Our cat died last week. Lacey. About 20 years old. We had her for over 18 of them.
It’s easy to write something teary and sentimental about this. That’s not mainly what I want to do, though it can’t help coming up at least a little.
I want to write about milestones, how some are phony and others are complicated. Often, there’s much less to a milestone than meets the eye.
But sometimes there’s much more.
Focus or not, Lacey deserves at least a brief obit. Here it is. She was a tabby-Siamese mix who, thank goodness, didn’t have that screechy Siamese yowl. We got her from the Humane Society. She was tiny, never weighing more than about seven-and-a-half pounds.
We called her “the go fuck yourself cat” because that’s the attitude she brought into the house whenever we let her inside from the deck or the courtyard.
She never, ever meowed to get in. She would sit silent, probably judging, at the glass doors until we spotted her. When we opened it, she did not stop to say hello or do what other cats do — make purry cat sounds, rub against your legs. She just walked on by without even looking up as if to say, “go—” — well you know the rest.
My wife Joy and I have decided that Lacey is the last pet we will ever have. So, it’s a milestone.
Calling it a milestone, though, doesn’t tell you anything. The term is deceptive and misleading. It often oversimplifies aging by covering it up with tears or happy talk.
Many milestone celebrations are excuses for the celebrant, often with false modesty, to brag on himself.
Others, like retirement parties for a worker no one wanted around anymore, are outwardly a celebration but inwardly a dismissal, as they give the retiree a faux koa bowl and gently but firmly catapult uncle or auntie out the door.
Plus, aging does really not work in terms of milestones. There’s a romantic view of aging that goes like this: It is an arc that looks like a bell curve with points of glitter called milestones scattered about. You go up, then peak and go down with glitter points that are dimmer and fewer as you get older and older.
In fact, aging is not a smoothed-out arc at all. It’s a Chutes and Ladders game.
It’s a loss of capacity in some pretty obvious ways but an increase in capacity for other things — wisdom for instance. For every milestone, there are maybe two hundred surprises, some of which are terrific while others are awful. Bumpy good, bumpy bad, most of the time you never know when or what.
And often, maybe typically, a milestone can be happy and sad at the same time, which brings me back to Lacey, our GFY cat.
I miss her. There’s a hole in my heart. But, damn, it certainly feels good to have more freedom — in both large and small ways.
The small way is breakfast. I typically get up early and am a breakfast loner, except of course for the cat. So, I was never alone. Human and feline companions in the morning? Nah. She was my customer. I was her barista.
Her “meow” was a quick blast, a combination of a dog’s bark and a sheep’s bleat. It’s taking you too long. The dish goes there, then over there. Put my treats in a bowl next to that bowl. Let me out. Let me in. Clean the litterboxes. By the way, the one you cleaned a minute ago — I just used it again, so get on the stick. You’re still here? Why?
Breakfast without her is now like eating in a tomb. I find myself glancing over for her, anticipating her distractions, ready to give her what she wants. “Seeing” her.
Still, I am out of the house half an hour earlier and with no Safeway produce bag filled with kitty clump to put in the dumpster.
And right there, that’s the two-sided coin: freedom and loss.
Our no-more-pets decision is a milestone that Joy and I have created for ourselves. One reason is as time goes on, there’s a bigger chance that a pet would outlive us, and then what?
No pets means that we can now travel more with more spontaneity and less anxiety.
Joy and I don’t have bucket lists. Bucket lists are to life what fantasy football is to real football. We also don’t like to be locked into heavily scheduled travel plans, preferring to meander with old friends on long car trips with flexible agendas.
And we like to visit Portland and kick back because for the first time since the late 1980s our children live in the same city.
For years we were lucky. A neighbor, friend or student housesat and took care of Lacey, but our luck ran out and we don’t like the idea of boarding an animal for a long time or having a stranger living in the house.
So, there you are. Life is simpler. We are being responsible. Score two for our side.
But loss doesn’t work that way. There’s the lingering desire for connection and the powerful strength of memory tugging at me.
Aging is not simply about jettisoning and simplifying. Yuck. It’s about doing stuff you’ve wanted to do or didn’t think you could do, as well as coping with and loving the power of memory that loss brings.
If that sounds like what it’s like to lose a loved one who has been sick for a long time, it is. That event is terrible but also a relief.
I am not equating the loss of a cat with the loss of a human, but I am saying the process is very much the same.
Lacey had a wily hauntedness about her. One evening, as she walked past the entrance to our den, the room’s lights dimmed.
My daughter’s theory is that Lacey was an alien disguised as a cat, sent down from her home planet to study earthlings. Like John Lithgow in the sitcom “Third Rock from the Sun.”
As it turns out, Lithgow has worked with animals. Here’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch where he is a priest taking confession from dogs.
Aleha hashalom, rest in peace, Lacey. You’re helping me understand the link between liberty and loss, which is hard but necessary.
I hope the home planet you’ve returned to is filled with fellow aliens like John Lithgow who will tickle your soul, give you all the cat treats you want and know how to talk to animals.
Meanwhile life goes on. And off. And on again.
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