‘Maybe we are all like this ephemeral cat,’
limping briefly through life
Not long ago, a new cat appeared in our neighbourhood.
We know who our neighbours are, and we know who their pets are. But where did this cat come from?
Did someone dump him in the neighbourhood? After all, he had a limp, favouring a wounded front left paw.
Had someone abandoned him, hoping he would be adopted by a kind soul in the neighbourhood?
This harmless cat immediately elicited our sympathy.
The cat would show up in the morning when we left for work, and he would be there, waiting to greet us, when we got home at the end of the workday. At night, he would cry out on the doorstep, summoning us to reciprocate a goodnight.
We had to say goodnight to him outside, petting him on the doorstep because I’m allergic to cats.
Because of my allergies, we used to chase cats from our yard. But as the days went by, this strange cat won over our affections.
The open sore on his left paw was still being dragged around with every step, and it seemed to worsen. It became a real cause for concern.
Maybe the cat’s owners were looking for it. Maybe the cat had gone missing. But its nametag was strangely blank.
Maybe the cat shouldn’t be returned to his owners, who could have abused him. At the very least, someone needed to care for him, but his suffering seemed far beyond our area of expertise.
So, my wife called an organization that cares for cats. They came and picked him up, promising to treat him.
Soon afterwards, we discovered the cat actually belonged to some new people in the neighbourhood whom we hadn’t yet met. They had just moved in and had been away on vacation for a couple of weeks, namely, during the time the cat made his appearance.
Passing on this information to the cat care people, they assured us that if these new neighbours didn’t want their cat back, a good home would be found for the cat.
As the days went by, we wondered what happened to him. When we surrendered him to the cat care people, we thought we would never see him again. And after the surrender, he did not return. Nonetheless, we were secretly excited to discover he was actually a neighbourhood cat.
He failed to reappear in the following weeks. It seemed he was not in the neighbourhood anymore. Where was he?
As it turns out, the new neighbours did reclaim their cat. He healed up and, one day, there he was again, lying in our driveway, soaking up the sun. He returned to his routine of greeting us in our driveway.
We had given him away, only now to happily welcome him back again with a mutual exchange of affection.
Over a happy summer, we enjoyed his persistent lounging in our front yard.
Then, just as suddenly as he had reappeared, he vanished, no longer coming to our house.
We waited for his return, feeling much sadness in the meantime. We were afraid to ask the neighbours what had happened, because it might be terrible news. Perhaps he was again hit by a car. (We learned from them this was the origin of his limp. He was a charming cat, but not very cautious.)
Was he eaten by coyotes on the edges of our neighbourhood, a fate reportedly suffered by other neighbourhood cats?
As I reflected, I thought to myself that maybe we are all like this ephemeral cat. Wounded by fate, we limp briefly through life. With persistence, we can find unlikely new friends.
Yet, in the grand scheme of things, do even our most satisfying friendships amount to anything more than a small number of days?
Perhaps that’s why there is an afterlife, where a new kind of time succeeds death. The poet, Richard Crashaw, prays:
“Come love! Come Lord! And that long day
For which I languish, come away.
…When Glory’s sun faith’s shades shall chase,
And for thy veil give me thy Face.”
Months later, I was driving out of the cul-de-sac, hurrying off to work. Suddenly, I thought I saw our feline friend limping across the road, rushing to avoid being hit by my car.
I reduced my speed, going slow enough to see his face. Yes, it really was him.
But there was, at least in this moment, no time to stop. So, we each limped off, hurrying in opposite directions.