This Cat

You guys know I fret about this cat. He turns 18 this year and he’s in rickety shape. The Butcher and I had a long discussion where the Butcher admitted that the orange cat can’t go live with them, that it would just be too much to ask him to get used to being an indoor cat in a new house at this late in the game.

I don’t know if you guys remember how the tiny cat went. One morning she was bleeding from her mouth and I was trying to round her up into the carrier and get the dog back inside and it went like hell and she sprinted outside and was gone. My parents’ cat went the same way. He determinedly snuck out and went off to die.

These past few days, the orange cat has been feeling his oats again. Playing, running around, yelling at me when I’m in the kitchen, demanding a million head scratches.

But yesterday, when I got home from the grocery store, he went outside with the dog. I thought he’d come back with the dog, but he didn’t. I gave him a few minutes and then I started to worry because it’s so cold. I put on my coat and went out to the shed and called for him and he came out and meowed at me and we walked back to the house together.

This morning he dashed out as I was letting the dog in. It’s five degrees here. And he was gone. I called for him. Nothing. I tried to go about my morning, but I kept listening for him at the door. Finally, the fourth time I checked the door, there he was, strolling up, like it was perfectly normal for a rickety frail man to want to wander in freezing temperatures for twenty minutes.

Is this a part of his, as the Butcher put it, “New Year, New Cat” initiative? I kind of think that, even as he’s looking worse to us, he seems to be feeling better than he has in some time. I mean, he was motherfucking playing yesterday. And certainly in his younger days, he would have much rather gone to the bathroom outside, no matter what the temperature, than used the litter boxes.

I’m torn between trying to just enjoy this bout of young behavior and worrying that he’s at the age where even good news is bad news.

Also, can I just say, it’s 5 degrees here and my garage is 40? God bless that heater.