O Small Happy Ecstasy of Cats

My cat brings me home a dead bird, and I do not tell him off for this, because I read an article online about a man in the United States who told his cat off for bringing home dead birds and the cat took that to mean it wasn’t bringing big enough prey home, so it started upping its game, bringing its owner lizards and small snakes.

I do not know what, in Belfast, my cat could bring me home that’s bigger than a bird, but I am not keen to find out. So, I stroke my cat and tell him he is a good boy (even though he is not), and that I appreciate his gift (even though I do not.)

Then, I put the bird’s body in the brown garden waste bin outside and try to put it out of my mind. My partner, who also does not appreciate my cat’s gift, shakes her head and says: we can’t think too much about it, its our cat’s natural instinct, and we signed up for this when we got him as a kitten.

I know this, and yet I can’t help but feel terrible that this small, once living thing is now dead in part because of me, and it did not even get a funeral. Its only dignity in death was to be disposed of, thrown away.

I justify this to myself by saying that birds don’t normally get funerals when they die. Sure, birds don’t know how to dig graves. If they did, all of Ireland would be a gravesite.

For a while, I started joking with my friends about how I was cursed, because I kept seeing birds die, sometimes in unusually garish ways. I feel as though I have more shocking dead bird stories than the average person should have. Which is to say, I have four shocking dead bird stories. Don’t worry though! I’m not going to tell them all now, I’m well aware most people didn't click on this post to read about birds dying.

Anyway, this is a piece of writing about my cat.

Really, I will take the occasional unwelcome gift from my cat in exchange for his small weight on my chest in the morning when he sees I'm awake and purrs enthusiastically to greet me. People often tell me cats are unaffectionate creatures, but my cat is the most affectionate pet I’ve ever had.

My partner and I got him as a kitten at the beginning of January 2021. It was the middle of the Winter lockdown, and the two of us were living in a small town in Wales, where we knew very few people other than my Dad and Granny.

Two months prior, in November 2020, my sister Hazel had taken her own life. In the height of my grief and isolation, I was desperate for a distraction. I needed something outside of myself to channel my energy into, something outside of myself to focus on, centre on.

My cat provided me with that distraction. There is something uniquely joyful about being openly loved by a creature so much smaller than you are. Feeling joy from a creature who knows you could harm it, and yet has faith that you won’t.

Isn’t that the purest example you can think of as to what love is, anyway? Isn’t that what it all boils down to? Putting your faith in the other person to say: I know you could ruin me, but I have to believe you won’t. Love is a changing force. It’s a healing power. I’m aware this all sounds incredibly cliché to say, but it’s cliché for a reason.

In her poem, O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love, Anne Carson writes: give me a world / you have taken the world that I was. What she means by this - I think - is that you can’t accept love into your life without irreversibly changing something about your own reality. To accept love is an active choice, a purposeful movement.

It’s the decision to take the other person’s hand, to grace the other person’s life, to place your shadow in their doorway and threaten to stay a while.

Love, I feel, is even more significant when received from a cat. I can sense I'm losing you - but please, hear me out. Cats as a species have a reputation for being arsey bastards at the best of times. I mean, cats have far more freedom than any other pet – they come and go as they please. My partner and I leave our bedroom window open year-round – even when the weather is below freezing – just so my cat can get out when he needs to.

Yet, despite his freedom, my cat rarely chooses to leave my side when I’m in the house. Instead, he follows me from room to room like a particularly cute (but violent) little shadow. His simple excitement when I walk through the door after a day away spent away from home is a gentle reassurance.

I do not have adequate words to explain how helpful my cat’s presence has been in my life, but I do know that, when my cat inevitably brings me home another dead bird, I will not tell him off for this.

Besides, it wouldn’t do much good anyway, because despite several attempts to teach him, my cat still doesn’t speak English.