I read a story earlier this year. Well, I’ve read a lot, but this one was my usual, science fiction. A man who grew up in America in the 21st century was talking to a woman who grew up in a different time and place. He said that he tried to treat people as he’d like to be treated himself, that this is the Golden Rule. She corrected him. Treating someone as you would like to be treated is the Silver Rule, she said. Treating someone as they would like to be treated is the Golden Rule.
I’ve been reminded of that tonight. We have two elderly cats – Max is sixteen, a recent arrival, and Sasha is fourteen. We adopted Sasha and her brother Tigger at very short notice – and I mean, ten minutes’ notice – in 2008. They loved people from the start. Tigger died of kidney failure in 2018, and we still miss his daft affectionate ways. Sasha is more regal, but no less affectionate. As time goes on, we’re more tolerant of her infringements of the rules; she is still not allowed on the table or the worktops in the kitchen – but if she takes over the chair we meant to sit in, we don’t have the heart to disturb her.
We have three ‘laptop’ tables – glazed wooden tops attached to cloth bags full of polysterene beads. The bags mould to our knees and our meals go on the wooden tops, so we can watch the news while we eat. Sasha has the habit of knocking these down, bag side up, and sleeping on the bag. And yes, we don’t have the heart to disturb her. The glazing has worn off one of them, and while Himself took the view that we should throw it away, I wanted to give Sasha her own guilt-free bed, so I insisted on recycling it.
Harder than it looked. The cloth bag was an underside of cloth glued to a cardboard rectangle, the cardboard glued firmly to the underside of the wood. In pulling the cardboard off the wood, I discovered that there was a hole in the cardboard… discovered that when I dropped the whole thing on the table and the polystyrene beads puffed out of the hole in the cardboard. You know those beads. Went everywhere, and static made them stick to the carpet, the table, my fingers… Picked up all the beads, dropped the half-dismantled board in the process, more beads everywhere… peeled off more cardboard, which compressed the bag and MORE beads escaped….
Eventually gathered the beads in a bag. Today, I sorted out my fabric scraps to make the outer cover of the cushion in which to house those beads. I wanted to use the original stiff blue fabric; then I thought a patchwork or a purple cotton cover might look prettier. But in the end I used a scrap of old shirt.
The shirt was a work shirt that finally became too thin and torn to wear even in the garden. There’s blobs of black paint on it, it would rip if you tugged it too hard and it’s a Grandad-cream colour with a green, gold and red check. But it’s clean, probably smells faintly of Himself and it is soft. It looks like a small child stitched it together of leftovers, but Sasha climbed onto it within a few minutes and is still asleep on it now. I would have liked to have made her a patchwork cushion that showed off my skill in colour and sewing, but that would be me imposing the Silver Rule on an old cat. She wanted something very soft, seamless and smelling of someone familiar, and she has it. And she loves it. At fourteen years old, she may have less than a year or maybe another decade, and I want her to have what she wants in whatever time she has left.
Julia Chalkley 