I Miss My Cat

He died last Tuesday.

He was my first child.

I got him 13 years ago at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter, for seventeen dollars. In exchange, I got 13 years of love.

He was my bridge from being single to living with my boyfriend, getting engaged, getting married, having kids.

He came into my life a few years after I'd lost both parents. My closest family member was nearly four hundred miles away from where I lived, and at the time, I wasn't dating anyone. I didn't have a roommate, I was working full-time from home, and I was in regular need of a hug.


He was in need too -- not just of hugs, but a home. A three-year-old who'd been brought in by his owner, for no reason that was shared with the shelter, he'd been in a cage for ten days and had already won the hearts of the staff, who dubbed him Marmalade because of his coloring. I couldn't take him home the first day I saw him, because I'd come without a cat carrier -- I didn't own one. But it didn't take me long to bond with him, because he meowed each time I walked by eyeing other cats, and drew me in with his gorgeous honey-colored coat with creamy white highlights around his cheeks, nose and eyes, and creamy chest and paws tipped with white, and his tiger-like tail, full of rings. When I offered to scritch his head, he knew a good thing and he promptly flopped down, belly up.

It was love at first belly rub.

I was back with a borrowed cat carrier when the doors to the shelter opened at seven thirty the next morning.

After a quick whisk to the vet, where he was weighed, inoculated and declared "somebody's love muffin" by the smitten doctor, I brought him home. I introduced him to one room at time in my West L.A. two-bedroom, and each time, he'd come back and "buuuush" me with his head to thank me, and meow as if to say, "It's all mine now? I can live here? With you?"

I dubbed him Honey Bear, because he was honey-colored, soft as a Teddy Bear, and simply brought to mind those bear-shaped honey dispensers you can get at the supermarket. He had the sweetest dispostion and gentlest nature of any being, human or animal, I have ever met.

He was a high-maintenance kitty, but worth it.

He demanded food at ungodly hours. He stood on hind legs and poked me with a paw if I neglected to feed him or break for lunch or stop working in time for dinner, or stayed too long on the couch watching TV before bed. He took up half the bed and most of the covers. In his last four years, when he battled lymphoma and endured chemotherapy, he demanded lots of medicine, costly treatments, and even, for more than a year, nightly administration of IV fluids. But, as the vet once said, "He never gave us a moment's trouble."

Always, he was there for me. Through the ups and downs of my romantic life, till I finally settled down, he was a constant comfort.

He moved with me, living in three apartments.

He allowed himself to be adopted by my boyfriend, who became my fiance, and then husband ... and made a man who'd never had a real pet turn into an adoring father willing to take allergy shots to be around him.

He taught my husband and I how to be parents, how to put our "child" first.

He saw me through surgeries and miscarriages and the birth of my twins.

He saw us both through those crazy first months with two babies.

He somehow cajoled my husband into being chief belly-rubber, and the love sessions between the two of them became a regular feature of their lives. I've never forgotten the night he planted himself atop my husband's chest when my husband had cried out from a nightmare. My husband always told the cat, when the cat settled down on his side of the bed, "Puss, you honor me."

But always, always, always, he was my cat first, my guardian, my mascot, my Patronus.

He was unfailingly gentle. He never bit save in play, and then, he would barely leave a mark. He never scratched except by accident, even when I sat him down and put him through the torture of cutting his nails. He rarely hissed -- maybe once, at a visiting human who smelled of cats, and maybe once at another cat at the vet's. Never at me. Never at a family member.

If I made the bed, he got under the sheets.

If I put a blanket down, he sat on it, assuming it was for him.

If I read the newspaper, he lay atop it.

He would often sit on my desk and get right between me and my computer: if I had to work, so be it, but he was going to be a part of it and that was that.

He would sit in a chair at the table during most meals, hoping, mostly in vain but not always, for a handout -- chicken, fish, or even better, the chance to lick a cereal bowl's residual milk. Boldly, he'd leap onto the table even though he was lifted off time and time again. More than a few times, he managed to snag somebody's supper before he was caught.

But mostly, he was just here, content to hang around me, a being whose very presence in my life kept me grounded and safe and enveloped in the sure knowledge that I was loved, no matter what.

He left the world just as my kids, nearly five, were starting to really appreciate him, wanting to feed him, giggling when he licked treats off their little hands, and marveling at watching him lap up water.

I'm glad they got to know him at least a little.

By watching me and their dad take care of him, they learned about being gentle to animals, about how they didn't always come first, about softness and sweetness and coziness, and about how great it is to have a little bit of nature, a touch of something wild, in your home.

But he was my cat, not theirs. He made his loyalties known time and time again, ushering me into the bedroom and plopping down in his accostomed place on the bed, sharing not just body heat, but the simple comfort of being in each other's company, and I was the company he loved best.

As I write this, I am thinking of an old Hoagy Carmichael song that captures the many, many nights (and days) I was fortunate to have with the cat I named Honey Bear. Funny, I never sang this one to him -- mostly I sang him a version of "You are So Beautiful," with lyrics rewritten to refer to a cat, to which he would meow in call and response ... or my own bastardized version of "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" (I retitled this, "How Are Things in Honey Bear-land"). But it's this Hoagy song that best captures my feelings for him and, I think, his feelings for me:

It's not the pale moon
that excites me
that thrills and delights me
oh no
It's just the nearness of you

It isn't your sweet conversation
that brings this sensation
oh no
It's just the nearness of you

When you're in my arms
And I feel you so close to me
All my wildest dreams come true

I need no soft lights
to enchant me
If you'll only grant me
the right
to hold you ever so tight
and to feel in the night
the nearness of you.