The Cat
Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
This is a little story about moving.
I moved to a town for the third time. And for the third time I did not bring a cat with me, though the second time I took one. I thought I would go back for him, but now he is in another place that I left him, and he is dying.
He has cat cancer. I should have gone for him a long time ago but I didn’t have the resources to do that. I got an email asking me to go to him, but I didn’t have the resources to do that either.
It was a long time that I knew him; he is maybe nineteen years old now. This is the town that he was born. Did he want to be here when he died? Would he have preferred to be with me when he died? I don’t think that he would have cared.
Somebody picked him and his brother up off the river bank, down south in the town, when they were very small. If you go down to that particular part of the river bank you’ll find cats that look just like him. If I were free to behave in the way I would like to behave, then I would be going down to that part of the river bank looking for another kitten, or possibly two more kittens, to bring home, that’s what I think the moment of him dying means. But I am no more free to do that than I was to jump on a plane and fly to his deathbed.
There is an orphanage in Vietnam, that I visited once, that I made a promise to; to try to come up with a solution to a problem they had. It is a promise I haven’t been able to keep as yet because I haven’t figured out what the solution could be and I don’t want to give them a solution that doesn’t work.
And there are one or possibly two kittens on a riverbank just south of the centre of this town to whom I feel I have an obligation.
These are my most important obligations, at the moment, though I may never manage to fulfil them. They are not important for any particular reason. I think that I should have much more significant obligations as my main obligations, if I am going to have any. But I don’t. One is a promise that I thought was important, and the other is my grief, which I have suspended temporarily.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Lehan, your paintings and stories are always a welcome addition to the wall behind the main bar at the Pigs. I dunno what Merv does with the old ones, when you bring in a new set. Anyhoo, took me a few days to get into your story…no time for sadness (I think). Yes, pets. humans are so connected to them. We take Fergus out and about, meeting dogs and their humans. Old Bob had tears in his eyes, a couple of months back, as on of his girls had arthritis (all treated now, of course). Last week I saw Bob, himself, hobbling, but not complaining. “Only a knee replacement, trying to keep moving so I can get the other bugger done next month!”
Yes, Lehan, grief suspended temporarily. Pets, partners, kids…all cause us grief.
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PS Bob is one of the humans Fergus and I meet on our walks.
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Well said, Big M, you seem to get it right most of times.
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Thanks, H, I still don’t know what Merv does with Lehan’s paintings. Perhaps he auctions them off to pay for Janet’s hearing aids??
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I am sad Lehan. I was trying to find kind words to say to you since yesterday. All I did was to share your grief, alone, silently.
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Hi hph. I thank you for your kind words but – if only it were as simple as that. The story continues, in parts, in Therese time, and I welcome each honest response from you!
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My thoughts exactly. I couldn’t get into the comment box (again) to say anything. Just too sad.
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I feel for you Lehan-I think obligations to our pets are very important and it makes me angry that people just discard their cats like rubbish and so are left to breed and overpopulate, and end up as you say -on the riverbank with no one to love them.
lindyp
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I agree, lindyp. I don’t think people appreciate that taking on a dog or a cat as a pet is a very significant commitment. And it can run for a long time. Parents do the right thing by their kids and teach the kids this commitment. And then the kids grow up, find other interests and leave home and the parents get to share the pain of an old much loved pet facing the final curtain. That’s hard too.
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Hi Lindy, I think I agree with you.
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First we had the cat and she lived happily in the house, then we got a lively friendly puppy dog. He wanted to make friends with the cat. The cat run upstairs and and out to the roof, where she lived from then on. The kids stood on a ladder and put cat food in a gutter at the lowest part of the house.
One day she came down and we noticed that she did not look well. Gerard took her to a vet who said: what you are looking here Mr Oosterman is a dying cat. She had feline cancer.
The kids thought she had ‘caught’ cancer for living on the hot tin roof. The vet said no, she was just unlucky.
They put her in a shoe box and buried her in the garden….
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Hi Helvi and Gerard, nice to see you, I buried some cats in the garden and that was good, it would have been good too if I could have buried this one in the garden and then grown something over the top of him. Always a better way to do it I think.
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Glad to see you back here Lehan. We have our Milo to keep us on track. Sometimes on our walks he gets to meet a cat. He is friendly to them and the cats seem to know that and don’t run away from him. With ducks or birds it is a different matter and as for rabbits, he’s a merciless killer. That’s nature for you.
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Gez, as you might recall I had a Jack Russell terrier for a half a dozen years and she was a total assassin of rodents and reptiles. I think it’s very deep in the breed’s DNA. She was as bright as a new pin, but she was not a cuddly family pet. We had no cat then. it just wouldn’t have worked at all.
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I am curious about the connection regards the cat wouldn’t have worked. Too many feuding assassins and not enough sofas? Would the Jack Russell have assassinated the cat heavens forbid. Maybe two compatible assassins and living with the ardour might have been in your imagination impossible? Questions to keep me wondering for hours. Therese Boss, you clearly know a few things about keeping dangerous animals.
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