That night I went to sleep wishing that I would´ve known that the previous night would be my last with them. Maybe I could have done something special, something… You know? 

This is the part of the story where the magic comes in. I still don´t know if it´s just a projection of my desire for closure. I like to think it´s not. No, it´s rather a deep knowing that I was gifted something from the universe of cats.

The next early evening when I came outside there was a man standing right next to my door. He looked tired. Big bags under his eyes, an ungroomed beard, and pieces of snot sticking to his mustache. I must say, having troubled people roaming around this building is not that uncommon. There´s a tram repair hangar next to this place. In the Hungarian socialist times, people who worked there automatically got an apartment here. After the system changed, people got to buy them for symbolic prices. Some of the children who inherited them fell off, so often you will hear the shouts and screams of alcoholic and drug-addicted neighbors who have nothing left but the roof they sleep under. 

I first assumed that this man was a reject from one of those parties but when I looked more closely into his eyes I saw such a deep sadness that I couldn´t help but feel sorry for him. I stood next to him and offered him a cigarette. He accepted without a word and so we stood there smoking together, neither of us making a sound except for his chattering teeth. I just smiled at him before I went back inside. Every time I returned he was still there at the exact same spot, shivering, sneezing, and looking at me with those sad eyes. I brought him wine, later some food, and eventually an old sweater. We stood there together at different moments throughout the night, all in silence but sharing a moment. I felt his eyes on me whenever I was not looking. I could sense that he wanted to speak, say something but simply couldn´t. We shared whatever I could give at different moments throughout the night until it was time for me to go to bed. I fell asleep thinking about those sad eyes and the shivering that seemed to be shaken deep into his bones. 

The next morning he was gone. Not a single trace of him ever being there. Maybe he had finally found a place to stay but I can´t help but think that this odd man was the spirit of Maci and Doortje saying their final farewell to me.