Of Past Cats

I wrote this essay in 2001, but it was recently brought to mind once again and I decided it needed to come out of the mothballs:

As night thins into morning, I feel the familiar warmth of Lenny beside me. With my eyes still shut, I roll onto my side to curl my body around his, slipping my arm over him and pulling him close to me.

Lenny was the cat I hadn't wanted, but who had come into my life anyway and stolen my heart. My daughter already had a cat, and one cat in the house was enough. But despite my wishes, my son brought a kitten home from the dairy farm where he worked. What could I do? I couldn't send him back where I knew survival would be a struggle for him. So he stayed. He was a slight kitten with oversized ears and yellow eyes. His gray tabby coat was silky, with a furry undercoat of buff. His kitten ways soon won me over, and he became one of the family.

Lenny became the family clown, and he brought such joy and laughter to our home with his crazy antics. He chased a ping-pong ball around the house, bouncing it down the basement stairs and then carrying it back up in his mouth. He stalked and attacked his stuffed animal toy, standing on it with his front feet while his back feet stomped it into submission. He loved catnip, and would leap high off the floor to grab the box from someone's hand. Often he would stretch out on his side and pull himself across the floor by hooking his claws in the carpet.

The older cat did not appreciate this rambunctious young interloper. With a look of disdain, he ran whenever Lenny came near. If contact couldn’t be avoided, he knocked the youngster down with a swipe of his paw. Undaunted by a cat three times his size, Lenny continued to torment the older cat until Smucker, too, became young again and agreed to play. The two of them would race through the house, sounding like a thundering herd of horses. The mad dash would end in a tumbling ball of fur, from which they each emerged to stare at each other in mock hate. Ears flattened and tails twitching, they bared teeth and exchanged glares. Then one would attack the other, rolling and wrestling on the floor until one made a break, and they raced through the house once more.

When my son left for the army, Lenny became my constant companion. He slept on my lap while I worked at the computer, sometimes waking to reach for the keyboard. He had a special spot on the kitchen stool, where he would sit and watch while I cooked or washed dishes. He followed me from room to room, from basement to attic, never underfoot but always nearby. I could always count on him to race past me on the way down the steps, leaping onto the post at the bottom and taking a swipe at me as I walked by. If I left the room while he was sleeping, he would awaken and meow plaintively until he found me. At night he slept curled in the hollow of my side. Often I would open my eyes in the morning to find him stretched out beside me, gazing at me with love in his golden eyes. When he saw that I was awake, he'd stretch out his paw and gently touch my cheek.

I missed Lenny terribly when I was away on an extended trip this summer, just as I missed my children. And it was while I was away that Lenny became ill and died. The heartache, combined with the homesickness that I already battled, was almost more than I could bear. My little Lenny was gone. Never again would I hear his plaintive meow or feel his silky fur against my face. Never again would his warm little body snuggle next to mine on a cold winter night. He was gone, and for the last few months of his life I'd been away.

I didn't want to get another cat. None could replace Lenny. But once again, against my wishes, a kitten came to live in my house. This time it was a calico stray rescued by my daughter. Noodle was firmly entrenched in the household routine before I even returned home from my trip.

As the first tentative rays of the morning sun slip past my bedroom curtains, I blink the sleep from my eyes and reach to give Lenny a good morning scratch. But, of course, it isn't Lenny. It's Noodle's sweet kitten face that gazes adoringly at me with pumpkin-colored eyes. No, she'll never replace Lenny, but as the new day comes alive, I look deep into Noodle's eyes, and she stretches out a paw to gently touch my cheek.

(All My Cats)