Ow Meow
He's in cat heaven, Linda remarked matter-of-factly. She was referring to Mr.Cat, the grey feline who'd been her cat for twelve years and on Friday went missing. He didn't show up on the counter begging for Linda to share her milk. He didn't meow his way between my legs insisting that I divert from whatever I was doing to feed him again. He was an outdoor cat in a rural area which features coyotes, mountain lions and bears.
Somehow in the first few hours that he had been a no-show, I didn't feel good about his future. But in truth, there was very little emotion around it. Start with the general rule that people don't have cats, cats have people. A lot of cats know how to manipulate people, with purring and rubbing up against their legs, but in truth, all too many cats don't even bother.
I had tried to teach Mr.Cat to purr. He meowed to beat the dickens. We'd meow back and forth as Buster and I climbed the driveway on the return leg of our daily perambulation. I would have liked to infer that Mr.Cat was attempting to communicate, but for the most part it seemed liked a cit-for-cat wail. He did not have a nice voice. Maybe that's why he didn't purr, although I think it was more due to intrinsic feline orneryness. There were times when I detected a constrained vibration in his throat but never to a pitch that it ever made a sound.
He was a good cat, Linda pronounced. She had gotten him to be a lap cat, to give her some emotional warmth when it was lacking in her person-al life. He wasn't a lap cat. Oh, sure he would sometimes jump into her lap as she sat reading the paper or watching the tube, but it was really for him that he did it. Maybe a tad more giving than marking his territory, showing 120-pound Buster that there were places he couldn't go. He also slept on the bed with us, somehow making his twelve pounds seem more like the dawg's weight when we tried to shove him back to the end of the bed.
Mr.Cat was kinda quirky, as all independent animals and especially cats can be. He would knead thighs and stomachs in a continuing one-two motion with his front paws. There was a flavor of instinctual bonding in his action, though it was often mitigated by his claws indeliberately punching holes in my skin. He probably couldn't understand my objection to this, his version of outreach.
He would jump into my lap when I was sitting at my desk, forcing me to type from a stretched position. Sometimes when I was plunked down in my spot on the couch, he would climb aboard, and I would rub his stomach. When I had the right rhythm going, he would lie twisted on his back across my lap, his back legs splayed shamelessly, his head lolling over my leg. Often he would drool from his nose. But when he had enough rubbing, he would simply lean around and bite me; not hard, though it demonstrated that he had a limited vocabulary.
I put away the remainder of his food, cleaned his dish, washed the towel he often used as a bed in my office, and stowed his toys. I wasn't in need of a replacement right now, though I would certainly have been glad to accommodate another cat if Linda wanted one. Nope, she said, she's got me now.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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