Our cat Rocket passed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly this month.
A long spindle of a black cat, elegant and sharp with a meow fine-tuned to pierce a heart - only sounded when in want of something, never wasting words on idle chatter. A lover of a fine surface and a fresh blanket. A sun-dozer with a rare but deep purr. A door-greeter and far-flung explorer - a second shadow creeping up when the light grew thin. A soft friend who would grab your attention with an outstretched paw. Eyes reflecting in a dark room, a shape taking form from void.
We got to spend 8 years across 3 different houses with him and it will never feel enough.
I struggle a lot with the feelings that surround pet death. I always do, and I understand that it will fade as it always does. I hate how immediately raw it makes me feel. I hate how it seems to me that it effects me more than human loss does. I think the only way I can square this circle is that human loss feels gargantuan, unapproachable. This is just the little death you hold in your hands and cradle. Their deaths we make totally about ourselves because they can't make anything of it themselves, at least not in a way that translates. If we don’t make something of it no one else will.
It is losing a piece of myself - wrenched out, in a way that has no pathos at all unless I inject it with such.
Eventually it will fade. I will still hold him dear, but the rawness will fade. I despise myself right now that this will be the case, that in the future I will likely have made my peace with his loss.
classic Rocket sleeping position
I think of another one of our cats that passed a few years ago called George. I try and remember his face sometimes and have trouble. Of course I could check a photo and be reminded but it hurts me that these things fade.
The absence from the sudden loss seems so much more sheer - a cliff face that has been excavated by man’s hand. Eventually it too will be weathered by time and at a glance look part of the everyday.
Our other cat Teddy responded with indifference, almost callousness when we showed him. But it's us ascribing human emotion to him when he comprehends the world differently. He is a sweet and loving cat who wants nothing more than attention from us.
I kept thinking of the phrase “his body’ - as if he has left for just a moment and will be back for it later.
The weight of silence in the car as we brought his body to the vet. Normally he would be so vocal when driven anywhere it would cause us endless distress.
Sitting in the vet’s waiting room, his body in a cardboard box, waiting to be seen, trying not to be too visible in our grief, in our loss, amongst others who are bringing their animals in for checkups. People who all will have a day like this. People who in the past have had days like this. The tears come as we are finally given a room to ourselves.
Handing his body over and asking the nurse if he really has passed, when we already know the answer. The practiced softness when one of the staff offers her condolences and brings out the sales catalogue for tasteful urns.
I remember his visceral reaction to mint tea bags. He would go crazy for them, ripping them open and rolling around in the dried leaves. If a box of tea was left out somewhere in the kitchen it would inevitably be discovered by him and destroyed.
He wasn’t super cuddly and so whenever he was it would feel so special.
The landscape becomes heavy with the shades of death. Is it a projection on my part, or rather a lens that picks up these colours which are ever present?
His sister Malka from the same litter is still around and lives with my parents. Looking at her is like looking at a rounder, meaner mirror of Rocket. I love her too.
I wanted to be able to watch him grow old. I wanted him to be here with me while I wrote this newsletter about some other pointless thing.
Rocket as a kitten during his first Christmas
This was not really what I had planned for this week’s post but once it happened it unfortunately couldn’t be anything else. I nearly didn’t write at all and wanted to leave this project moulder. I’m glad I wrote it.
One last related thing is that I wrote this song several years ago with my friend Claire to eulogize another of Rocket’s siblings - his brother from the same litter Lazar, who lived with my parents (along with the aforementioned Malka and several other cats). There is an odd synchronicity in that this song was wrote in a live session at the house we now live as Claire used to live here with her partner and child. I guess it’s not really synchronicity - just life? Your friends help you out if they can, and everything is temporary.