Lament for a cat

A couple of days ago I was walking back from the video rental shop (with what turned out to be a wonderful film, Secretary, in hand). I was pleasantly spaced, some white wine and grass finding their way around the spaces that my daily yoga’s been opening up of late. As I approached my road, Tricky’s moody ‘Makes Me Wanna Die’ kicked in on my headphones, and I opened up to its melancholy. Ahead, I saw what looked like a crumpled black bag on the side of the road. Getting closer involved a rapid turnaround of perceptual judgements that, after some nervous oscillation, settled on the reality: here was a cat that had just been run over, its guts blasted part way out its rear.

I turned away, but caught myself. To my knowledge, there’s only one all-black feline that prowls these streets. This prone mess must have been that cat, my favourite of the local cats. It was never desperate for attention—always keeping its feline dignity—but it was so warm and gracious, always basking on the pavements in the summer, so happy to be stroked by a friendly hand. More than once it had followed me home and tried its best to slip through my front door. Once, when some gas company engineers were working on our meter, it slipped in completely unnoticed, only to give me a pleasant shock when I found it in the kitchen. It purred ceaselessly as I reluctantly carried it out (my flatmate’s allergic).

Earlier this year, after waking from an incredibly intense dream, I was strangely drawn to watch the MPEG I’d recently downloaded of R. Budd Dwyer‘s TV suicide. I regretted watching it instantly, the shocking immediacy of this press conference bullet in the head wreaking havoc on my already fried nerves. I felt an uncomfortable heat in my chest, feeling like some somatic allusion to the heat of spilling blood. Walking out into the street felt a bit unnerving in this state, but as I swung the door open, whose head should appear round the corner of the hedge but the friendly black cat’s. It walked without hesitation to greet me, and I felt grace. Something in my emotional state, the uncanny timing of the cat’s arrival, the beautiful spring air, and the cat’s unaffected openness… I suddenly felt touched by untold possibilities for amazement.

That heat in my chest came back as I stood paying silent, distressed respect to this violently extinguished animal. I’m not sure of significance here: just one of those rhyming loops in time that hold things together until you grasp something of their import.

For now, I just wanted to remember this truly graceful creature.

UPDATE, 13th Jan: Well, imagine my delight when I bumped into my beloved cat-on-the-street, the black one with its distinctive white fleck on its chest. Sat on a dustbin looking all unperturbed. No consolation for the one that was killed, but I guess it’s only human to be more moved by the things you’ve a personal connection to. I still get a romantic, righteous tsunami of anti-car bile when I think of that feline with its exploded innards; but I’m so glad my friend is still alive, aloof and gracious.