Feline was the source

of love, companionship

My feline friend, Nicholas, died in mid-November 25 years ago. I clearly remember that day cool and gray, with a threat of rain. That afternoon, I found him in front of our house, with just a few minutes of breath remaining.

I lifted him carefully from the ground and felt the warmth ebb from his body and watched as his eyes turned cold and hollow. He died in my arms and I could do nothing to reverse the process.

When Nicholas joined our family, I greeted him with a casual indifference. I resolved that association would not evolve into fondness, that his presence would guarantee no more from me than the essentials of survival food and shelter.

Wrong. Nicholas possessed an insatiable curiosity and a superior intelligence. He combined an instinctive sense of play with a grand capacity for the absurd, all the while attempting to unlock the enigmatic patterns of human behavior. Predictably, inexorably mostly on his terms accommodation was transformed over five years into genuine affection. When he insisted on attention, who could resist? When he became distant and aloof, understanding was required. When he questioned and investigated, on occasion punctuated by the clatter of falling objects, reprimand without first repressing a smile was difficult.

I buried him in our backyard that cool, gray November afternoon. There is no marker, only memories: of a solid white fur ball with one brown eye and one blue eye, who would leap on and off one's lap without notification and whose whiskers would invariably invert in the relentless pursuit of feline knowledge.

Nicholas, I am convinced, grasped the essence of mutual fondness and understood his role as the source of abiding and everlasting joy.

See the rest here:
Letter to the Editor, Nov. 25, 2019: Feline was the source of love, companionship - Richmond.com