It’s a bit emptier in the house. Losing a pet is like that. Even a pet you didn’t mean to have. Especially those. Like the old man porch cat named Sunburst who had trickled into our lives. Eventually, he also trickled off our front porch and onto the wicker Ottoman we kept in the dining room. There he would curl up like a loaf of bread, watching all the craziness around him.
Our house is always crazy. A hive of activity. Like rush hour at Grand Central. Running. Screaming. Unintelligible PA announcements about boarding trains or getting ready for school. A flurry. An unending bustle. A panic and a whirlwind.
This cat was fascinated by it. He watched it all – these fish in their bowl. Going about their multi-tasking and manic lives. “Don’t they see there’s a perfectly warm Ottoman here?” he seemed to say. “Why don’t they just kick back with me?”
That was the look on his little critter face: Content. Grateful. Always at peace.
Lucky bugger, right up to the end.
Sunburst passed away last week. We had to put him to sleep. A sudden onset of a very aggressive cancer took over him. He was losing weight. Not eating. Tumors were creeping up everywhere. He was wasting away, and fast. It was terrible to see how quickly it moved. But speed can be a blessing if it means less suffering. That you can still lead your life comfortably until the end.
He had a pretty good life, that Sunburst. A former street cat, he spent most of his days and nights outdoors. He lived under houses. In people’s driveways. He used to have that slinking walk of stray cats. Like they never quite know who to trust. Like he should be ready at a moment’s notice to run. Life on the streets will teach you that.
My wife called the orange tabby “handsome,” but you had to hold some cheese cloth in front of your eyes to get that image right. He only had one good tooth, and there was a snip missing from the tip of an ear. It marked him as a former stray who had been picked up, neutered and then released back into the wilds. Among his other unique characteristics: he was deaf; his tail seemed to have less hair than the rest of his body; he could wail like a drunken banshee; he slammed screen doors to let you know he was hungry.
We’re not sure of his age. Maybe 15? We inherited him from someone special to us down the street. He had lived in her driveway, so he became our porch cat when she passed away a few years back. He came with a female partner named Teagrass that we lost a year or so ago.
Over time, he somehow “graduated” to part-time inside cat, and then found a home on the Ottoman where he watched us, fascinated by the hustle. H
Content. Grateful. At peace.
I don’t think of myself as a jealous person, but I’ve often found myself jealous of that cat. Not because he got to lie around all day. I don’t envy laziness. Rather, it was the feeling of peace he seemed to master. That air of total satisfaction with the world. Like nothing could bother him, and you could go ahead and try if you wanted to. He just sat there purring. Observing. Taking it in with keen focus.
He fascinated me.
I’m a person whose mind is always racing. Who is thinking three, four, even 700 steps ahead. What’s next? What’s wrong? Why did they think that? What do I do about it? What if such-and-such happens? How will I make this work? Why do we let the cat sleep on our wicker Ottoman? Why is he always studying us?!?
I’m a taskmaster. A guy who keeps to-do lists that say things like: Don’t forget to do your other to-do lists.
Often I would be traipsing through the house in a flurry of some sort, only to catch his face as I passed him on his Ottoman. (Wait a minute … MY Ottoman!) He would look up at me as if to say, “What’s all the fuss, bub? Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
It was like HE had “figured it out.” Some great secret that presented itself to him. Sure, he didn’t have a mortgage or a kid to drop off at school or a deadline at work. But even if he did, you got the sense he wouldn’t spend any time worrying about it. Those were just things. They took up space in his head he wasn’t willing to rent out.
My cat had a simplistic philosophy on life. It boiled down to this: I am sitting here, right now, and that is good enough for me.
How I envied the orange tabby with no tip on his ear.
He’s gone now, and we miss him. There’s a hole in our house. A cold spot on the Ottoman. The contented face isn’t there to greet us as we pass. Or that relaxing, Zen-like purr. It was always enough to calm the nerves. Who would have ever thought a toothless porch cat could do that?
Now that he’s gone, I’m starting to understand him even better. That look he used to have. One that signaled an appreciation for life. Gratitude for each day. A desire to live in the moment. To not take anything for granted.
And I find myself wanting to curl up on that Ottoman once in a while to escape the hustle. To just think: I am sitting here, right now, and that is good enough for me.