One unseasonably warm and obnoxiously bright Friday about a year ago, I found out my cat was doomed.
He wasn’t supposed to be doomed. He was supposed to be coming home after having dental surgery. That changed in one brief call from the vet who used immutable words like “cancer” and “inoperable” before I hung up the phone and began to cry.
Lily was right there, but I didn’t hide my grief from her because I knew was going to be crying a lot- for a long time and at random intervals. Death isn’t something a toddler is even capable of understanding, but I laid a bit of groundwork that I hoped wouldn’t be traumatizing.
I told her Binx was going to die, which meant he would be going to someplace we couldn’t go and that he couldn’t come back once he got there. I said he had to go away so he wouldn’t be hurting anymore, but that I would miss him very much and that made me sad. It was okay to be sad.
Often, Lily gets quiet and fixes her eyes to some spot on the ground when she doesn’t understand something as though she’s trying to work it out for herself before she asks questions. Sometimes the questions don’t come for days or weeks. There are usually some entertaining non sequiturs down the road. She did this here for a moment before giving me a big hug.
When Violet came home from school later, Binx was home with kitty morphine to “keep him comfortable”. I told Violet that I wanted to talk to her and Lily rushed over to hold her hand. She was looking up at her big sister and smiling, delighted to know something that Violet did not yet; then, perhaps realizing the nature of what I was going to say, she looked down and tried very hard to look very serious.
Violet was upset, of course. She curled up on the bed next to Binx and put her arm around him and cried and cried as he purred away, oblivious to the reason for all the tears. Lily curled around Violet and really just seemed happy to be involved in what she could tell was somehow an important happening. When she caught herself smiling again, she did some pretend sobbing as well until I joined them in a mournful group hug. Eventually, for the children, the crying subsided in favor of snacks.
Binx died that Monday.
When Violet was an infant he so badly wanted to be her friend. He would snuggle next to her, or lay across her, or just set his paw on her little hand. Her response was to grab handfuls of his skin and fur or an ear, and squeeze, tug and try to pull him into her mouth. He was amazingly tolerant, but he would always end up giving her this look that said, ” WHY WON’T YOU LET ME LOVE YOU?!?!”
He was often just in the background of the children’s lives, finding a place near where they were playing to half watch, half nap like a quiet, lazy nanny.
They moved on from losing him much quicker than I did. Or so I thought.
A few months ago at dinner Lily asked when Binx was coming back. “He’s been gone a long time and I miss him. When will he come back?” I had to explain in a cracking voice all over again that he was never coming back. And then she started crying, followed by Violet. In a desperate attempt to make this stop, I blurted out that we could get a kitten someday. Now I get asked about that about once every two weeks.
I fight the urge to openly weep every time I pet a black cat. I am not ready for a kitten.
Recently Lily popped over to me while I was doing dishes to tell me a joke:
“Knock, knock!”
‘Who’s there?”
“Binx, your cat! I loved you and I died!” Before skipping merrily off, she added, ” I throw a cheese on my head now!”
She’s not great at jokes or mourning yet.
Binx was my companion for 17 years and I don’t imagine I’ll ever stop missing him.
When I was depressed, he’d jump onto the arm of the couch, reaching out his paw to touch me until I moved closer to pet him; then he’d raise his nose up for one of the Eskimo (Inuit?) kisses he loved to give.
He was a small thing and I’d easily scoop him up and pace around the house with my head filled with building dread and worry while he draped his body along my forearm, his feet resting in one hand while I absentmindedly stroked his fur with the other.
If it was getting bad and I couldn’t get off the couch, he’d come and sit next to me and put his paw on my arm, curling and uncurling it into my skin as he purred, his half lidded eyes telling me he loved me anyway.
I think that when I’m sad, I miss him most.
Lillian knows now that Binx dying means that he is gone. She knows that it’s a sad thing, but that it doesn’t change. While her sister uses art to keep Binx around, Lillian uses stories. When we were just waking up this morning, cuddling in bed like we do everyday she told me of a basket she found just then “over there”. I asked her what we would find in the basket because it was too dark in the room for me to see it yet.
“It’s full of little Binx’s. Inside of them are rainbows, but they have black fur and orange ribbons and they don’t never die ever, and if they do they always come back. Do you like them?”
I said I liked them very much.
