Betrayal

It took me a very long time to finish this post, because of all the recent changes in my life this one hurts most.

Mortality is a deep issue to contemplate, and when a pet dies, grief is no less than with a loved human, and guilt probably stronger. I wrote about it when Miso died, and every time Facebook shows me a picture of happy and healthy Miso, I want to cry. Miranda died a year ago, quite unexpectedly and quickly, so hopefully she only suffered a short time. 

I know it sounds horrible, but even before I was told that Miranda would not make it, I started looking on cat shelter sites. And when I saw the twins, my heart melted. Sobbing, I called the shelter, and after a thorough inspection, we were approved as suitable staff (you know: dog have owners, cats have staff). And even before we got them home, we decided that their names were Castor and Pollux, Dioscuri, the celestial twins.

We had never had two cats, and we had never had kittens. Dioscuri had been captured from a pack of stray cats and had been in a foster home for a few months. They had only been adoptable for a couple of days when I saw them – it was just meant to be.

They were very shy. The first week we were told to keep them in just one room with access to food and sand. I hung blankets over chairs, and they hid under them, only coming out for short moments to play. I made toys for them. They liked my toys better than the toys I bought. By the end of the week they would allow me to touch them. Castor was bolder than Pollux. 

By and by we opened more space for them, and they were fascinated by the large glass door leading to the garden, and also by ventilation form which, I suppose, plenty of interesting information arrived. When we allowed them in the bedroom, they immediately started sleeping by my feet. How did stray cats know that they should sleep in their human's bed? 

And then came the disaster. One morning I opened the glass door before giving them breakfast, expecting them to go out cautiously and return to their bowls. No way! Within seconds they vanished, and they didn't come back. I must have been off balance for something else because my reaction was inadequate. I went hysterical. I don't remember when I cried that hard. I hated the whole world, starting with myself. I felt worthless and defeated.

When I pulled myself together a bit, I posted in local facebook groups, and someone told me that they had possibly seen one of the cats. I printed posters and put them on telephone poles and by the entrance to the country park. I went around calling. I came back home and cried a bit more. The glass door was open, the bowls just by it. It was February and very cold outside. It was getting dark. I sat in an armchair by the open glass door. I could not read or do anything. I could not eat.

Of course they came back eventually, first Castor, then an hour later Pollux. I didn't let them out for another week, but sooner or later they had to go out and then go and come as they pleased. Young, inquisitive cats with plenty of exciting things to discover and explore. They turned out to be skillful hunters. They would stay away for hours, but always came to sleep in my bed. In the dusk, they got particularly playful, staging mock fights. They were the source of much joy. Just telling someone about them made me smile. 

When I moved to Gatehouse, I had to leave them behind. First, pets are not allowed on campus. But even if they were, it is impossible to keep cats who are used to freedom in a tiny flat. I wouldn't be able to let them go out because of the traffic.

I started asking around, but nobody seemed to want or knew someone who might want two lovely cats. Every time I thought about them I started crying. I could not bring myself to call the cat shelter, so a friend did it for me, while I wasn't just sobbing, I was weeping. The shelter said they didn't have space and would get back.

Each time I had to go back to Milton, the cats would come and want a cuddle. My heart was permanently broken.

Then – a miracle I had been hoping for. A new home! A good home. Someone who would give them all care and love they needed. My heart was still broken, but at least I knew that my wonderful twins would have a good life.  

The first time their new staff came to collect them, I didn't manage to catch them both, because of a misunderstanding. Two weeks later, I sat there with two unhappy cats in a basket, crying floods again. The new staff spoke to them gently. I felt better.

Do you want to hear the rest of the story? No, you don't. It is not a story with a happy ending. 

So many things...

I haven't blogged for a while, and I don't know where to start. I should blog about wonderful days with Norton Juster when I was a bit jealous because he and Staffan got up very early and talked and talked. I should blog about the death of Maurice Sendak, trying to say something that hasn't been said by everybody else. Just two days before, Norton was telling us about Sendak - they were so close friends. Before that, I was planning to blog about another, much less famous children's writer who had passed away, Leila Berg, whose book The Adventures of Chunky, I loved passionately when I was a child. I should also blog about the anxiety and despair of a young mother whose four-year-old child is taken away from her into a hospital, with the words: "It was good you came now, two hours from now would be too late... You can call the day after tomorrow".  The memory comes as we read reports about a grandchild in a hospital in Sweden, luckily surrounded by the loving family. I should blog about Julia's little cat who, sadly, is no more, which brings memories of just a couple of months ago. I should blog about yesterday being the Victory Day in Russia and what it once meant to me. In the first place, I should blog about the imminence of three-score.

Adopted

If you have read my previous post you may want to see our new family member

Approved for adoption

Yes, I know there is something called a decent period of grief. On the other hand, it is said that if a survivor marries again soon, it is a good mark to marriage.

Anyway, suddenly I couldn't stand the emptiness of the house any longer. We went online searching for a cat who would adopt us. All cat shelter sites, however, have a button that says “Adopt me”, which makes me suspicious of the humans who have constructed the site. We didn't push buttons, we went to the shelter. We did have a particular feline in mind who might adopt us, but things never go the way you expect.

Shelters are, cleverly, cautious about potential adoptive families. They ask you a lot of really good questions. Such as: Are all family members in agreement about a cat? (Yes!) If you have had a cat before, how long ago and what happened to it? (prolonged weeping) Where do you want your cat to be at night? (“Sleeping in my bed”). Have you got a cat flap? Do you believe in pet insurance? Are you planning to travel around the world in the next few weeks? Have you got nasty children who will pull the cat's tail? With our impecable track record, we were approved within minutes. But it's not for humans to approve us.

While I was filling out the form, Staffan browsed through the folder with available furry friends. Suddenly he stopped and pointed: This one. No-no, I said, we were going to look at... This one, he repeated. When we were taken to be introduced to the cats and asked whether we had any special cat we were interested in, Staffan replied before I had a chance.

In one of my old lives, I used to visit children's homes. It was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. You enter a room, and fifteen kids rush to you, screaming: “Mum!” You want to pack them all in your suitcase. Several of the caged cats screamed: “I'll take you!” We went to the one Staffan had noticed, as he said afterwards, because of the way her personality was described. The carer opened the cage. I went down on my knees, very carefully. I was talking rubbish in three languages. The cat took me in, sniffed, allowed me to touch her, jumped on my knees, began to purr. After a while, as we were leaving, she announced very loudly that we were approved.

Do cats know that they are cats?

For my current research I am reading about mysterious things such as emotions, memory and consciousness. The latter seems especially controversial. There seems to be no way of saying what consciousness is, what it is for, where exactly it is, or how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What has always fascinated me is the question whether human beings are the only living creatures that have consciousness. The clever book that I am reading claims, with reference to another clever book, that a bat only has consciousness if it is conscious of what it is like to be a bat. Since bats eat cats and cats eat bats, I can modify the issue. Are cats conscious of being cats?

Another question I have contemplated a lot is whether we are conscious of being alive. In Ray Bradbury's wonderful book Dandelion Wine, the young protagonist Douglas suddenly becomes conscious of being alive. Not unexpectedly, this discovery very soon leads him to the conclusion of being mortal. We all know that we will die, but are we conscious of being mortal? And are we conscious of dying when it comes to that? I know that my grandfather wasn't, the evening before he died. I wasn't there when my father dies, but according to my mother the last thing he said before drifting into merciful unconsciousness was: “So that's what it's like”. I don't know which is preferable.

But if cats are conscious of being cats, and if they know that they are alive, are they conscious of dying? Or maybe they don't have consciousness, but still know that they are dying. Maybe they are scared. Maybe they are trying to tell us something. Maybe they are trying to say goodbye. I am positively sure that Miso was trying to say goodbye

Watching a cat slowly and peacefully dying for ten days brings up lots of big questions. Farewell, Miso. You stayed with us more than a year after we thought we had lost you.

We are responsible for those we have tamed

So why am I pretending it hasn't happened? Perhaps now, with the imminent danger over, I can articulate the experience of the past 20 hours. I came home early yesterday, after a day of back-to-back meetings that had all been satisfactory, and I was cheerful. I had had a very late and substantial business lunch so I wasn't as famished as I usually am when I came home, and it was Friday, so I sat down in a comfortable armchair with a glass of blush wine. Miso came and jumped onto my lap. Well, she didn't quite jump, rather crawled, but I took no notice because cats are like that. Only five minutes later it was obvisouly very, very wrong. I cannot explain it, but she felt like a piece of dead skin, and she didn't purr, and she hadn't groomed herself. We sat there for a while, and Staffan held her for a while, and I held her again, and then I heard Staffan call someone, and for some reason I thought he was calling Julia who knows all about cats and would know what to do. In fact, Staffan called the 24-hour veterinary service which just happened to be two streets from us here in Milton. We had driven past it at least twice a day the past eighteen months, with unuttered hope that we would never need it.

I knew Miso was really bad because she didn't even try to escape, and she lay dead still on the examination table, but she screamed with pain when the doctor squeezed her. She had bad wounds that I hadn't seen, and bruises, and, X-ray showed, broken ribs. And, blood test showed, kidney failure.

We don't know how old Miso is because we took her from a home, but she is at least twelve. Cats can live longer than that, but of course I have been thinking about how much longer she will be with us. When I see the agility with which she jumps through a half-open window I hope she will live many years. I am such a fatalist that I keep telling myself that we can't really know who of us goes first. So I shouldn't say I wasn't prepared. But I wasn't.When Staffan tried to hold my hand I had to brush it away not to burst into tears there and then. I guess the veterinary people have seen this happen over and over again.

They kept her overnight, and we came back to a silent, empty house, looking at her bowls and her blanket and stumbling over a tin of cat food in the fridge. We went to bed without a purring bundle of fur on my hip. We got up without a hungry scream in the kitchen. Nobody came to demand a lick of frothed milk from my coffee. The morning was very, very long. In my mind, I was digging a little grave at the bottom of the garden, behind the conifers. Staffan and I kept talking about irrelevant things.

Then we called the veterinary and heard that Miso was eating and doing fine. We could come and see her in the afternoon. We did. She was tired, but who wouldn't be after such a night. She had a tube attached to her little paw; half her back had been shaven to clean the wounds. But she was glad to see us, she sat up, she purred, she ate some food, just so show us (I know I am being silly now). The nurse praised her for patience and good behaviour.

With some luck, we can take her home tomorrow. Her kidneys will never be ok, but we can keep her going with the right kind of food and some medication. Maybe a month, maybe a year, maybe several years.

Ecclesiastic feline

Exeter has a magnificent cathedral. I only have a hour before I must take my train so I almost miss the most interesting detail. Right under the medieval clock there is a little, inconspicuous wooden door with a round hole. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't read the guide folder. It's a cat flap! From the 16th century, the guide says. Mice were attracted by the lard used to lubricate the ropes inside the clock. Yes, exactly: Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock!

Always new things you learn when you go to conferences.

Intruder!

I worked in the back garden today, pruning the shrubs and generally trying to make it look like a garden rather than a jungle. When I wanted to show Staffan the view from what is now slowly becoming my study, I saw an intruder lying just at the spot that I had cleared. Staffan fetched Miso who produced some miserable tones and went away, pretending that she wasn't at all interested. The black cat stayed where he was, even when I went out through one of our many secret back doors. Obviously this is his territory.

Into the wild

We wanted to sit outside yesterday, and it meant that Miso would be allowed to go out - first time after three months. We didn't want to let her out at Water Street because of traffic. She had been quite wild recently, with new spring smells and sounds, trying to escape. But now, "the time has come". So - we opened the screen door and waited. Within seconds she was out, and I could almost feel her happiness. She walked slowly and cautiously, pausing to smell grass and shrubs. I imagined myself having been locked up for three months and finally being let loose. I followed her as if she were a toddler; she strolled round the house, returning to the patio; I picked her up thinking that was enough for the first time. She scratched me and went off before I could even see in which direction.

The following hour I felt exactly like I did when I many, many years ago sent my then seven-year-old son to the bakery and sat stiff until he came back. Staffan kept telling me that Miso was no fool, that she knew where her bowl was, that cats always find their way home. I just saw in my mind the ad: "Cat missing".

She came back, walking slowly and casually toward us, and went inside without giving us a look.

Reunion

Here is the happy family, at last united!

Feline thriller, continued

Today our dear cat is finally coming over. I see my beloved sons growing angel wings after all they have done. It took a dozen emails and some phone calls to ensure that all papers were correct (I gave up since the papers were in Stockholm). When they took the cat to the veterinary clinic for a treatment I don't want to describe in detail, it turned out that they should have brought the medicine. This morning, when they came to the airport three hours before the departure, as required, it turned out that the cage was too small. I just cannot believe it because I bought this cage when I was i Stockholm, and the next in size had room for an elephant. Well, new cage, thus new charge. At least, the cat is on the way, and we should hit the road soon. Last time we went to Heathrow was just last Friday, with Filip. We were stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. I don't want Miso to wait one minute more than absolutely necessary.

I suggest that we call Heathrow to enquire how quickly after the arrival we could collect our darling. Two to four hours, is the answer. I am glad we have called. Breathe deeply and take another cup of coffee. Put the box of fresh minced meat back into the fridge.

Messenger call from Anton: flight delayed. Check Heathrow arrivals - no information. Check Arlanda departures: new information at 13.15. Refresh page every ten miutes. Finally: Flight departed 14.10 (three hours late). I imagine Miso in the dark of the plane's belly, hungry, miserable, and still hours to go.

If I had moved to some other European country, I could have taken the cat on board with me as cabin luggage.

More feline issues

Soon our dear cat can join us here. High time to think about practical arrangements. I thought that I would fly over and bring her. It turns out that even if I am on the same plane I can neither take her as cabin luggage nor as checked-in luggage. She must go as cargo! So it makes no sense. Our noble son has agreed to take her to the airport. I investigate booking and discover that there are companies that collect pets in your home and deliver to your new home - door-to-door service. Sounds good to me. A long form to fill, much longer than my own health questionaire. The reply comes promptly. "Since you already have all documents you will not need our service". That's what I call service.

Cruelty to animals

One of the most prominent exhibits at Levenham Guildhall, featured in all broschures, is a mummified cat. It was found inside a house wall. The inscription says it was dead before they put it in the wall. In olden days, people also put their firstborn babies in house walls for luck.

Feline friends and foes

The Swedish daily Svenska dagbladet has an article about cats in literature today. A subject many scholars and amateurs have happily embraced, including yours truly. There is nothing radically new in the article, but it was still interesting to read, and the author points out that although many famous writers were cat-lovers there have also been cat-haters. He refers to Roberts Darnton’s seminal essay “The Great Cat Massacre” and goes on to discuss some Swedish writers, notably August Strindberg, who really disliked felines. But then, the article concludes, he was a misanthropist too.

The best book on the cultural history of cats is, however, The Tiger in the House by Carl van Vechten, first published in 1920. He has a whole chapter on ailurophobes – which means, yes, cat-haters.

Feline trouble

When I came home victoriously, my primary concern was our cat. I knew that it was difficult to take cats into the UK, but since I am superstitious, I didn’t start investigating before I actually got the job. I thought poor Miso would have to go to quarantine for a month, which would be a disaster. We took her from a cat home, and after she has adopted us she doesn’t like even one of us being away, while if we both are away, she wouldn’t eat. The mere thought of her locked away among strangers made me sick. As it turned out, things were much worse. In any country within the European Union you can take your pets around as you wish, as long as they have a passport. I read regulation from DEFRA (UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), and I read instructions from airlines, and I read the British Embassy’s homepage, which pointed me back to DEFRA. One thing was clear: Miso had to be microchipped and get a rabies vaccination. I made an appointment with our vet and tried to find out more from them, but they suggested British Embassy and the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture. The latter said they only knew the rules for Sweden and suggested DEFRA and the British Embassy (the game known as “push the baby”). After the first vaccination we had to wait for a month and get a boost. After that, as I first understood, we had to wait six months before we could bring Miso to the misty Albion. I counted on my fingers and made it mid-November. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to spend a month away from people she knows. Out youngest son, who usually takes care of her when we are away, agreed to have her.

But it would have been too simple. The DEFRA rules specified which airlines you could use for bringing pets (forget low budget!), and the airlines specified the size and exact construction of the travel basket, including food, drink and toilet facilities; but worst of all, they took me back to DEFRA, and I realized that I had got it all wrong. The six-months rule did not apply from the date of the boost, but from the date of the positive result of the blood test which, according to the vet, must be taken four months after the boost, but which DEFRA states can be taken directly afterwards. There was a list of approved labs for the blood test. New calculations ended up with mid-December. At least Miso would be with us for Christmas. More phone calls and emails, making appointment with the vet, just in case, and a tiny hope from yet another webpage saying that the rules may change after July 3.

Several people have suggested that we leave the cat behind. To this, I can only say: “Would you leave a child behind?”