A Cat Story-Short Story

I was too late getting my Cats on Tuesday Story posted, so I'm posting my longish, short story now, you may place in whatever catagorey you like, COT, WW or even TT. It's longer than what you're used to reading on this site so you may want to come back when you have a cup of coffee and time to put your feet up and just read.

This is an old story that I've recently re-written about two cats and the their awarness of death. My mother's cats. It is based on something true, but my imagination has taken form in their voices. It was a story I had planned to post for Short Story Writing Month in September. I had submitted one and was planning on a second when I lost my nerve. I've gained some of that confidence back...so here it is. There are no photo's, it was long before digital cameras came into my life.

GRAY AND ME

No one prepared me for this. I didn't know it would hurt so much. I miss him—really miss him.

We'd been friends for only a short time before Gray told me, one cold winter day that he was ill and was going to die.

"I've lived a long time," he had said, in a raspy voice. "I will be leaving before the azaleas bloom."

I stared out into that cold afternoon; even the sun streaming in through the glass door, felt cold. An icy chill sped down my spine, standing my hair on end. I couldn't fathom what death was like back then.

I was taken from my mother at an early age, a wee runt of a calico kitten that it seemed nobody wanted. I was given to a family, if you can call it that, which never cared for me once the cuteness of my early kitten days, wore off. I was left out in the cold and rain, to find food and shelter wherever I could, before I came to live with my friend Gray. So, when he said he was leaving, I'd just gone numb from the top of my brain to the tips of my paws.

I remember the day I first came to this house. I had not rained that day—the first in many. The sun, in fact, was warm and the breeze was whispering gently through the stately pines. The birds were flying around like they had never seen blue sky before.

I sat on the curb of a quiet street and watched them flit from tree to tree. I was contemplating trying to catch one when a kind, old man stopped and said hello to me. I had noticed this man before. He walked this street every day, rain or shine. I had always stayed hidden from anyone's view, but it was such a beautiful day that I just had to capture some of the sun's rays and breathe in the warm, pine scented air.

The old man's voice was very soft, loving and kind. He asked me where I lived. With a shy mew, I tried to tell him that I didn't really have a home. Well, I did, sort of, but I desperately wanted to leave it behind and find someplace new. Someplace where torture and starvation were not the order of the day.

Somehow, the old man sensed this about me and lifted me up in his arms. He seemed startled by how underweight and thin I was. "My goodness, little one," he'd said, "haven't' you been eating well?

In a long, mournful meow, I lied, and mewed to him, "No, not in three days now." But in reality I hadn't had a decent meal in over a month. In all that time, muddy rain water was all I'd had to drink, too.

"Would you like to live with us?" he'd asked, pulling at the dried flecks of weeds and burs from my long, matted fur. "The wife and I will feed you well," he'd added.

That was all I needed to hear. I responded with deep rumbling purrs. I was definitely going home with this man.

As we walked along together, for the first time in a long time, I'd suddenly felt happy and safe. Happiness that would last forever, I thought, until we reached the old man's house. That was the day I met Gray. Before I stepped through the door of that house I had sensed an intimidating presence. But I'd quickly dismissed it because I couldn't imagine anything bad coming from these humans, the man was so kind. He had a true heart. I could tell that much.

After I'd been given a warm bath and a good meal, I was left to take a nap on the sofa. Then Gray entered the room. He had been out most of the day, so he wasn't aware that the old man had brought home a new addition to the family.

The old man and his wife were in the room when Gray came through the cat flap. They'd tried to introduce me. Gray had been polite to them, but only stared at me through the narrowed slits of his dark, gray-green eyes. A threatening growl followed by a row of bristled fur down his back, and a menacing hiss.

The old had man scolded Gray. "Be nice to this little girl," he'd said, "she's had a pretty rough life and we want to her to like it here."

But the old, gray, lump of fuzz just continued to stare me down. His eyes were threatening, daring me to leave the sofa. From the kitchen came a familiar call, Gray abruptly broke off his stare, stuck his nose in the air, and turned towards the kitchen for the light snack the woman had prepared.

From the sofa, I remember watching him eat, afraid to move a single whisker for fear he'd take that as insult and pounce on me. I wanted him to like me then. I needed to be liked.

Having a home with this old couple had been just what I'd been hoping for. I had felt so lonely for so long and after having spent just one hour with these kind people, I felt like I finally had a happy place to live. Forever. I wanted to be happy. I needed to be happy.

For the next three days, Gray avoided being in the same room as me. It wasn't until the fourth day, when we just happened to be left alone in the house together, that he finally spoke to me. And even though he wasn't kind with his greeting back then, he did speak to me, nonetheless.

"If you're going to stay here, young calico," he growled, "then stay out of my favorite chair."
I had been sitting in the old man's lap until he had to get up and go out with the wife. He had inadvertently placed me on the wife's chair to finish out my nap.

It took all that winter, and most of the next spring, for Gray to treat me like a real member of the family. He seemed to just tolerate me being in his territory for the sake of the old man and his wife. We got treated like equals by the old couple, so I guess that must have helped him to finally warm up to me. I could tell he would do anything he could to please the old couple. He loved them that much.

And so would I.

When summer came, so did the company. The old couple's house got very busy and very noisy. That's when Gray started to look after me. That first summer, the old man and his wife's daughters and grandchildren came to visit a lot. First one bunch, and then the other. The grandchildren always teased me, ran after me trying to grab my tail. Gray could see how distraught I was over the loud, obnoxious little humans and told me how to avoid them during the day, and at night, they were more interested in the television than me, anyway.

"Napping on the old ladies bed is the key," he'd confided one warm day, after I'd been chased around the house for the third time. "I just pretend I'm too tired to play and go take a nap on her bed. No one is allowed to go in there except me. So they leave me alone."

That was good advice. From then on, I took a lot of morning naps, long afternoon naps, and sometimes I slept the whole darn day away in the old woman's room. Besides being safe from shrill, giggling voices, and prying hands, the darkened bedroom was the coolest place to be when the days outside heated up.

Gray also knew that by sharing the old ladies room with him, it was the only way for him to get any peace for himself. Sometimes during our naps he'd let me sleep on the same bed. Sometimes he'd let me have the whole bed and he'd take the chair.

The old woman understood our need for a retreat from the visitors. Just for us, she kept a special quilt on the chair, and one on the end of the bed, so we wouldn't get our hairs and dirt all over her ivory, chenille bedspread.

It was during those long summer days that Gray and I finally got to be good friends. We talked a lot about our past. Gray had told me that he had lived here with the old couple since he'd been a small kitten.

"You're lucky," I told him one day, "you've never had to be chased and beaten. No one kept you locked in a dark shed for days on end without any food or clean water." Then I told him how I had to eat sickly mice and insects just to stay alive. I wasn't real adept at catching very healthy mice.

"Well, you're okay, now," Gray had said. "You'll never have to worry about being abused again. I've lived with these humans very near seventeen years now, and I have never once been mistreated."

Even in the short time that I'd been here, I could see that was true. The old couple bent over backwards to care for Gray and me. We always had good food—lot's of variety. The only thing I didn't like about living here so much, however, was the trips to the cat doctor. But Gray told me that was because they loved me they cared about my health, so I'd better get used to them.

Gray had to go to the cat doctor a lot in those last few months of his life. He'd begun having to stay in the clinic for several days at a time. Each time he'd gone to the Cat Hospital he'd stayed a little longer; each time he'd come home, he'd been markedly weaker.

Finally, one day, after a particularly long hospital stay, Gray told me the reason for his sickness.
"I have cancer," he had said, while were tucked up together on the end of the old ladies bed. He was cold a lot those last days and we snuggled together whenever he was home. He liked my warmth. I liked his. Although, I didn't like the smell of his fur when he'd first come home from the animal hospital. "The doctors can't seem to find a medicine that will work for me anymore. So I'm going to stay home now, I'm not going back there again. I will die here, around those that love me best, the old man, the old woman, and you.

I was happy he was going to stay home with me now. Those long days that Gray was in the hospital were the worst for me. I was totally lost. I continually paced from one room to the next, looking for him, calling for him. Smelling his odor in places that he'd last been was the only comfort I found when he was away.

The old man would hold me in his arms a lot. They both knew I was distraught over Gray's absence and tried to comfort me. But I could also sense that they missed him just as much as I did and they were just as worried as I was.

The old woman vented her feelings to the old man the night before Gray came home to stay for good. "I can't bear for Gray to be alone in his suffering," she'd said, "I want to bring him home tomorrow and let him die here, in his own bed, with his family, with all the things he loves around him and snuggled next to his best friend, our little Calico Girl." (Calico Girl, that's what they had named me.) "I can take just as good of care of him as they can at that hospital."

And that was that. Gray was brought home and slept out his final days. Several places had been prepared around the house just for him to nap: one was a warm fleece blanket placed in front of the living room window; the warm rays of the morning sun streaming through the plate glass warmed his fur. On warm days, he'd been carried to spend the afternoons on the cool, comforting quilt on the old woman's bed. And in the evening, he'd find comfort in the arms of the old woman as they rocked back and forth, watching television. I was always just a few feet away in the old man's arms, dozing lightly, listening to every breath Gray took.

When Gray could no longer eat, and could barely swallow water, I snuggled even closer. I stayed by his side every minute. I didn't care to eat or drink either. When the old couple urged me to keep up my strength, I realized that it wouldn't be good for the old couple to lose both of us at the same time. Gray had also urged me to eat, and so for him, I did.

I had told him how hard it was to stand by and watch his suffering. "I'm not suffering, really," he'd groaned one night. "If I'm lucky, one day soon, I'll just go to sleep and won't wake up in this world." I told him I didn't want him to go. "I have to, Calico Girl," he'd said. "It's my time, I have to go."

I had told him how much I would miss him. I cried. We had to be brave for the old couple's sake. Gray knew the old woman liked him best. He would miss her. He'd told me to buck-up and mind not to do anything to make the old woman unhappy. "Once I'm gone, she'll need you to cuddle with. She's a good human. She'll love you forever and will take good care of you till the day it's your turn to die."

Gray had told me that the old man couldn't live without me, either. He'd told me how sad the old man had been before he'd found me. "Oh, the old man loves me, too," Gray had added, "but he knew that his wife had a special bond with me. He often wished he'd had someone like me to dote on, too. Getting old for humans is hard. He needed someone like you to pamper and look after. The day the old man found you in that old gutter was the day he came back to life."

I had asked Gray why I'd made such a difference in the old man's life.

"All his life, the old man had been very busy with work. He travelled all over the world while his wife and kids stayed home and lived most of their lives without him. When he was finally retired, his kids were suddenly grown, gone with families of their own to look after." Gray sighed and shifted his weight, not an easy feat for him to do anymore. "Oh, the old man loves his wife and family dearly, they did a lot of good things together, but as the days went by, the years had piled up a hole of emptiness in the old man's heart that even his grandchildren couldn't fill. The old man's mind was going inactive. He was losing his will to greet each new day with the same eagerness he once had. Old age had suddenly become boring. Lonely. He took a lot of long walks.

"Then, he found you. All dirty, hair matted, half starved for food, as well as for love and attention. The old man's heart melted, and well, you know the rest. Since he found you there's been a huge change in his attitude, his love for life. He's happy again. And I think it's all because you needed him as much as he needed the likes of you."

I couldn't decide if I was more happy or sad that day. Gray always had a way of making me feel needed. I'm glad he let me into his life.

It was later that night that Gray left us. He'd been snuggled in the old woman's arms, rocking back and forth; she had been stoking his head, rubbing him gently behind his ears, when he just slipped away. The old woman knew the second he passed, but kept holding him, rocking with him, gently stroking his coarse fur for a few more minutes. Tears wet her face and dripped onto her bosom.

When next the old woman looked up at her husband, and me, I'd been stretched out across his chest, dozing, we knew that Gray had gone, too. The old man's eyes filled with tears and the couple wept together. My eyes stung, but I didn't weep. All I could do was stare across the little lamp table that divided the pair's comfortable chairs, at the lifeless gray lump of fur in her lap. I knew he'd gone, but I didn't want to believe it. I watched for the gentle rise and fall of his stomach, the low congested rumble of his purr, the twitch of a whisker, how I'd known that pain had struck him again. I watched for some minutes, but all was still. My friend had indeed gone.

Dazed, I'd watched as the old man stood up, he'd placed me back in the warm spot of his chair and patted the top of my head. Then he gently lifted the limp mass of gray fluff from his wife's lap. They didn't speak. There was no sound at all really; even the television had been silenced. The woman stood, wrapped Gray's favorite blanket around him and the old man carried him out the door.

Dazed, I watched the woman as she closed the door behind them and they disappeared into the darkness. In a few minutes the old man reappeared in the doorway and nodded for his wife of fifty years, to come. Carrying a small lighted wand in her hand, the woman stepped out into the night after him. Then suddenly the old man and old woman had stopped, turned to me and beckoned me to join them. Numb from the top of my ears to the tip of my tail, I'd followed them.

There, on the side of the house, where all the beautiful azaleas bloomed each spring, in the hole that the man had just dug, Gray's body laid snuggly wrapped in his blanket, getting colder by the minute. When the old man pressed the earth firmly around Gray's body, I sniffed the dirt. It was acrid to all of my senses. But Gray was in the place he loved the most. He had always loved to lie hidden in the azalea beds, watching the humans stroll up and down the sidewalk. He'd often said that was the best entertainment a cat could have. Besides, chasing mice and digging for moles, that is.

With my right paw I padded down the dirt like the old man and then followed the old couple back into the house. That was that. Gray was in no more pain. He'd never suffer pain again.

We had all been preparing for this day, this hour when we'd have to lay our friend to rest. The human's still had me. They took things better, somehow. I, however, was devastated. I hadn't realized it at the moment Gray took his last breath, I hadn't realized it when he'd been lovingly wrapped in his warm blanket, I hadn't even realized how devastated I would be when I placed my paw on his little grave and wished him a happy afterlife. It took about an hour to realize how really devastated I was that he was gone. Gone!

Gray's death had stunned me. I slept where Gray slept, I ate where he used to eat, I paced, I cried, yowled a horrible yowl, actually. I couldn't be comforted. The poor old man and his wife couldn't console me, and oh, how they tried to console me. For the next four days I moaned and groaned and paced and fretted. Outside I wanted to be. I'd check the grave. Inside I wanted to be. I'd check all the rooms, all the beds…

On the lap, off the lap, back on again. In the door, out the door. I had just about worn out the old couple completely before I finally realized that Gray was truly gone, truly in a better place and I'd truly have to go on without him. The poor old man was afraid he'd lose me, too. He held me, rocked me, carried me about the house, gently stroking my fur, gently whispering in my ear, "It'll be all right, precious little kitty," he cooed, over and over, "it'll be all right."

Somehow winter came and went and it's now spring. The woman and I are digging about under the azaleas today. The sun is warm, the birds are happily spreading their joy, and the old man is planting annuals a few feet away. Everyone is busy. Everyone is happy.

I took my place under the azaleas the way Gray would have done. I watched my humans lovingly care for all the growing things around us, I watched the people walk up and down the sidewalk. Gray was right. This is a good spot for a cat to watch the world go by. I looked fondly upon the all-knowing woman beside me. She was right; this was a good place to bury a cat. This is the place I want to be buried also, under the azalea, next to Gray. And nobody knows this but the old man, the old woman, Gray, and Me.

The End

Written and re-written by DBB