braon, a journal

wedenesday 4 may 2011

Along with her five brothers and sisters, Zoë was born on Thursday 7 August 1992, and was killed by a human driving a car on Wednesday 3 May 1995. Her life was short. Her death was instigated by a human. She was another dear member of that cat-family that I was completely enamored of, and which began in 1990 with the arrival in our lives of Zoë’s grandmother, Maman, and ended on Monday 24 March 2008 with the slaughter of Zoë’s sister and her two cousins by the animal “shelter” in Greenfield.

Most of Maman’s family popped out grey and white, like Maman herself. Four of them showed up in brown tiger, like their fathers. But only two, Zoë and her mother Chani, came out black and white, little genetic quirks in this family, and quirks that happened to be especially neat for me. While I have raised and lived with and deeply loved animals of all the colors I can think of, I’ve always been visually tantalized by black and white animals, of any species. Just another quirk of mine, I guess.

Very like her mother physically, Zoë had Chani’s temperament as well. Shy, and very much a one-person cat. She and her mother formed strong bonds with their blood family members, but when it came to humans, they really only wanted me. And that’s not an ego-statement. There are just animals who are like that — I’ve seen it scores of times. They center on one person in their household, and beyond that, they really aren’t much interested. Zoë politely accepted my daughter, and my mother, when she came to stay on weekends. Let any other human enter our walls, and she and her mother were nowhere to be seen, having sought out hiding places that would not be abandonned until the unwelcome human presence had hauled ass away.

I’ve said on at least one other post about a cat killed by the human driver of a car that someday I would address the indoor-cat/outdoor-cat debate. I suppose now is as good a time as any. Why have I for the most part always let my cats go outside? One reason is certainly: because that’s how I was acculturated to both small-town living and cat-keeping. My parents, and most of our neighbors, friends and relatives let their cats out. Another reason is that I firmly believe, and have always believed, that indoor cats are not as happy as those who can go out. Many will rise up to argue with me, I’m sure, and swear by all that’s holy to them that their indoor cats are happy as pigs in mud. I respect your opinion, and your need to believe that your indoor cat is in no way deprived, but I do not agree. Indoor cats as a rule live longer, are hardly exposed to diseases and parasites, have cleaner coats, do not kill sweet outdoor creatures, and all kinds of other positives. But I don’t believe that they are as happy as cats who can go out. A cat is bound to nature and to prowling in a way that is essential to their well-being, and this statement is based on nothing other than my decades of observing dozens and dozens of cats, both my own and other people’s. A cat needs, at some genetic level, to spend time outdoors in order for the organism to be content. There are other beliefs out there that make cogent arguments in their favor, but my mind has not yet been changed by any of them.

And so I have spent my life with both the cognitive dissonance and the heartbreak that acting on my belief has brought about: the early deaths of certain cats over the years, cats that I wanted to have with me until they were senile, incontinent, and ready to go. And whenever a cat has been killed by a human wielding an automobile, or, much more rarely, by another animal, I have pulled out the whip and done battle with myself and my belief. If I’d never let them out, they would have lived to be old and infirm and get the lethal injection. I would have had them to love much longer. The other ANIMALS here would have had them to love much longer. Why can’t I stop believing they’re better off going out? And I beat myself and beat myself with that whip.

And in the end, the whipping changes nothing. Because no matter how many times I ply the lash, I still believe that cats need to go outdoors. On the sunny May morning when some human ran Zoë down, she was two years and nine months old. I’d wanted to be with her for much, much longer. And I still beat myself with that whip. But something else in me still always answers back to the self-flagellator: The muscles and eyes and ears and psyches of cats need to spend time among winds and leaves, bugs and birds and rodents, and all the low-register pulsing activity that is nature. Zoë (and others) died young but happy. And fulfilled. I will never be able to say those things about myself. She was deeply loved and appreciated by me and by a bunch of other cats, and she died happy and fulfilled. Despite the despised brevity of her life, Zoë, when I look at the larger scenario, didn’t get as cheated as one might at first glance think.

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(stones are a clipping)

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