There was once a cat. She was a mangy stray that would eat and run from my grandmother like a bad-tempered thief. The Alsatian next door wouldn’t deter her, neither would the masses of feet that habitually used the family home. She was aware of the dangers but knew her own ability to dodge and weave through the obstacles of life. Her one eye sported a stylish blemish that gave her a roguish look, and anything less than pillaging would’ve been beneath her.
Over the years the cat became a part of the home. Whether she became a resident or not was a matter of opinion. She ate there, and slept there, but it was one place of many, at least at first. As time moved on the journey to another residence was less and less appealing to her, and the current crash pad was as good as any – I’d suppose – so she stayed longer and longer until she decided that pillaging might be harder work than she needed to perform.
By this time, my grandmother had lost her husband, whom she had been with since the eve of forever, and most of her family now had families of their own, so the cat, bad tempered thief or not, became a friend. I would suppose friendships are like that. We acquire them rather than make them, sometimes people – or cats – turn up in our lives and just never go away, and before you know it, the space they inhabit moulds around them and could not be filled by anyone (or anycat) else.
My grandmother died at the beginning of 2021, and I have believed ever since that she died of a broken heart. No matter how much she loved the cat, the dog, and yes – I suppose – even those irritating people we all call family, none of them could ever replace my grandfather. His boisterous laugh as it boomed through the house, louder because of the deafness he would never acknowledge, was too easily missed once it was gone. His CB radio crackled as he chatted to the strangely named children who would look, if you met them in reality, as though they were adults. The moments of abrupt gruffness that would appear and disappear like clouds before a summer sun.
I think my grandfather was a hard act for anyone to follow, and though the cat channelled his gruffness, I don’t think it could channel much else, so eventually my grandmother just drifted away.
The cat, however, did not.
My mother never really liked cats. She would never be cruel to one. She loved animals, but cats, well, cats looked at her with those eyes that seemed to stare into a person’s soul. My mother was therefore a dog person, as was I. Dogs would never look at you in that condescending way cats did. I suppose some of us have seen enough of our own eyes looking back at us in the mirror reproachfully, so to take that from a cat is just too much.
But after my grandmother, the cat had to go somewhere, and like her mother before her, my mother would give the newly homeless cat a home.
But she didn’t enjoy it.
Unfortunately, my mother thought she was the alpha-female of the house, but the cat had other ideas. My mother would feed the cat and the cat would scratch her back in return, she would pet her and receive a bite for her troubles. It seemed that the cat knew who was really the boss.
But my mother being my mother, she persisted.
To add insult to injury, the cat quite liked me. She’d lie on my lap and roll over to present her belly to be tickled. She’d look at me and smile that catty smile as I scratched behind her ear. She’d purr that purr of the world’s smallest motorbike idling in a bed of cotton wool as I rested my hand on her back and slowly stroked her. She did all these things as if she were not a tiny wannabe tigress awaiting just the right moment to eat the woman of the house whole.
Now, there has always been a certain peculiarity about the cat. It never seemed to bother her. It never caused anyone any real concern. People would notice it and comment on it but forget it soon enough. This was that roguish fleck in one eye, and over the years it got darker and darker still, until we were certain there was no conceivable way for the cat to actually see out of it. But then the cat began to leave food. She would become even more lethargic than usual – though admittedly this was hard to tell from her usual self – and finally my mother began to hear the cat crying quietly to herself.
They were not shrieks of pain. They were small sounds. As if the cat was mourning someone lost to her but didn’t want to draw too much attention to the fact.
I’ll be honest with you here. I could understand if a lesser person would have just pointed and laughed at the cat. I realise that sounds awful, but the cat didn’t exactly fill the home with love and happiness. The cat looked down on my mother, and it tended to treat my mother as an underling. Of course, my mother is not a lesser woman, so instead of pointing and bellowing “ha-ha” she took the cat to the vet, and then we discovered why the cat’s eye was so very dark.
A cyst had been growing behind it for many years. Pressing against the cat’s brain and causing what we can only assume was a great deal of discomfort. But the cat, much like many of the other women of the family, never showed her pain. I guess she was a cat of the real world, a tough one, a cat grown of hard-won fights. Which was – perhaps – why she had selected my grandmother, and then my mother, as her companion.
The vet stated his terms, and my mother opened her purse.
So, when the cat returned home, she was minus an eye. Around her neck was a lampshade that would have been stylish for a lesser creature, so naturally the cat hated it, and my mother’s purse was considerably lighter.
My mother has called me since and we have spoken of the cat, but I have not seen her since all this occurred. I have been told that there is a patch of hairless skin where her little eye-socket has been sewn shut, and her temperament seems to have improved.
I only hope it has not improved too much.
The tiny roguish fleck has gone now along with the eye of course, but I hope the rogue in the cat remains. In fact, I have already suggested to my mother that – as she is a seamstress – she should make the cat a tiny eyepatch, because even if the cat’s pillaging days are over, she is still very much a pirate at heart.