My wife and I once had this favorite haunt in Idaho called Somerville Manor. We stayed their several times when we were first married. The best things about the place (after the food, atmosphere and company) were the hordes of friendly, well tempered cats. You never met so many easy going felines and we were determined to take one home some day, even if we had to steal it (which we plotted to do almost every visit).
One fine summer afternoon we found ourselves there again. The place was crawling with people and cats and I was sitting about talking with friends when Tracy walked up and presented me with a squirming, silver, adorable little fellow and asked, "Can I have this?" With little or no pause I said, "Sure, but only if I get one too."
You see, I've always been a firm believer in pairings and I think me and Noah would have been fast friends. We understand that animals that grow up in the company of other like animals are healthier and happier. They keep each other company and they communicate with one another on a level familiar to themselves. As litter mates, we were sure we'd have the most tightly knit pair of cats one could hope for, and with that in mind (and only minutes later) I found a little black kitten that was all hair and eyes.
It should be pointed out that we first thought that the brothers were girls. Being as young as they were their gender was still somewhat ambiguous, so they were misidentified as female, and like Scoot and Scat, they were first named something else. We chose Egyptian names from mythology that I'd long since forgotten (though my wife reminded me today that the names were Isis and Nebthet), and it wasn't a week after they came home with us that we renamed them Amenhotep and Anubis.
Amenhotep (or Amen) was a couch kitty. He would laze about and nap more than any creature imaginable after the Sloth. He was one of the prettiest cats you ever saw and the best lap cat I have ever known. He'd just snuggle right up to anybody, though his favorite person of all time was my brother Andrew. You couldn't lounge on a couch or occupy a chair without this gentle giant of a cat sidling up to you and seeming to say, "Can I sit here with you?" He had the temperament and temperature of a warm throw pillow. It was impossible not to like him.
Amen was a butterball turkey in a fur coat. We sometimes called him the hippo, owing to his size and color. We used to suspect that he couldn't do anything but nap, fat as he became, though once I saw him move with a speed and agility I would have thought impossible…
While passing the front door one afternoon I chanced to see Anubis pinned down in the front yard by a large, mottled grey cat and the bigger cat had the best of Anubis. Just as I went to open the door to shoo this cat away a blur of grey crossed the yard and plowed into the unsuspecting bully with such force that it sent the blindsided cat went end over end all the way into the neighboring yard. Much to my surprise, Amen had come across the grass with such speed, that as he collided with the assailing cat he came to a dead stop, and the energy of his momentum was transferred to the other. There Amen stood over his brother with a frenzied, defiant expression I had never seen before and would never see after. The cat he crashed into summersaulted five or six times across the lawn and came up in a panic and a dead sprint.
It never bothered Anubis again.
Amen and Anubis were like this. They never fought. Not once that I can remember. They were the fastest of friends or what passes for friendship among cats. They probably would have lived forever feeding off the Zen of one another, but they didn't.
A few years ago Amen contracted feline leukemia. We didn't even know he was sick. Being a napper like he was he just slept and slipped into a state so weak, that by the time I noticed anything was wrong, it was too late. I found him stock still in a patch of sunlight near the front windows of the house. I picked him up and he made one of the few sounds of his life. One pitiful mew. Less than an hour later he passed away at the vet office where I had once spent the last minutes with a favorite dog some 20 years earlier.
Anubis never quite recovered from the death of his brother. We don't often attribute sorrow and loneliness to other animals. We think of them as smaller, simpler machines in design, purpose and experience, but the brothers washed away any doubt in my mind that cats form bonds as lasting and as meaningful to them as we might hope to have among ourselves. Anubis was a model of forlorn loss. He bawled openly with a pitiful cry that I had never heard from any cat before. I remember when he came home that night. He went right to the last spot where Amen had lain and just began to pour out the most heart wrenching sounds. They only thing that we could do to make him stop was to release him to the outdoors. Every time he came in the house for weeks on end he would immediately mew in the saddest way and we'd let him out again. I could sometimes see him in the yard visiting every little spot they had once shared from trees to sun-drenched stones. He soon would only live out of doors.
Sadder still, our neighbors came home one day with a fat, well mannered cat that was the very embodiment of Amen and Anubis latched on to this calico fellow for almost a year, until even that cat was struck down by illness.
Still, Anubis remained the friendliest cat on the block. Neighbors would often ask after him and we learned over time that he lived in almost every receiving house that would let him in and pet him. I often heard people that I didn't know claim him as their own to other passing strangers that would stop to pet him. He was simply any every person cat and we excepted that he'd never live under our roof again.
Then one day, after years of being outside and forever wandering, Anubis just walked into the house with me. I came up to the porch, stepped into the house, shut the door and turned to find Anubis sitting there as though he had never left. He seemed right as rain and no different in that moment than the years before Amen died. After that he was sometimes in the house and sometimes out of it. He seemed better for being here and there, in and out. He was sometimes on the couch with us as we watched television. He was sometimes in the kitchen with rapt attention as I cooked bacon. Whatever he was, he was around more.
It was like old times.
There were some differences. He had a few grey hairs. He drooled when you petted him. He was less afraid of the vacuum. He had become more vocal over the years, but with a funny little cut off meow that sounded fragile and comical at the same time. An endearing little half meow.
My favorite thing about Anubis over the years is that he was there. You just had a sense that he was always there. He would come running every time you called, but more than this he would suddenly be next you whether you heard him coming or not. Quite often he would tap your leg with a front paw and then pause. Tap and pause. Tap and pause. We would sometimes stand about and purposely ignore him just to feel that 'tap and pause', the little 'I'm right down here in case you didn't notice' gesture which would set people to giggling. He did it every time. If you didn't see him, he would reach up and tap.
With Anubis returned we made it a part of the children's routine to feed and take care of him. Even our four year old became so involved in the life of Anubis that she would announce his arrival and departure, so that we had regular reports of his comings and goings.
It was this Sunday last that she announced with her usual, childlike fervor that 'Anubis was gone'. It proved to be prophetic. When he didn't return for several days I went looking for him by flashlight and found him curled up and forever asleep in one of his favorite napping places.
I buried him Tuesday evening just as the sun was going down. We had buried his brother in the same spot years before and built a ring of stones and burned a fire there from time to time, so I found the spot easily enough. I dug down to within inches of Amen and buried Anubis in the same spot of ground. They napped upon one another in life, so it seemed most fitting. I marked the place with one light and one dark stone.
Now we settle into the small changes. There are so many things that we didn't notice that we noticed.
I ate a bowl of beef stew yesterday and saved some for Anubis, forgetting that he's gone. I can't take a stick of butter from the fridge without thinking of Amen, who despite his considerable size, always managed to get on the counter to lick the butter. There's a pet door in the mudroom door that will always be there. When I drive in or out of the driveway I look for Anubis still.
I stood in the yard today and waited for the tap…
