I said goodbye to Benjy two years ago today. It's one of those memories that makes me stop for a minute and...not really think, but definitely feel. I still miss that shadow cat. From time to time, I still think I see him out of the corner of my eye.
I wrote the following on the day he died, and I wanted to preserve it somewhere other than Facebook.
If I’m being honest, Benjy wasn’t a very good family cat. We adopted him as a kitten 16 years ago to keep Caddy company when we weren’t home. He was great for those first five years. Active, cute, funny (even though he could never really figure out how to play right).
When we brought our first child home from the hospital, Benjy began to withdraw. And when Conor began to crawl, he retreated further. ”A crying little hairless creature that can now move across the floor? Screw that! I didn’t sign up for this. You people suck!”
When we brought home our second child, Benjy checked out and became almost a complete recluse. He’d hide under the bed or in the basement during the day. And when the kids went to bed, he’s start howling wherever he was and eventually work his way out to settle in beside or behind us. He purred and head-bumped Kristy and me and settled in to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet out in the open.
Over the years, he became almost an afterthought—a shadow cat—because he was never around. The kids never really knew him, and most of our friends and family never saw him. He was dark and moody and misanthropic. If Morrissey were a cat, he would be Benjy.
But we loved him. He outlasted our great first family cat by five years, so he must have been happy in some small way. He loved tuna fish and catnip, which made him drool and purr up a storm. His favorite thing was to bury his head in my cupped hand and close his eyes and pretend no one could see him. He could disappear from the world.
When we held him as he passed away this morning, he buried his head in Kristy’s hand and did that again. He disappeared, and the purr stopped, and he faded away.
Even our complicated pets are hard to say goodbye to. Because we love them for who they are. And that peripheral shadow cat will always be there, just out of view, even though he’s not anymore.
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