(F)Cooking (C)Fat and Other Loves
Cats know stuff. I’m not kidding. Cats are better than bank managers at sensing your station in life. They know more than the vicar knows or would wish to know. I love my cats; they don’t love me. Cats come, and sometimes go, sometimes stay in the barn, other times haunt the house in the middle of the night. If you need a clairvoyant, you can’t do better than speak to a cat, seriously, cats know about ghosts and reincarnation, they see in the dark, have no more lives than you, and will stalk you from room to room for no reason.
Take Balance, so called because of his uncanny ability to walk on a fence half an inch wide, he is the cat most often leaving. I don’t know where he goes, or why. He just goes. He’s also the cat who comes back more than any other cat.
They all have strong personalities, stronger traits, deliberate felines. Nothing they do is happenchance, which brings me to tell you about Greek. Now here’s a bloody rascal of a cat, I tell you. I’m pretty sure he was already in transit the first time he stopped by, probably moving from barn to barn until he found this hotel, a room with breakfast included. For several months now, he appears to like the place. While we didn’t know at the time, it became obvious on his visits that he was looking for a place to die. Greek, has moved on a final time, but during his visits he showed me a better part of myself.
Molly was too old to be bothered by fat Toms in the neighborhood. She’d long ago finished strutting her stuff. Reckless, one of my dogs, sees her as a old friend to be taken care of on wintry days, snuggling her into his chest by the fire. I sit in my rocker and I don’t know why but seeing them that way brings tears to my eyes.
Occasionally, and I mean this in its true sense, Peter will permit himself company. Peter wasn’t the friendliest cat…just the one I spoke to most.
One by whiskered one Peter took on all the other cats till none would venture near him. Peter was nothing if not deliberate. Nothing he did was done by chance. Playing, if it pleased him, preening if it didn’t. Peter wasn’t the kind of cat to make you feel calm or settled. That cat was Bonehead, he’d curl up in your lap and purr till you dozed.
Cooking Fat, so called because most times we referred to him with the first letter of each name exchanged. Cooking Fat was the cat most under our feet.
One day a new cat turned up at the cottage and stayed. After several weeks of being around I gave him the name Mr. Harry. So-called because every night, when he got tired of being petted by those of us he knows are friends, he wanders off to sleep in someone else’s yard.
I found Peter when he was a kitten and still bear the scrapes and scratches of getting to know him.
The only other cat Peter had any time for was Sarah. It’s hard to say how hurt I was when Peter took himself off to die. I know that grief hit me. I brought his lifeless body home and buried him far away from other cats also buried on the property, Paco, Fancy, Cilla, Smokey, Greek, and Louise, for whom Peter had no time. Before each of them left they had managed to become a habit as comfortable as any well loved child or a piece of furniture. Peter must have known how much we cared for him, being sure to lay down where he did.
You don’t choose a cat. With any luck at all a cat will come along and fancy you for his or her duration, not your own. If I thought that cats were anything but deliberate, I’d bolt the door on Sarah, believing her to be next, but I do believe that she’s determined. After all she’s given us a full six years of precious time. She’s entitled to be rid of us now that Peter has gone.
I fear for her heart.
