If my farmer parents were around to read this, I wouldn’t show it to them. Over their lifetimes, they had more cats than I will ever have and they took care of them, but their attitude towards them was a world apart from mine. The cats had a function and that job was to keep the rodent population down. They were not considered to be members of the family, even though I always suspected my Dad had a soft spot for them. They lived in the barn, 17 of them at their highest population, and Dad built a little shelter for them full of straw so they wouldn’t freeze to death in winter. He used to haul home huge bags of “calf starter” feed from the farm supply store and the cats thrived on it. They never grew the size of cows, however, so that was good.
But times change. When I was a bachelor living alone, my parents gone by then, my two cats were my family. I talked to them and I imagined they talked back to me. I relied on them for companionship and comfort; they looked to me for food, fun, warmth and healthcare.
I was out raking leaves in our backyard one day this week and noticed that the ground was sinking over the grave I had dug for our cat Luigi who lost a battle with cancer a couple of months ago. I am still in mourning for that little creature and I realized the sadness was continuing on past the time it might normally take me to get over the loss of a pet. And I think there is a reason for that.
Luigi was 14 years old when he died. And that might have been that except for the fact that he left behind his twin brother Mario. It is watching Mario day in day out that continues the heartbreak for me.
It might seem odd to read these words from a man who is coming up to his 69th birthday, but Mario is not himself. He wanders around the house looking for his brother and he is acting out in ways that are unusual for him. He wants to go outside more often than he used to. I think he thinks Luigi might be out there. Luigi loved to spend time in the garage. Now Mario wants out there a lot too. Mario drags his water dish all over the kitchen floor, spills the water on the floor, then drinks the spilled water. He has only ever done that when he is nervous. He wants to be cuddled all day long but doesn’t seem satisfied no matter how much attention he gets. He has taken to smacking the dog on his head and sleeps in places Luigi used to sleep. The other day, we saw him cuddled up sleeping with a stuffed teddy bear in one of our bedrooms.
I have a hundred pictures of Mario and Luigi sleeping together. In some of them, their two bodies are so closely bound together it is hard to make out where one cat starts and the other ends. They look just like one big pile of cat. But in most of the photos, one cat will have his leg draped over the other while they sleep. Or they will have all four of their front legs entwined.
So this is what I find the hardest. To go into the rec room at night to see Mario sleeping by himself in the big swivel rocker where the two of them often spent their nights. And the other night, as I was heading to bed myself, I saw Mario standing in the doorway to the rec room, staring into the darkness and looking lost. Maybe that’s just me projecting but I am forgiving myself and I hope my parents would do the same.
Because I am lost too.
“But it’s just a cat,” someone might say. But if we are playing at “justs”, then …
I am just human.
Soon we will put up our real Christmas tree. Ten minutes after it went up, Luigi would crawl under it and stay there till New Years.
Little things mess me up.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
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