Somewhere in 1996-97, if you believe in such things, there were three litters of kittens waiting to be born at different times, and one from each waiting somewhere in the ether of pre-existence to wind up at his eventual home on terra firma.
To speculate that these three charmers would have known each other in that form, even if you believe in such things, is probably a stretch. But hey, if you’re going to believe in such things, why not also accept that these three feline souls were gathered in the same part of Wherever? Maybe they were playing cards, even, while keeping one eye the Buddha Reincarnator™ for transfers to the Ethereal Plane who had managed to ascend to cathood.
The first was called much sooner than the others to enter the world around the end of summer in 1996. He had a starter home for a couple years before he moved in with his permanent human, my friend Jenny - she told me it was because her friend’s husband had allergies, but knowing cats as I do, I’m not sure Methos didn’t plan it out ahead of time. Or maybe he was given orders while still in Wherever of where he needed to be, and how to end up there. “Sneezing,” he was told. “Make him sneeze. Better yet, hives.”
And so, the other two pre-kittens had to fill their time for another six months or so until they could be born within a couple of weeks of each other in the early spring of 1997; I’d imagine they spent it practicing their facial expressions of disdain, or finding the perfect angle to run under a human’s foot just as they started down a flight of steps.
Nobody said cats were the most concerned or careful pets, even if they are the best. Go on, fight me about my claim; I’ll just send my cats to the duel in my stead. They have sharper nails.
So these two went on to be born in different states. Jekyll ended up with my friends John and Wendy, and Sylvester came to live with me, through a litter a stray cat had near my home while I lived in Missouri. He ended up a traveling cat - of sorts - taking up residence in the three different states and five homes I inhabited over his lifetime.
Sylvester went on to great notoriety as a small-game hunter during his indoor/outdoor period, which was all but the last couple years of his life. His one exception to the steady stream of birds, chipmunks, mice, moles, squirrels, and other fauna he could crunch in half with his powerful little jaws was a white owl he dragged to the back door one December night when he was about eight years old. The bird was roughly his size, and I inferred that he hadn’t meant to hunt it - it was a juvenile owl, probably just learning to hunt, and it likely spotted something moving in the dark in the woods and swooped. Sylvester would have protected himself, boxing the bird - and, it appears, sending it back to Wherever. As it was the only animal he ever carried home that he made no effort to eat, I’m sticking to the idea it was self-defense … Kitty-Krav Maga, or Kat-Fu.
On Earth, these cats never met each other. But I met each of them, which is just as good, I suppose. Each of them had tenure as the only cat in a household, at least for a while in Sylvester’s case.
He was the first to leave and head back to the Eternal Canasta Table, making his exit on Halloween night. In 2013, no less. As a black cat dying on 10-31-13, never let it be said he didn’t aim for a fitting departure. He had plenty of time to shuffle the cards for solitaire, as Jekyll waited another three-and-a-half years so he could at least celebrate his 20th birthday here before ducking out. At that point they could move up to playing Old Maid, at least.
It was, oddly, the first to leave the game who would be the last to return, as Methos went to sleep this week in his small bed two months short of his 22nd birthday - and stayed that way.
We knew them as mortal creatures that came into our lives and both complemented and inconvenienced us, because that’s what animal friends do. They were warm and cuddly and affectionate, and they were sometimes mean little assholes, too. Sylvester could do the latter like he was working on a doctorate in annoyance, particularly when he would position himself to carefully study something on the edge of a table before knocking it to the floor; or when he would approach a piece of upholstery he knew he wasn’t supposed to molest, sit up with a gentle paw, and then proceed to claw the hell out of it at 120 strokes per second before yanking away and darting ten paces to turn and stare me down.
Come at me, Sis, the look - and tail - would say.
The fact is, all three cats lived rather good, long lives, and they aged. They all grew old, they each got sick, and they died, as all things - including the planet we sit upon writing and reading this will someday - do. Still, they might be somewhere else right now, getting up to a good game of something, conversing however they do about the lives they lived and the humans they trained and the furniture they decimated.
If you believe in such things with me.
July 17, 2018