By Jim Hagarty
2004
I was taking out the garbage one Monday night when my wife handed me an item wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.
“I found this in the trunk of the car,” she said. “I don’t know what you want to do with it.”
Unwrapping the contents of the bag, I was soon holding an old leather slipper, one half of a pair I had bought almost 25 years before and had long since forgotten about. I sat down on the back-door steps to check it out.
“Hey, look!” I called to my wife. “You can still see Grumbles’ fur on the sole.” Our cat Grumbles had devoted over 11 years of her life to winning life-and-death struggles with my old slippers. She attacked them with all the vigour of a professional wrestler, clawing them, chewing them, rolling on her back and rotating them on her four paws like a circus performer. The smell didn’t put her off; she often buried her head as far down into the toes as she could.
So, when she took on something a little more sturdy than a shoe one rainy evening in the middle of our street and lost the battle, we had no choice. We wrapped her in my holey old, yellow sweatshirt she loved to sleep on, and buried her in a cardboard box in our back yard with a few of her toys tucked in with her.
Along with one of my slippers.
So, here I sat, five years later, with the other one.
The slippers predated the cat. They were a frivolous purchase, made with the early proceeds I’d collected from my first job in my journalism career. They cost $20 when most other slippers cost $5. My cold feet and I wanted a good pair. And we got them.
From that point on, the slippers went where I went. If I was in my home, winter or summer, they were on my feet. Sometimes with socks, sometimes without. If I could have slept with them on, I would have. In fact, I think I did, a time or two.
My favourite footwear even started going on the road with me, from time to time, as I tried to export my comfort from my home to other locations. They once accompanied me to a large hotel in a far-away city for a newspaper convention. But they didn’t come home with me. Frantically, I phoned the hotel the day after my return. They would look for them. I waited anxiously. A few days later they arrived in the mail. If a long lost relative suddenly re-appeared, I couldn’t have been more joyful.
When Grumbles came aboard, about 10 years after my slipper purchase, she took an instant interest in them. She attacked them mercilessly, usually when they were off my feet, often when they were on. When the assaults came while the slippers were already occupied, her claws often missed the mark and dug into my ankles. This would result in much screaming and yelling and a scampering cat looking for shelter.
Many a time, I could be seen limping through the house, dragging one slipper-clad foot – with cat attached – behind me. In fact, this pose became routine.
But, nothing lasts forever. No cat. No slippers. No aging man’s youth. After two decades of wear and tear, my footwear was a sorry shadow of the bright, brown pair that had beckoned to me from the shoe-store window so long ago. Ten years of mauling by a frenzied feline hadn’t improved their status. What was left of the soles was coming away from the uppers. When I wore them, as I did as much as ever, my socks peeked out from various openings, as the footwear seemed to be making a slow transition from slippers to sandals.
My wife began suggesting a new pair to replace the old. But you don’t replace old friends. You just grow old with them, appreciate them for what they’ve meant to you, not for how they look.
If Grumbles hadn’t died, I might still be wearing them. But she did, and now she sleeps curled up beside one of those old friends of mine – and hers.
And here I sat that Monday night, holding the other. It had made it into the trunk of the car on some run to the landfill site of the past five years, obviously saved at the last minute for sentimental reasons, thrown back into the car and forgotten about.
But this time there would be no keeping it. Its time had come. How long does it take to get over a cat? A pair of slippers?
I wrapped the footwear back up in the bag and tossed it into the garbage bag. I completed my chores and carried two bags out to the curb for pickup in the morning.
At 7 a.m. the next day, before the truck arrived, I went out to the street and brought back the bag with the slipper in it. That night, I decided, I’d sort through the refuse of another week of living to find my old friend. What I’d do with it then, I wasn’t sure.
As it turns out, five years was not long enough to forget Grumbles. Or her favourite toy.
The Christmas after my cat and our slipper were buried together, Santa Claus left a new pair of slippers under the tree. They cost him $60. They’re identical to the old ones. I love them, unclawed as they are.
But I still love the old ones better.
And when I leave this world, it just may be that I’ll be wearing one of those old ones on my left foot as they lower me down. Like a Pharaoh being buried with his treasures, I will want to be prepared.
You never know whom you might meet on the other side.
Or what you might need when you get there.
