Oblivious though she surely was to the idea of a dirty protest, this is nevertheless what Chelsea, my cat of 17 years, performed on the last night of her life. She had never taken to our daughter, who was born nine months previously, put out by her usurper in the way of Big Brother contestants when a shiny newcomer arrives. Clearly, she wanted to make her feelings felt. And she did, in the baby’s bedroom, while we slept, with an emphatic deposit.
In the previous weeks, Chelsea had been a shadow of her former self. She had lost a lot of weight, her features had grown pointed, her spine like a xylophone, ribs like harp strings. She could no longer manage the stairs.
She had arrived in my life in the autumn of 1989, as I was preparing to leave my childhood home. A family friend had given a kitten to my mother, to fill the void absence left by my departure, but I ended up taking her with me. I named her Chelsea after the Daryl Hannah character in the 1984 mermaid-in-Manhattan film Splash. I wish Google had been around then: when the film turned up on television six months later, we discovered that the character was called Madison, not Chelsea. Too late.
The cat was my one constant throughout early adulthood. We moved together from one bedsit to the next and she grew accustomed to occasionally being bundled into cupboards or on to windowsills whenever landlords dropped by to ensure that rules were being abided by, chief among them: no pets allowed. We would eat at the same table and she shared my single bed, taking up her regular position on my chest, with a proprietary paw on my chin. One girlfriend found this charming, another considered it “a bit much”. When a particularly lovely woman came back to mine for dinner one night, the cat was receptive to her in ways she hadn’t been to others, so I did the only thing I could possibly do: I married her. (The woman, not the cat.)
By the time we finally moved into a house, with stairs, a garden and the luxury of space, Chelsea was deep into midlife and content to sit on one end of the ironing board we never put away, where she could watch us with imperious disdain. She paid no attention to the pregnancy, but retreated by stealth the moment the baby arrived, haunting me like a ghost.
When she became ill, the vet gave me the talk vets give everyone at some stage. We made one final trip to the surgery together. I stumbled back to the house that cold morning, piercingly alone, in a film of tears. At home, I smelled a very particular scent, familiar to all new parents and pet owners, and eventually found its source in the corner of my daughter’s room, curled up like a Mr Whippy missing its cone.
My jaw dropped. What a strange thing to do – so hostile, yet so gloriously defiant. I marvelled at the effort expended. She was a cat who had always known her own mind – is there any other kind? – and was still communicating her feelings to me from beyond the grave.
She would prove to be a hard act to follow.
