Bereaved

Today I vacuumed my mother's floors, did four loads of laundry, emptied the trash, fed Seraphin the cat his last meal on earth, then ended the day by burying him.

There have been times in my past when people I cared about were taken from me because of unexpected circumstances. Simply, they disappeared from my life one day... An awful misunderstanding between two very close friends. A cutthroat power play in the workplace with collateral damage. But there was a reprieve: in the first case, I surreptitiously spotted the former associate—looking lonely and withdrawn—on board a subway train eight years after our acrimonious parting; and in the latter, a budding friendship continued long after the job had already ended.

Just like that. He was gone. I will never again see his furry face or feel him rub against my leg at my parents' doorway. My heart is bleeding, like the liquid redness oozing from his mouth.

What does it say about the value we ascribe to life in a civilization that is on the verge of deterioration? The careless and unnecessary loss of life diminishes us all. The hit-and-run driver didn't even stop. When I lived in pastoral New Hampshire, following a rainfall the country roads would team with wildlife…I always swerved to avoid hitting a stray animal—whether chipmunk or tiny frog. Why was this unwelcome stranger using our street as a thoroughfare? It is common enough to see dead mammals alongside the highways, but not in an established family neighborhood populated with children and pets.

The last time I saw Seraphin alive, he was enjoying a tendon I had placed in his food bowl from the stewed meat I braised for three hours just that morning. “Look at our baby,” I exclaimed to my mother who had walked me to the door. “Seraphin really enjoys his food.”

“Yes,” my mother slowly replied. “that cat always likes to eat.”

I headed out to complete my errands and when I returned less than an hour later before 3:30 p.m. he was gone. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw my husband by the fence, chatting on the phone about the family cat and whether or not anyone had seen him. “He was eating a while ago,” I answered. “All I have to do is call him and he’ll come running.” Ludicrously, in the surrealistic scene across the street, a ginger colored cat lay prostrate, its pink and neon green tags visible from the fur. My sister, brother-in-law and their children had driven past my parents’ home and saw a lifeless cat in front of our neighbor’s house. They called my husband to be sure Seraphin was safe. My rational mind had initially refused to make the connection that my intuition had instantly realized. I ran inside the house in my uncontrollable grief screaming. I couldn't return outside, even as my husband pleaded with me to keep my emotions in check. He kept asking for a shovel and a box, before another car could hit and disfigure our Seraphin’s body. How could he comprehend my grief? To him Seraphin was a stray cat that appeared one day and never left. He did not know that I was…Seraphin’s mother.

If I hadn't stopped by Kmart to look at the Martha Stewart turkey baster, I might have arrived home a little sooner and perhaps this slight alteration in the wrinkle of time would have saved Seraphin from fate. My mother had already set aside the leftovers for his evening meal. While I was away, Seraphin had finished the tidbit I lovingly fed him. One minute Seraphin was enjoying the sunlight as he bounced across the yard. An instant later, he was dead. If death had come elsewhere, in some alley or on another street, if he had never returned, we might have continued in ignorant bliss, thinking he had left home, found love, and started a family. But the reality is that blunt trauma had hit him on one side of his face, leaving a gash from which blood spurted in his head and bloodying his teeth and mouth. On the other side from where he landed, there were no such signs, he could have been sleeping in the middle of that busy street, rerouted that day through a family neighborhood because of the eminent domain taking of family homes to convert to commercial real estate less than two blocks away.

Whoever had done this deed had to have known that Seraphin had a family. He was too well-cared for, glossy, and was wearing pink and neon green tags that gave a contact telephone number and showed that his annual immunizations were current—proof that he was beloved, that he mattered to someone. He was snatched from an elderly couple, their small grandchildren, other family members, and me.

“Killing a cat is nine years bad luck," my mother whispered. Consumed with commingled rage and a bottomless sorrow, I was motivated to run into the street and scrawl graffiti on the spattered pavement, “Who killed our cat?" I grieved for some hours, then I composed myself and decided instead to commemorate Seraphin’s life in the only way I knew how, by crafting in my masterful, visceral, gift for words an homage to a beloved family member and the love he inspired in a family that took him in, cared for him, and loved him as one of their own. In this way, I hope to bring Seraphin back to life.

A pet. A being. A life.

I was the one who found Seraphin. Following one of my regular visits to my parents’ house, I was preparing to leave when I heard a plaintive sound, like a terrified infant crying. It was the voice of a disembodied kitten, but we couldn’t see him in the shrubs and bushes of the foundation plantings. Eventually, we localized the pitch as coming from the engine of my parents’ seldom used car, a capacious Cadillac. The kitten had to have been small enough to pass through the tubing and compartments of the engine. I tried to tempt the animal to make an appearance by leaving food and fresh water next to the wheel well. He was either frightened—or once he scampered up he didn’t know how to climb back down—because the leftovers remained untouched. There was no way something that new could have made its way to our yard and sought shelter in a car engine. Someone had to have brought him here. Left him to the vagaries of fate. Why couldn’t his owner have rang our doorbell and asked us to take him in instead of abandoning him and fleeing like a thief? We wouldn’t have turned them away…that is not our custom.

Several weeks passed before the frail and skinny creature came to trust humans once again and was comfortable enough to venture near me. We knew he was still alive because the plates of food were completely eaten and we could often hear a rustling as he darted unseen among the shrubbery. In time, he showed himself—a beautiful and graceful kitten, slight in build, with golden fur touched by clear pinkness around the nose, mouth, and ears. Having quietly gained his trust, the kitten now lingered by the tire on the driver’s side and scampered up to eat from my hand.

My niece named him Serafin, after her best friend in school, Sera, or Serafina, who moved when her father was reassigned to another military posting. This told me that she missed Sera terribly, in a way she couldn’t yet articulate, and was trying to keep her friend in her life by giving the foundling her friend’s name. I changed the spelling to Seraphin, because of its approximation to “seraphim,” a member of the highest order of angels with a pink cherub’s head and wings in Renaissance paintings. Somehow, the spelling seemed right to me.

As the months passed, Seraphin imperceptibly grew from a foundling to a handsome and lusty cat. When my mother was exercising by doing yard work, he would stay by her side until she finished for the day. When unoccupied, he would sit in the driveway, a muscular watch cat. His first home was in a car engine, so Seraphin had no fear of cars. This observation filled me with dread. Often, I would see him underneath one of the numerous cars parked in the driveway to shade himself from the hot sun. I would start my car engine then peer underneath to be certain Seraphin was out of harm’s way. There seemed to be no need for this, however, since Seraphin would dart to safety as soon as he heard an engine start up.

In the winter, faced with below freezing temperatures, my husband constructed a new home for Seraphin. Recycling a medium size-moving box, Joseph cleverly constructed an insulated igloo using foam and an old blanket, with a small hole cut just large enough for Seraphin to crawl inside. My fondest memory of Seraphin is how he would stand outside my parents’ door, eagerly anticipating whatever leftovers I brought for him as a treat, aside from his daily fare of household leftovers and premium, shredded canned cat food, of which we had just purchased another month's supply. I lavished him with grilled sardines and steamed shrimp—he would expertly gulp down the head, bones, and shells like a snake. There was also mesquite smoked barbecue, shredded meat from a chicken carcass, the trimmings from gourmet dishes I regularly made from scratch. Now, each time I have entered my parents’ home, I experience a wave of sadness. I miss his expectant presence that always brought a smile to my heart. Although I wanted to touch him, as an outdoor cat, Seraphin harbored fleas and parasites that could spread through my garments to our indoor pets and the children. Instead, I would often bring my face to his level and make kissing sounds and gestures while I admonished him to wait until I unwrapped his treat, or I would rub his head with my toe.

I would take Seraphin to the veterinarian and feed him his daily meals, but he was considered to be my mother’s cat. That is, until this past summer when a startling incident created an emotional bond between us. In his young life, Seraphin had experienced much pain and discomfort. Perhaps as a precursor to his eventual fate, someone had taken a BB gun and left what looked like a large and bloody shotgun hole in his right hindquarter. He never cried or complained, and calmly tried to lick clean the area around the wound, so no one in our family thought to bring him to the clinic. In fact, the veterinarian herself thought Seraphin had scratched an abscess underneath his fur. She retracted her diagnosis weeks later when she noticed the perfectly round scar—undeniable evidence of the damage left by a BB pellet.

But horrified, I had taken it upon myself to find a box large enough to fit Seraphin inside, even as he tried to claw his way out. For two weeks, I drove to my parents’ house like clockwork twice a day, eight hours apart, to administer antibiotics by mouth to Seraphin. To make the medicine palatable, I would choose a savory morsel and stick the small pill inside, then hand feed it to Seraphin to be sure it was completely swallowed. Along the way, I took to refreshing his water bowl and sweeping any leaves or debris near his insulated igloo. We tried to create a nest for Seraphin by the back door, inside a shed, or elsewhere around the property, but he had made his home in the space between the Cadillac and the den, right alongside the sheltered doorway entrance beyond the carport. As a sign of his affection, I would sometimes find half-pawed, small birds and mice near the gated door.

After the BB gun incident, we wanted to contain Seraphin. I wanted to train him to stay within the confines of our fenced yard. If he would only stay inside this charmed circle, he would remain forever safe. Everything he needed was within its boundaries—food, shelter, comfort, and love. We thought about constructing a 6x8 cage at the back of the house. We also considered boarding him with family friends. They were landlords who rescued the cats their tenants left behind by building a small addition at the back of their house. Up to a dozen cats would laze in comfort. There was no room to scamper, they could only sit and became very fat cats. There was a heater to keep them warm in the winter, and they were given fresh food and water. In the morning, Uncle Arturo would sit inside the cat condo, with his cup of coffee and newspaper, surrounded by his beloved cats while his long-suffering wife, who loved him very much even as she was allergic to cats, would empty out the litter box each day. Neither option seemed viable, or would make Seraphin happy, so we instead had him neutered, assured by the vet that the procedure would somewhat diminish his wanderlust.

Two months ago, Seraphin’s death had been foretold to me in a lucid dream. In the dream, a man, my father, was speaking to me, telling me that Seraphin had been hit by a car, and that it was a painful death. At the time, I wondered whether to dismiss this knowledge as a manifestation of my fear: that this fate was inevitable for a cat that felt comfortable around vehicles. But perhaps it was my sixth sense preparing me for what was to come. I was terrified enough to revisit the options for keeping Seraphin contained, but I understood that, at heart, Seraphin was an alley cat. I was resigned to the probability, and the expectation, that he would be a part of my life for no more than 3, 4, or 5 years, and hopefully many more. But the average lifespan of a feral cat, if he makes it past kitten hood, is less than two years. Alley cats are likely to remain feral, unless a bond is established when the kitten is still a few weeks old. We were able to socialize Seraphin while he was still young, so that he learned to trust humans. He was about 18 months old at the time of his death.

I have no photographs of Seraphin. Now, he exists only in my mind and in my heart. I try to forget how I emptied an ornate document box, decorated in red and gold trim, with a golden palm tree on the cover. How I gently lifted Seraphin’s cold remains with rigor mortis setting in and placed him in a familiar curled position with his forepaws tucked under his chin. I try to forget the dried blood that my mother told me was not necessary to wash away, and the prayer I composed in my mind through my tears, for his soul and in gratitude for the gift of Seraphin’s presence in our lives, as my husband, a high tech guru, and my brother-in-law, a physician, mixed concrete with water for a slab. They placed the casket on top of the hardened slab, and then covered the hole made in the ground with more concrete. In my handwriting, I wrote a love note to our beloved cat, and when the surface was fixed, they placed fresh dirt and grass to level with the walkway.

You might ask yourself: “What kind of person sees the meaning of existence in the shortened life cycle of an outdoor cat?” I will give you the answer: I am someone who transfigures daily or overlooked rituals and details to give transcendence and permanence to the stream of life. All of life is, to me, art—that elusive, emotional or sensory connection that allows us to appreciate beauty as a portal to the harmony, balance, and rhythm in the universe, and our own relation to this eternal mystery.

When we hand-pick people and other living beings to let into our lives, it is a vulnerable act. You are exchanging a part of yourself that you can never get back. To lose the beloved is to forfeit a piece of your soul. There are those who, after episodes in their lives—sometimes precious and memorable, other times damaging—move on without a thought about a past connection. The chapters of life, to people like these, are expendable, throwaway. Then there are others, like myself, for whom this mindset is incomprehensible: the very gift of life is to be honored, commemorated, no matter how seemingly insignificant. This to me is the ultimate litmus test of the kind of world we choose to live in. Seraphin was taken from us too soon, but in the all too short time he was mine, this abandoned kitten who grew into a magnificent cat inspired me with his loyalty, his fortitude, and his full, sensory, appreciation for the simple comforts of a well-lived life.