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Living in PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
We should be attendant to involves love, even when it’s the bond between a cat
The author’s cats, Edison and Twiggy, in August 2009.
E
arlier this summer my cat died. I know it’s not important in the scheme of things, but it left me reeling. For days I was buffeted by my grief in the most unexpected places: in the supermarket checkout line (no longer any need to buy pet food or litter), riding the subway (sitting opposite an elderly woman with a tiny, playful dog in a tote bag), and, of all places, at the Starbucks drinks counter in Hell’s Kitchen (where a barista called out a name that sounded similar to my poor kitty’s). It was embarrassing to respond like this. I mean, I’m a grown man. It struck me as unseemly to mourn for a little pet the way I was until I finally understood what was going on. He was a lilac point Siamese. My husband and I had adopted him and his inseparable brother in early 2002, just a few months after September 11 when the nation and New York in particular was still stricken by the terrorist attacks. The pitilessness and cruelty of what had happened to the city was still on many people’s minds. My own had blanked at the glare of it. To me it felt like, and it turned out to be, one of those moments in history when a line is temporarily drawn under human
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progress. It felt as if America and the world had stepped into an unsettling new era of uncertainty. It turned out to be the case too. Between the endless color-coded terror alerts on TV and the drumbeats calling for war, I wanted something to remind me that life was not entirely regrettable. Something creaturely and reassuring and human scale. It didn’t take long for me to decide that this would be a cat. My husband was not convinced. Recent events had proved to him that nothing was fixed, that people could not be trusted, that your life could end without explanation or ceremony between the ordering of a coffee and sitting down at your work desk. In that existential absurdity, why subject yourself to more needless complications, he asked, not unreasonably. But I’m Irish, which means when I make a decision it stays made. Within a week I was filling out an application at the Humane Society on East 59th Street. Founded in 1904, it has cared for abused, ill, or abandoned animals in New York City for over 100 years, and the scope of its operations has only grown. On the way there I had pictured myself picking up a scrappy, spirited little cat and when I arrived it turned out there was no shortage of them waiting to be brought home. But on impulse I asked if this was all of them and the female attendant told me that there were some I hadn’t seen in another room. We took the rickety elevator up another story and I walked into a room where ten full-grown cats were sitting up or sleeping in their metal cages. All of them were delightful, but for some reason I walked to the end of the long room to the very last cage. And that was the first time I saw him. He meowed at me with that distinctive and funny Siamese yowl. He clearly wanted to be let out. “Oh, this one is calling to you,” the attendant said wisely, so she opened his cage. He stepped out, stretched luxuriously, and then right away jumped into my lap. I had thought to choose a cat, but the truth is one chose me. His brother, the shy and sensitive one, held back in the cage until he saw the bond that was opening between us. Then he leaped up to join his brother