Our 16-year-old cat Mario lost his twin brother Luigi a while back and he’s been affected in various ways by the loss. He developed an eating disorder, for one thing, and needs a lot more human attention than he ever wanted before.
We got the eating disorder solved after learning he was reacting to losing his twice-daily dining partner of 12 years. So guess who his new partner is. I don’t eat with him but I lie on the floor with my face a few inches from his dish and he shoots me a glance now and then to make sure I’m still there. He rarely throws up any more and once in a while this earns me a head butt for my troubles.
Mario and Luigi, over their long lives together, never really put it together that they were two cats and not one. When you’d walk by a comfy chair where they were sleeping, you’d be seeing what could only be described as a pile o’ cat. Legs, tails, ears sticking out all over. It was hard to see where one animal started and the other ended.
So, in some ways, I have been an oversized Luigi since that great guy left this world. My claws aren’t as sharp and my whiskers not as long and Luigi didn’t wear glasses, but Mario seems to think I make an alright substitute. Several times a day, and even in the middle of the night sometimes, Mario and I snuggle in the same comfy chair he and his brother shared so many naps in.
And Mario loves just about anything I decide to do with his body but his favourite thing is to have his jawline pressed against my knuckles. There doesn’t seem to be any point where I can push too hard on that area of his face. In fact, he does a major part of the pressing.
In a way, it takes me back to my days in a one-room country schoolhouse where one of my classmates used to press his knuckles against my jawline on a pretty regular basis. And like Mario, I loved it. But to make things more fun, I would often try to run away when I saw Billy heading my way and hide behind a tree or a bush, but he was very determined and good at finding me and my “four eyes.” Billy was more mini bulldozer than boy and he liked to make my life a little brighter every day.
But there is a benefit to everything we experience in life and my frequent attempts to run away from Billy led me to take up track and field when I got to high school, and left the bulldozer behind. I would imagine Billy was gaining on me and I’d quicken my pace. However, I soon discovered that I was not the speediest runner in the world which explained how Billy could always catch me. So I switched to cross country running and was actually kind of good at that as there were lots of trees, creeks and bushes to run around even if I wasn’t being chased.
After a good snuggle that can last upwards of 20 minutes or so, Mario jumps down from my lap and crawls under a comfy chair with a big blanket over it which gives him total privacy. And he goes to sleep. I can’t read the mind of a cat, but my guess is, he misses Luigi.
As for me, it might sound strange, but I don’t miss Billy at all.
©2022 Jim Hagarty
