Today would have been Max’s nineteenth birthday. Two years ago today he and I walked up the garden together. He leapt up onto the raised beds, followed me around and ran back down the garden with his tail straight up in sheer joy.
He hasn’t made it to nineteen. I left a lantern burning over his grave last night to acknowledge that he should have been waking up to a tuna feast and a lot of fuss this morning. I miss him. Max is one of the best cats I have ever known – sweet, affectionate, trusting and permanently on guard against whatever might harm his adopted family. If we ever get the chance to adopt another cat as loving as Max, I will count us as blessed.
I’m treating this turn of the year into 2024 as a good chance to start afresh. These are the good things we woke up to this morning. Sasha, still alive and grousing that her breakfast is late. Our foster cat, Smoky Jo, doddering around the dining room yelling that her breakfast is late, too. She’s 18, almost blind, completely deaf and suffering from legs weakened by arthritis, but there’s nothing wrong with her lungs.
Other assets include a chance to change our vacuum cleaner without feeling wasteful, thanks to me being a touch over-enthusiastic during a ‘New Year, clean house’ vaccing session yesterday. Half an hour in, the Dyson grunted and there was an ‘orrible stench of burning from the motor area. Being us, we’ve thought of taking it apart to fix it, but it seems that Dyson no longer provide parts or servicing for this model. I’ve found that a Dyson should last about ten years. Our DC-02 is around thirty years old so I guess we’ve had our money’s worth out of it. We will open it up out of sheer curiousity, but I think we’ll probably be taking it on its final ride to the local tip next week.
One of the last things I did before logging off in 2023 was to block someone on FaceBook who was really annoying me. I woke this morning knowing that I could enjoy that page without seeing his posts. Don’t tell me that was spiteful. He isn’t harmed. His audience is one less today, but he won’t know that. And I won’t miss those posts that look as if a cat has bum-typed it and walked on the ‘Send’ key on its way to the litter tray.
I have also – at final long bloody last – sent out the last of the 2024 calendars I created for another FB page, the OU Cats. The last person who had ordered one let me have her address in late December. I got through the post office to send it off just before the queues began to build up. The empty calendar box at home was turned upside down so that Sasha could sit on the bottom of it to look down on her food bowl. Well that was a mistake. We heard the thump from the other room just minutes later – the flaps had worked free of their fixings and we found Sasha sitting unhurt but startled on the floor inside the broken box. The busted box has gone to Compost Bin Heaven and Sasha has gone back to sitting on the lid of our food waste bin.
Every scrap of Christmassy food has gone, and no, we didn’t waste any of it. The carnivores of the house finished the last of the turkey yesterday, all the brussel sprouts worth human consumption went into the turkey / vegetable stew and tonight we’re back to home-made pizza. I’m re-starting my habit of writing a daily diary, though there’s nothing to report for today beyond me sitting on my bum writing a short story for an upcoming competition. It’s a competition with the same judge who awarded me second place for a different story earlier this year, so I’ll be interested to see whether I can catch her attention again.
Some things were left in 2023 and some remain. Max has gone, but I’ll think of him often, with the pleasure of knowing that he had two and a half years playing in our garden and snoozing in the sun, enjoying the company of Genie and Sasha and sleeping between us as we watched TV. It’s all we can do for a cat – give him or her a good life for as long as it lasts. I start 2024 hoping that we can go on being human guardians for cats for a long while yet.
Julia Chalkley 