Clementine

Clementine. An insistent, persistent cat whose intense desire to have her head scratched was only matched by the loudness of her purring.

We got her when she was a few years old - I'm fuzzy on the details - and she lived with us in all the homes we've shared - Washington Heights, our first Brooklyn place, and now here. We soon discovered she was not a lap cat and hated being picked up, but loved being snuggled up next to us, scratching her head or cheeks. She developed a habit of tapping you repeatedly with her paw to get your attention so that you would bestow the head scratch.

She liked people far more than other cats or animals; her later years were marked by stoically attempting to ignore Lyra and our kid.


She was an idiosyncratic cat. She seemed to be happiest squished up in our paper recycling box, a suitcase, or in the shower, where she sat and drank running water. Her method of taking in liquid was strange, to say the least - she'd thrust her head under the tap, it would trickle down her face, and then she'd bat it into her mouth with her paw. We'd never seen anything like it. For a long time, while His Professorship was working in another city, she'd be my hot water bottle, snuggling under the covers with me for about 10 minutes until I was nicely toasty, and then surfacing to sit next to me.

We adored her, but we still probably under appreciated her because she was so solid and reliable. She definitely lost out in attention terms after we adopted a psychopathic (and I do not say that lightly) kitten and had a child. But she was such a reassuring presence. The house feels so much emptier without her. I'm glad we had the 12 years we did with her and grateful we had the time and means to say goodbye peacefully and with as little discomfort for her as possible. And we'll eat crab rangoon tonight in honor of the time she stole one from us and caused us to argue over who had nicked beyond their fair share. What a cat.

Regathering

A lot has happened since that last post.  A lot.

The thing that is inescapable and pervading, despite my attempts to block it out, is that my mum died. Suddenly, yes; yet, it seems that we had been dodging it for years - the blood poisoning after an emergency hysterectomy, the breast cancer, the triple bypass. It seems that it only just happened and forever ago, as if it always has been; sometimes it feels as if I cannot grasp the life I had with her, it was so lacking in reality, and that is one of the most terrifying parts of this.

Grief is so deeply personal, and so hard to fathom when you are not experiencing it, I do not plan to spend much time on it specifically. But it is everywhere, at all times, with me in differing intensities, and always with the capacity to wind me, suddenly, in its sharpness - the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour on Yesterday, which I could not get through; the fiftieth reading of Where the Wild Things Are with the peanut which suddenly cut through me; the start of a football season without her.

I have a lot to work through, frankly. I do not want this to be the space for that, but it will seep in, inevitably. But what I do want to use this for is thinking about the good in my life, the things that I cannot share with her but want to, desperately.

I am not quite sure why I am doing this but putting it out in the world feels peaceful and calming. A way to somehow make solid everything that feels so shaky and insubstantial otherwise.