The Last Cat

I lay on the couch late Sunday afternoon, curled on my side with room for Sabastian, but he's gone. After eighteen years of making a place for three cats, tripping over them, cleaning up their markings, talking to them in high voices and playing crazy games, seeing the world through their eyes and taking comfort in their closeness, now there are none.
Sebastian, "Seabass", was the gentle soul. At the NYCity ASPCA, I first saw him riding on the hip of a very large shelter worker. When I wondered if the tiny black kitten I'd already chosen would be intimidated by this larger tabby, the man said, "Oh no, he's a sweetheart." Seabass just wanted to get along. Satchmo tormented him and Keely claimed her dominance, but he never fought back: he just moved along. Coziness with people was his aim and he was a comfort to the girls during lonely evenings at home when I was out working.
There was his adventure: the Great Escape. He slipped out past Alison and her boyfriend when they were kissing in the doorway and was gone for two weeks. I sat behind the front screen door watching the bowl of food I had set out as bait, learning how many loose cats there were on our block in Brooklyn. Finally our posters brought a call from a woman on the block behind us who had seen him come up for food she set out for stray cats. He was huddled under a porch, cried out when he saw me, but was so frightened, I had to crawl in and get him. Once home, I put him in the tub with a little water- he smelled like a homeless person- and he purred as I washed him. Still, time and time again, he tried to get out. In Philadelphia, Bob would host him in the back area way. "Want to go outside?" would excite loud meows and standing up to the doorknob. He loved to watch the feral cats from the safety of the other side of the fence.
The years went by, the girls' college and young adulthood and what had been "their" cats became ours. We saw the vet more often, lost Satchmo, had a routine of medicating Sebastian. Bob had more rituals and conversations with Seabass, who talked to him in response. We had the trauma of putting Keely to sleep in January, then Seabass had the house to himself.
He became more demanding. He was an old guy with kidney trouble who wanted water from the sink, and had a hyperthyroid appetite for special treats. He looked at us like a dog or a person and asked and asked. He peed
everywhere, but we forgave him when he squeezed up beside us whenever we sat down. He seemed to enjoy our practicing in the living room. When he stopped eating, then barely focussed his eyes and staggered when he walked, we had to help him go.
Now we have the kitty ghosts, the shadow that slips past the corner of your eye, the little motion along the stair. The house is unnaturally spacious without multiple litter boxes and bowls of food and barriers we put out to discourage the old age accidents. We are not greeted when we come in the door, nothing lives in the house when we are not there, no house spirit patrols and fills the emptiness. Thanks, old guy, for staying so long and giving our home a heart.

Summer's End

Before I noticed
here's summer's end:
Cicadas whirring like frying grease
along the drought dry path,
suddenly the brown leaves twisting
and dropping in the crackling grass.

I welcome the soberness of autumn, the inwardness,
the bare stretch beyond.
In the richness of my life,
the knowing I will never die,
I face the autumn wind of mortality
I run across the bare field
embracing my aloneness and my death,
because I still don't believe I will ever die or be alone.


My old cat is dying, the last of the three who spanned the growing up years of my daughters.
He's given up eating . He lies, a furry skeleton, waiting and sometimes asking me to do
something, he just doesn't know quite what.

There should be a lesson here,
the arc from beginning to end before my eyes.

Still, I refuse.
I think I have forever and keep
squandering
all the way to spring.