I had honestly got around to thinking he’d live forever. He was slower, and his hair had grown thin and brittle; he spent much time sleeping, or wandering on his own. He was taking medicine, although not much for someone so old. But he was still his cheerful if reserved self when you greeted him, would come over and pass the time as if there were no time at all, just a golden infinity of long, hot afternoons.
I liked him, despite myself. He had his vices. No doubt he was a dirty old man—he had an affinity for toes, which is not something I understand very well. He would eat to surfeit and then keep going, at least in the days before his appetite failed. He was sometimes, if not exactly cruel, often callous, and he was a great braggart. He’d often posture as a man about to perform fantastic feats of physical prowess—usually big-game hunting. He’d be provoked to these warlike reveries by deer walking through the yard, at which sight his whole body would tense up and his very hair would seem to stand on end. But these grand, bloody designs would inevitably fade into the warm inertia of sitting on the back porch, watching the grass grow.
Yes, I did like him, even though he made me sneeze. I’m not much of a cat person. Cats as a rule don’t act like they owe you anything, even when you feed them twice a day, let them sleep in the garage, and take them to the vet. The slavish devotion of dogs is a little more in line with what I expect from my dependents. On the very best of days, your average cat acts like a bad houseguest.
But Yoda the orange barn cat was a bit different, which I guess is what everyone who isn’t a cat person says when they like a cat. My wife’s family took him in nigh twenty years ago; as a kitten, his ears had been so large relative to his head that the moniker was gotten the old-fashioned way, earned. Unlike the vast run of cats, he seemed grateful. He was easy. He never scratched children and was always happy to see you; if you pulled his tail a little, say in an excess of post–Easter-supper high spirits, he’d know it was a joke and walk it off gamely. His greatest ambition was to get inside the house. If ever the door was left ajar, he’d bolt in with a speed that belied his heft, apparently hoping that this time an exception would be made and he’d be allowed to lounge on the hearth and watch golf. He was such an agreeable fellow, maybe he would have, save for my father-in-law’s catastrophic dander allergies, which make mine look small-time and amateurish. He was the cat who walked by himself, yes, but all places were not alike to him; inside was clearly his preference.
His younger companion, the black-and-white Cow Cat, or Skywalker, remains extant. She is all cat; she thinks she’s a wild animal, despite the kibble and the garage, and runs away when you try to come up to pet her. Inside is her idea of hell, and, if she could speak, she’d say “Nenni” when you tell her to come. She is, by my lights, no fun, and her skittering around does nothing to ameliorate the melancholy of Yoda’s surcease. I can’t help but feel that we won’t see his like again.
My father-in-law found him napping under a tree; he didn’t move at the approach of the lawnmower. Not such a bad way to go into that long unmemory. Yet I cannot help but feel sad. He was on the scene long before me, licked my toes when I showed up, licked the toes of my three children when they showed up. He seemed permanent, the friendly maître d’hôtel at my in-laws’ farm. But few things are permanent in truth. We haven’t told the children yet, and, being a coward in a small way, I somehow can’t bring myself to yet.
I guess all that’s to say that I’ve found the one hundred second use for a dead cat: obituarize him. Without him, all places are a little more alike, and now when I walk through the fields, I will walk by myself.
