EVERYTHING HAD BEEN SLEPT ON…

I walked into Annie’s old bedroom and something caught my eye on the bedspread of faded tea coloured rosebuds, reminiscent of her adolescent years. Any other time I would have muttered in exasperation… `everything has been slept on’… But this time I simply picked up the silken threads of cream and white, rubbed them between my two fingers and allowed the sentiments to flood in. I had already written about how Miu started her life with us in one of my previous blog posts [ But The Sofa Smelt Of Cat ] so I’ll try not to repeat myself. It was in the autumn of 2006, almost 16 years ago…and this is going to sound very clichéd…but it does feel like only yesterday… when I brought home this little ball of white fur that could have easily fitted into a man’s palm, with two almond shaped green eyes stamped into the funny little smushed face. The first sound she emitted after a couple of days of dumb silence was…` miu ‘…and that’s how she got her name.

 I saw one of my neighbours later in the afternoon and spilled out the sad news about Miu, hoping for some stirrings of empathy… of shared sorrow. But she brushed the air with a wave of her hand and said… `Well, it’s sad but she was only a cat.’… Was Miu ONLY a cat?… My no-nonsense neighbour has a dog and she says that when it passes, she’ll just tell herself that she had given it a good life and…c’est la vie. But the funny thing is…that’s exactly the kind of wisdom I would have dished out not too long ago. Two years ago this other neighbour down the street had to put down her dog of some ten years or so…a spoilt little thing that yipped and yapped and snapped sharply at the heels of unsuspecting passers-by who would jump back in fright. The poor woman was so distraught at her dog’s passing that she stored it in the basement freezer for a week until the rain abated and the skies cleared before she buried the frozen little creature in her garden. My feelings were not of sympathy but horror…how could she stuff it in the freezer!!!!

Now in retrospect, I feel a tinge of guilt for not sympathizing with her bereavement… especially since I’m sitting here sadly, raking memories of Miu and even willing to gloss over her errant behaviour…. putting it down to capriciousness that comes with the breed. Miu had a personality that filled the whole house…sleeping on all the furniture and depositing bits of fluff here and there and preening herself and sending fine hairs wafting about and settling in corners. When there was too much traffic downstairs, she’d run up the wooden staircase in a huff and a puff… tail swishing and swaying her furry bottom that resembled a pair of fancy knickers. She’d lay on one of the top steps sprawled… her tail dangling over the step twitching and a paw sticking through the rails, observing our comings and goings from a lofty height… with a look of disdain. She preferred it when the house was quiet and rid of visitors and Yiannis and myself…her subjects…doting on only her.  Any new additions to the house were sniffed and pawed and frowned upon. In spring and early summer when my roses of whites, reds and yellows bloomed, I’d cut a bunch of them and proudly arrange them in a vase on the dining table and wait for their delicate warm scents to suffuse the house. But the minute I turned my back, she’d spring on to the table and gingerly pull out a stem or two and leave them out to wilt. If I caught her in the act, I would shriek and she’d scoot away and skid behind the curtains only to sneak out like a thief and try her luck again.

Food was always an issue for Miu. Like her human companions, she had acquired a taste for variety. Cat food was boring and she yearned for that something more to tickle her palate. She loved pies baking in the oven. She could sit for hours looking through the oven door waiting for the pie to gently rise and turn a golden brown. When it came out all hot and steamy, she’d drink in the delicious smells and beg for a piece. Her favourite dessert was Christmas cake with all its spicy fruity flavours and in between meals…a little chunk of yellow cheese. If I ignored her repeated requests for food, she’d throw a tantrum by emitting a sharp meow, jump in the air and rush towards the living room and vent her frustration on the furniture…dig holes in the couches or pluck threads out of the fabric.

Yes… she had a temper and was destructive. But she also had a softer side to her. In winter evenings when we sat in our cubbyhole and watched our favourite programmes, Miu would snuggle against Yiannis’ recliner and purr softly…and the minute he got up and left the room, she’d jump into the warmth of the armchair until he came back and pulled her out. When we turned in for the night, she would follow behind and sink into a deep slumber on the landing or behind our bedroom curtains until her snoring got too loud and we’d throw her out. Whenever I emerged from the shower on Saturday night and stood before the mirror to apply my make-up, she would trot in from nowhere, sit on the weighing machine and observe my every little movement…pencilling in my eyebrows, dabbing some highlight on my cheeks, painting a slick of lip colour… But what she enjoyed most was listening in to girl talk. When Annie would visit and we chatted for endless hours in the bedroom or back terrace in the waning light of a summer evening, Miu would sit with her paws tucked in and catch all the nuances in our chatter and then doze off and wake with a start when our voices rang out with laughter.

In spring and early summer Miu spent her evenings with the boys, Yiannis and Jimmy, when they wore their thick gloves, bent their backs and pulled out weeds by the handfuls from the earth still soft from the winter rains, dug and turned the soil over and prepared the vegetable beds. She sat quietly and watched, mesmerized by their repetitive movements and pricked her ears when they exchanged light banter and jokes… and the neighbours, an ever present audience… sat on their veranda across the street and joined in shaking with laughter. When the orange evening sun sank behind the dome of the church, visible behind the roofs of the houses and twilight settled gently on our fruit trees, Yiannis would clomp into the kitchen in his garden boots leaving clods of earth on the marble floor with me screeching in total exasperation…` WHY COULDN’T YOU LEAVE YOUR BOOTS OUTSIDE? ‘… and Miu would come trailing behind dragging a long string of weeds caught in a hind paw. After drinking from the kitchen tap Yiannis would always refill his glass and fill up Miu’s water bowl. It was like a ritual and Miu was fond of rituals.

But this winter we saw Miu decline in health. First it was the weight loss and two weeks ago she suffered from incontinence. I took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with renal failure and aenemia. She was put on drips but Miu just deteriorated over the weekend and we had to put her down. We brought her home that Monday morning without exchanging a word. Yiannis went into the garden and selected a spot near the garden shed under two old trees, a bitter orange and a lemon, with trunks bent and gnarled with age. It was cold and drizzling under a grey March sky. I pulled down my hood and watched him shovel into the wet earth. Miu’s resting place was one of her favourite summer time haunts where she crunched on cicadas that buzzed shrilly and hunted for mice that scampered from behind the shed. It’s a shady spot where climbers grow thickly on the high fence with cascades of brilliant yellow flowers in April and honeysuckle with flowers of white and lemon hang in bunches. Their lingering fragrance draw in honey bees and bumble bees and flitting butterflies and humming-bird moths with whirring wings…and at dawn birds chitter and chirp while building their nests in the thick boughs of the trees and the harbingers of dawn… warblers and blackbirds split the early morn with melodious birdsong.

On Saturday, Jimmy brought in a white slab to put on her resting place. It says…Miu 2006-2022 a beloved companion. He studied it a little sadly and then looked up at us with a straight face and said… `She’s gone to cat heaven.’… The three of us laughed…and if there’s such a place I’m sure she would continue with her antics and bully the folks over there into submission.

So cheers for now.