About a Cat

"Oh, so you're a cat person?" A subtle criticism disguised as a question I thought was passe, but one lobbed several times since Aradhna and I adopted a pair of domestic shorthairs named Oscar and Theo in January 2008. Mostly from women, which is odd given Australia's blokey culture, where a man would sooner profess a love for chick flicks than a fondness for felines. But Aussie blokes care more about which footy code you prefer or team you barrack for than whether you’ve got a cat or dog ... as long as you shout the next round.

But this isn't a dig at Australia, or Australians. I grew up with dogs in NJ and spent many sublime afternoons walking with my mom’s or brother's dogs through sloping Tennessee backwoods. If pressed I would have undoubtedly expressed a preference for them over cats. It wasn't until 1999 when ex-girlfriend Janine and I adopted a pair of burly cats named Dimitri and Nicholas that I found myself amongst their fuzzy ilk. My outlook was quickly modified, but that didn’t make me a cat person any more than breathing makes me an oxygen person. Dimitri and Nicholas could have been homeless drifters with impeccable hygiene or space aliens who delivered complex messages with nearly imperceptible tail twitches ... but they weren’t. They were cats. Our cats, with personalities that demanded recognition and quirks that drew subtle acquiescence. We were graced by their presence, and they damn well knew it.

Which brings me to Oscar, who’s pictured above. He’s a cat I wish you could have met. Not because you’d have scratched his head and remarked "What a nice kitty" but because you’d have scratched his head and he may have hopped up beside you, or walked away from you like a runway model, or sat before you and stared like an art critic before a Miro, head cocked, eyes focused, body frozen. No, you wouldn’t have said, "What a nice kitty." You’d have said, "This cat is BLOWING MY MIND!"

Sadly, Oscar didn’t make it to his eighth year. As noted in the previous blog post he was diagnosed with anaemia in June 2011 and two vets advised he be put down immediately but he stuck around another twelve months until Friday when I had to bring him to the vet and watch him go. I could write about Oscar until my fingers bled but for now it suffices that you, dear reader, have missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because Oscar was the only creature that purred like a chainsaw and ate sunflower oil spread and meowed like a siren and laid beside, against and on top of my laptop whenever it deflected attention from him and considered my lap his easy chair and filled a room with moxie like an opera singer belting a tune in an elevator. Cat, giraffe, box turtle, wombat ... doesn’t matter WHAT he was. It’s WHO he was that made him unique and remarkably dear to us.

"Oh, so you’re an Oscar person?" That sounds about right.