On wanting to be haunted ….

On mantelpiece Clarycat’s urn w/her ashes near Jim’s, on one side her favorite toy, on the other a stuffed sheep bought at Stonehenge (family holiday, in London, & then Somerset); behind these things, a square holder with an impression of Clary’s front paws; the a literal dish she ate from, & then her heart-shaped tag. I even have a certificate for her death.

Friends and readers,

I now think Clarycat’s death is only now beginning to sink in. That she is gone forever. She had a distinct personality; she accompanied me around the house each morning as I did morning chores (making my bed, tidying up, renewing water in water bowls, snacks in a plate Clary would eat from that Izzy made for her and Ian many years ago. I’d find her snuggled up against me in the night. I used to say she thought I was another cat as she’d lick me a lot. I don’t want to adopt/buy new kittens for a while as I think I would not respond to them now — it’s too soon.

Thursday late afternoon I brought home Clarycat’s urn, her ashes in it. An impression of her two front paws, a death certificate (it’s much prettier than Jim’s which is more in the vein of a scannable document).

I had nothing like these relics when Llyr died. They help assuage grief, which in my case is more visceral than it was for Jim — I cry far more freely. I remember Clary’s particular behaviors whose memory I now cherish. I loved her so, she never judged me or expected boasting (as so many people do). No subtexts, no mysteries about our social life together. She is not here any more.

Ian is behaving in ways that shows he is made anxious, upset by Clary’s vanishing. Yesterday when we went to that Thanksgiving dinner (gone 3 hours), he looked so worried, rocking back and forth. In September he acted out because Clary was no longer a companion, but at least she was there. Now he is sticking close and when in other rooms cries out for attention. He stayed at a distance the last weeks of her life. I didn’t see the analogy between her and Jim until that last day: both died of cancer, both painfully thin and unable to hold up their bodies anymore. In a way I was able to be kinder to her; we didn’t have to wait the last painful days/hours out.

A Trollope listserv friend has reminded me that Dorothy Sayers is one of those women who lived in Mecklenberg Square — the center of Francesca Wades very absorbing and intelligent Square Haunting. I’ve taken it down to read the section again. Haunting is an apt word I now realize. The place is haunted by those who once lived there. I’m now realizing why at this time of year people do turn to ghost stories — we are haunted by the memories of those who’ve gone — their absent presences. I am thinking about Margaret Oliphant too — her powerful ghost stories. She wanted to be haunted by those she loved who had died befoe her. I would like to be haunted by Clarycat.

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The Cat’s Song by Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Dancing Cats — by Susan Herbert

Ellen