Mona

Mona.

I am a cat person.  Any biographical blurb for a conference paper or a concert program has included a line about how I enjoy philosophical discourse with the cat.  It has been like my persistent identifier for nearly 20 years.

For a very long time, my mornings have been a race against the cat.  First to see who would get to the kitchen the fastest, where the morning fish is dispensed.  Then to the toilet, making sure to shut the door firmly so that the cat couldn't do laps of the bowl (why do cats follow one to the privy?).  Then back to the kitchen to put my own breakfast together.

Brushing one's teeth with a cat curling around your legs can be perilous when it comes to gargling.

Cooking can be a complex exercise when you don't know how accurately the cat is tracking (and anticipating) your path, leaving you standing on one foot with a pot full of stew, or a volatile frying pan.  Any meal involving dessert becomes a battle of wills, especially if there is any cream left in a bowl.

Apart from mealtimes, a cat's life is generally sedate and predictable.  A warm box with a familiar blanket, a place by the window to catch the sun.  A long evening curled up on someone's lap.  These are the times of feline at repose.

A younger cat is a bit like an alarm clock.  Food is dispensed at the routine times; pestering can usually be relied on to move a recalcitrant member of the domestic staff. If the morning feed is late in arriving, there's no use in some hapless cat owner cowering under a thick doona.  Priorities demand the cat be fed so that peace be restored!

This has been a fairly steady part of my daily routine for nearly 20 years, until today.


I woke up today with a dozen tasks listed in my mind, which remain un-done.  I moved through the morning routine, and then realized that Mona hadn't come out to greet the morning.  When I went to her box, I found her lying very still, but very much alive and unimpressed.  It was a great big mess, as she hadn't been able to get up to visit the kitty litter during the night.  I have just returned from the veterinary hospital, where she has been put to sleep.

Mona was born in a truck depot in the Riverina area of southern New South Wales in 1991.  She came into my life in February 1992, when my father and sister brought her back to our home in Richmond.  My father has long been the sort of person to take in animals, much to the chagrin of my mother.  Mona quickly asserted her dominance in the household, being a kitten of around six months of age -- she was never entirely domesticated in so far as she always retained some of the hard edges to her personality.

Until recently, Mona was never a highly sociable animal.  The doorbell would inevitably bring on a mad scurry to some odd hiding place.  Visitors were shunned with magisterial disdain.  However, since moving to our current abode, Mona decided it was time to be the hostess with the mostess.  Where visitors were mightily ignored, they were now expected to lie still and be a good cushion.  Dinner guests would be expected to contribute to the evening treat.

Through successive moves of house, Mona gradually became an indoors cat.  This was brought about by various things -- such as moving from a fairly large suburban block to a flat on a major road.  In the last few years we have lived in a place where she could go into the courtyard when the weather was fine, a situation which suited her very well.

During my undergraduate years, Mona was like a live alarm clock.  Undergraduates sleep and wake to a timetable which still mystifies me, and I was no exception after moving out of the family home in 2000.  Mona could be relied upon to raise an almighty racket (enough to disturb the neighbours) if I remained in bed beyond 8.30am.  Tranquility would be restored instantly when I arose.

Mona's approach to my research work can be summed up in an image:

Piano practice would inevitably bring forth squawks of protest.

Mona's decline has been gradual.  In 2007 I spent nearly two months on a research trip in the UK.  I arrived home to find a 'new' (now defeated) state government, and a mildly annoyed feline.  I had been home a couple of days when Mona had a massive seizure.  Various trips to the vet revealed that she had developed many of the usual elderly feline conditions, and probably a brain tumour.  Over the last twelve months, her walking has been unsteady, with the back paws sometimes facing 90 degrees away from the front quarters.

I decided to keep Mona comfortable, for as long as she could move to feed herself and wasn't in pain, then there didn't seem to be any pressing reason to take drastic steps.  Today it was clear that even though she was not in pain, she clearly couldn't move to feed herself.  Now that I look back over the last few days, she had been shutting down since Sunday.

I cleaned her up, and we had a good half hour of time together before going out.

Anyone who lives with a cat knows that the relationship has one side to it, and that we are not really in control.  One can train a cat to live within the routines of the household, but beyond that, the interaction is largely something which the cat chooses.

Cats have an inner life which is unique and total.  To anyone who says that animals do not have souls, I reply that nearly 19 years of conversations and occasional claw-flinging disagreements convince me otherwise.

Mona has been like a persistent identifier.  All the physical marks of her being in the house -- food bowl, scratching post -- are still about for now.  But the conversation which took place around these things is no longer.

What a bloody awful day.