Not really the done thing to put on a eulogy about a cat but I think humans find an interaction with animals that is usually quite pure and in someway a reflection of themselves, to which I will try to explain to myself.
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| Fernox resting on my legs. |
In 2009 I’d bought a house and was completely broke and single. At times
I found myself bewildered just staring at the waning ceilings and crumbling
walls and I’d suddenly catch a glimpse of a cat in the corner of my eye. With a
start I’d turn around to see there was in fact no cat. It happened to me
several times and I started to think I was going mad only to later reason my
brain was trying to comfort me on a subconscious level, or that the house was in
fact haunted. I opted for the first definition.
Two years later, when the house was all fixed up, I decided to get cats
and fill the house with a bit of love and not just paint and found two ginger
kittens online that were brothers. Thirty minutes later I was driving them to
my home in a cardboard box strapped to the passenger seat of my car with their
heads poking through the gaps in the box like two furry periscopes. On the way
back I thought to myself, 'this is like entering into a relationship with a
partner', as you know you feel desire but your fear of things falling apart,
like the love ending, or even a death, actually stops you from entering into any
relationship just so that you never have to feel the heartache of the end of
the world in it’s minutiae.
Back at the house I duly named the cats Sika and Fernox after building
material manufacturers, it seemed fitting at the time, and well, they never
complained. Both cats had different personalities, Fernox was proud, loyal and
had a silent meow whereas Sika is more the cheeky rogue and mouser. But of the
two, I’d again turn with that start of something in the corner of my eye and it
always seemed to be Fernox that was there, followed by his silent meow.
When the call came after two years of living without nostalgia of the
now, I would have gladly set the world on fire in that moment just to have
avoided hearing a stranger tell me he'd found my cat, dead, and unceremoniously
put on top of his bin by the roadside.
We all want to live out our days into
old age with grace and dignity and feel the need to protect those around us
with our ideals of Utopia, but the ancient Greeks invented the word that
translates as, 'no place' and that our ideals have no place in the cruel nature
of life. We live wonderful existential lives side by side animals and our
fellow human beings but have no control over the nature of time and its
inevitability.
This is the hardest thing. It's not just the grief of loss for an
animals unreserved love and companionship that doesn’t involve the conflict
with being a fuck up, wearing crap clothes or having a big nose, but it is the
loss of a time impossibly shared. A time of fantastic inconsequence that we
shared and he probably didn’t even know he was helping me towards where I am today,
the now.
http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk
