Listening for a voice that is gone

My cat has died, and my heart is aching. Miss Kitty is gone away forever, and I am shattered.

She was in the cattery over the weekend while I was away at Abbey, and as I drove out to get her on Monday afternoon they rang to tell me that she had passed away on Sunday night. I went to see her a last time, and she was curled up in a rug as though asleep. Gone.

They say that she was happy and content and comfortable when they left her on Sunday night, and that she looked to have just passed away quietly in her sleep. She is gone, and I am shattered.

She was my companion, my friend, a personality even though not a person, a mind and a soul, cat-shaped but present. I lived with her for over twenty years, longer than I lived with anyone, longer than I lived with my parents. My cat has died, and my heart is aching.

She was so tiny, even when she was plump, and sparklingly alive. Her ears were torn – once from having a go at a Boxer dog, once from chasing an irate pheasant hen. In her youth she was a ferocious mouser, a terror to grasshoppers, and once bought me a pigeon. She ate lemon grass, and pestered me for the freshest green tips. I grew extra for her, and she would sleep beneath it.

Miss Kitty is gone away forever, and I am shattered.

I keep listening for her, wondering where she is. She talked a lot, telling me where she was and what she was doing, always seeking me out to be near me. She always knew when I was sad, or lonely, or sick, and would lean up against me to sleep. I open the front door, and wonder why she is not there to greet me, or calling out to let me know where she is. I open the back door, and wonder why she’s not waiting to come in and be fed. I see the places in the garden where she has squirmed around and made cat-sized depressions to sleep in the sun.

My cat has died, and my heart is aching.

 

Miss Kitty’s Villanelle