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View ProfilesPublished April 24, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
In his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T.S. Eliot wrote of a life measured out with coffee spoons. My existential yardstick has been: cats. A succession of them, from my twenties to my early sixties, has kept me company in adulthood. While I love dogs and their promise of unconditional affection, I've found a feline is better suited to my personality and busy schedule. I need an animal that is patient, self-reliant and requires no walking.
Also: immortality. The only bummer about the cats I've loved through the years is that they didn't live long enough. Animals — and our relationships with them — are the subject of this week's Seven Days.
Our last gray tiger, Frankie, died in March 2022 of a blood clot that paralyzed his hind quarters. He was only 8, so it was unexpected. My partner, Tim, and I don't have children, and we took it hard — like losing a family member. A source of affection, entertainment and joy, Frank had smoothed the sharp edges of our interactions in ways we didn't realize until he was gone. Sometimes we talked to each other through him, like he was an inadvertent mediator. I'd say, "Frank, tell Tim he's being unreasonable." Tim would respond, "He thinks you should chill. Right, buddy?"
Roused from a catnap, Frank would look up: bored, a little annoyed and thoroughly adorable. We happily catered to his every need, from feeding him canned tuna water to letting him sleep on our bed every night between Tim's legs.
Why haven't we gotten another cat? Friends and colleagues, including Seven Days' own Eva Sollberger, have certainly forwarded plenty of tantalizing adoption opportunities. "Too soon" no longer explains it, as we've been pet-less for more than two years.
One reason: Frank was an outdoor cat, and he killed mice and birds — just for the fun of it. Finding one of the latter, eviscerated on our foyer or bedroom floor, always brought me to tears. I don't want to unleash another predator on the local avian population. Birds are not as snuggly as cats, but they are wild and beautiful. The older I get, the more I worry about their plight.
On the other hand: Tim and I agree that to keep an outdoor-craving cat indoors — considered the "right" thing to do these days — seems cruel. I don't want to deny a domesticated tiger its greatest instinctual thrill.
So, we do nothing. The cat door that was once a busy thoroughfare — used regularly by Frank and the occasional enterprising raccoon — is boarded up on the outside and the inside is stuffed with insulation.
Now, if we're in Montréal, there's no reason not to stay overnight. But when we return the next day, the front door opens to a clean, quiet place that still doesn't feel quite like home.
I think I know what Eliot would do. Another of his works, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, was the inspiration for Frankie's favorite blockbuster Broadway musical.
Tags: From the Publisher
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