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For a while now, Emily and my sister Diane have been gently suggesting that I get a cat. I'd been resisting. Why? There was a web of reasons; I didn't even bother to analyze them all out, since it wasn't really about "reasons" so much as a resistance to the feelings of cat-longing, but I did pray a couple of months ago, if I'm "supposed" to have a cat, well, if a stray comes by, I'll consider it. Since I hadn't seen a stray outside my apartment door in over four years, but strays were possible enough, it seemed like a reasonable enough condition to set.
I was working at my computer a week and a half ago when I heard a scritching on my patio screen door. An animal?? Sure enough, a tabby peered up at me expectantly. What does one do when confronted by a tsunami of maternal instinct? If you are me, you might argue ambivalently with it for 30 seconds--"But if I feed it, it will come back--" "That's the point!" --"But what if this isn't supposed to be *my* cat, what if, what if...?" until God says, "FEED THE *?~@ CAT!!" So I reached for the fridge, grabbing a slice of Oscar Meyer ham. The cat was predictably wary of me, very interested in the ham but disappearing (but not very far) when I came back out with water. I had to leave for the evening and returned later to find the food gone.
The cat paid another visit the next evening, disappeared when I emerged with two slices of ham and a water refill. Again, I left for the evening and returned to find the food gone.
I left food out the next night w/out seeing the cat, then decided, the cat's going to have to visit me again to get more food! So I waited. Waited the entire weekend, waited through Halloween, waited two more days thinking, well, cat's moved on...
Come Wednesday night, scritch, scritch at the screen again. This time the cat let me stand over him and watch him eat and when he was done, rolled onto his side and purred on my dark porch.
Thursday night, scritching at the screen again. I'm thinking, is this cat mine, or am I crazy for thinking so? The cat let me pet him after I fed him. He hovered around my apartment, waited for an hour and a half until I came back from Seneca House, and I was very happy to see him and he obviously wanted to be let inside, but I wasn't ready.
Vulnerability to caring is always risky... is it worth the risk? This cat will die someday, almost certainly before I do, and I'll really really really care when that happens. So I could avoid it now, cut my losses... Maybe this cat isn't meant for me. Problem was, I didn't believe that. But I wasn't ready to reject that on Thursday night... And I didn't see the cat again for three more days, although the food I left out kept disappearing.
Emily rode back with me long after Vespers last night. There was the cat! MY cat. In my excitement, I forgot about the obvious: never chase after a cat. Laughably, ironically, he ran from me straight to my apartment door where Emily casually scooped him up.
I've been thinking of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Audrey Hepburn's frustratingly tragic, tragically frustrating character (Holly Golightly), how she won't grieve for herself, how she won't care for herself, but she still persists in worrying about the neighborhood stray cat that serves as a walking embodiment of all her feral longings and disappointments, a walking reminder of hope and compassion in a deadening world.
I'm going to go home today with a mixture of hope at hearing Oscar's conversational "meows" and dread at what he might have chewed up/peed on. I'm leaning more towards the hope end of things, though. |
