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This Is Us
What a Cat Taught Me About Love and Separation
A soul is a soul, be it a cat’s or a human’s
One late September evening, my husband and I were chatting at the dining table in my father’s home. Our conversation was interrupted by a high-pitched meow from the window. It was the tomcat that had fathered Coco’s kittens.
I heard pain in his voice. He had shrunk in size from the last time I saw him, months before my mother moved out and took Coco and the kittens with her. He appeared to have not recovered from the agony of the sudden separation, a tortured soul wandering the neighborhood in grief. The sight of him changed the mood.
That night, I wept. I never could have imagined that I, a cat-phobic, would grieve the separation of two cats I had never touched.
The first time I saw Coco, I had been sitting on the kitchen counter in my parents’ home, when a swift movement from the pantry into the corridor caught my eye. My heart jumped out of my lungs. “What the hell was that?” I screamed, only to be jeered at by my mother and little sister who told me that “she” was the latest addition to our family.
“Her name is Coco,” my little sister said.
“A cat?” I shrieked. “Why would you bring a cat into our home? You know I hate…
