It’s the anniversary today of my precious Midgecat’s death. As you might expect, it feels a million years ago and just yesterday. I’m old enough to have experienced my share of painful bereavements of people both furry and smooth, but I’m not sure anything was quite so agonising as going to collect her lifeless hairy body from the vets, and burying her. The loss of a furry companion is something so often under-estimated by the rest of the world, but few relationships are as uncomplicatedly loving and devoted as the ones we have with our pets.
Midgecat arrived ten years ago, at a time when although I didn’t know it, my life badly needed a cat. She was kind of a rescue cat but being Midge she didn’t bother going through an agency – just turned up in the garden one day, and before you could say “cat flap” she’d moved herself in with us. She saw me through some difficult times and many happy times, and supervised two house moves. She should still be here – she was only 9.
I wonder what she’d make of her home now? She hated cats, rejected out of hand my suggestion that we got another cat, but was happy for our friend Molliedog to come round for a sleepover so long as Mollie understood who the boss was. I feel guilty sometimes that I’ve filled the house with felines since she died, and fear she’ll be turning in her grave. Biff reckons though that she’d be chuffed if she knew about it – all these other beautiful cats and kittens are still not enough to fill the hole that she left.
She was certainly one of a kind. The only cat I ever met who loved power tools – the bigger and noisier the better. Often she left me wondering about past lives and who she might have been. Soon after she arrived with us she watched her dad change a washer in the bath tap – so intent, so quick to poke her fingers in when he moved away, rummaging in the tool bag sorting through things. Perhaps she’d been a plumber? She was certainly a smart little bunny – in the old days of dial up internet she could open up the browser and connect to the internet whilst I was in the kitchen making tea. And a few of the keyboard short cuts I know now are thanks to her. In the time its taken for the current incumbents to figure out how to use the cat flap she’d have had it reprogrammed and set so it didn’t lock when it went dark.
Rest in Peace lovely girl. One thing’s for sure – you’ll never be forgotten.
accidental fosterer 