Picture by Eduardo Viera, Pixabay
This time yesterday, we had three cats; an elderly tabby female and a pair of youngsters just growing up to be adult cats. They’d negotiated their spaces in the house and everyone got along with everyone else. The tom was starting to show signs of preferring to sit with my husband, while the old tabby would sit in her favourite spots, with anyone who was there at the time and the young female seemed to enjoy surprising everyone with where she’d be next.
Then we had the knock on the door. A driver in tears who had seen a car hit a black cat on the road outside and wanted to know, did we have a black cat?
We did – but not now. Thanks to that driver who took the time to come and find us and tell us the bad news, we found him before the foxes and crows did. He’s buried in the garden, under the place he adopted as his little den in the summer. We’ve been locked down for months, and the cats have been our comfort and our entertainment in that time. We’ve seen the youngsters grow in confidence, becoming cheeky and affectionate, while the old girl began to act kittenish in their presence. The surviving cats are quiet tonight. The tom’s sister is not her usual cheery self and the old girl has retreated from our company.
We’ve been asking ourselves whether we could have done anything differently, a useless question; we did what we did. He went out at dawn as usual, and we expected him to return for his breakfast. We’d never seen him cross the road, and couldn’t stop him from doing so without making him a prisoner in the house, a miserable existence for an animal known for his curiousity. If we’d known he’d be in danger – but how many days do you bar him from going out before he’s safe?
There’s something missing from the house now. All through the lockdowns, we have taken pleasure in the company of these three furry idiots we’ve invited to share our house. Now it’s two idiots, and we’re all unhappy and seeing this lockdown as a prison sentence more than some bigger version of being stuck in a lift for a little while longer with a group of amusing people. None of us are looking forward to what comes next.
We’ve been lucky to have lost only one relative to Covid so far, and we’re hoping it stays that way. We’re guarding what’s left to us. Going to sleep tonight hoping our absent tomcat is resting in peace, that our families will stay safe, that life will return to something better than this miserable and isolated existence. When you can’t offer help to a stranger in tears on your doorstep, the world is a harder place.
It’s a generic photo of a black cat above, though of a cat very like our lad. He was a shy cat, and the few photos I have of him I keep for my own memories.
Julia Chalkley 