Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade

2002-05-20 - 8:01 a.m.

Well, morning is here and it doesn't hurt any less.

Neko was encouraging me to talk about as much as I could last night, and I should maybe write some background here.

We got our first cat - Mittens - in 1990. Mittens was very much the family cat, and my sister eventually decided she wanted a cat of her own. She even prayed for one. And she was very specific about what she wanted - a female kitten, tortoiseshell with white markings. Around that time my brother had been keeping chickens and there was a kind of trough in the garage that was filled with hay. One morning my brother went into the garage and Josephine was just lying there. It's likely that someone had just abandoned her there, but it's always been at the back of our minds that maybe Josephine was a gift from God.

We originally thought she was a boy and named her "Joseph" because of the coat of many colours. Then the vet told us that she was female, so it became "Josephine".

Josephine was a very quiet, indoors cat. She didn't like to go outdoors and run around and she only really did so if she felt forced. The living room became very much her domain - if we weren't sure where she was, she was usually hiding in the living room somewhere.

She really liked to explore the house. We eventually learned not to leave the airing cupboard door sitting open because she'd hide in there and sleep on the rugs on the bottom shelf. And she loved the ladder that my dad used to get into the attic more than anything else. She used to climb up it and then meow pathetically until someone came to look at her. We used to think she got stuck up there, but she really just liked the attention.

If we left the trap door to the attic open she'd climb up there and run around. I think she liked the exploration opportunities, because our attic is not the tidiest or best organised of places. It was also very difficult to catch her when she was up there because she could run along the rafters with ease, whereas we needed to make a bit more of an effort to stay on balance. She climbed up there once without my dad knowing, and he shut her in. It wasn't until I noticed she'd been missing for a couple of days and started hearing scratching on the ceiling at night that I figured she was up there.

She used to climb up on my wardrobe, too. I don't know how she got up there.

She would go nuts for string, ribbon and Christmas tree decorations. When she was little I used to tangle her up in wool and she'd roll around, trying to get out of it. If I swung the sash of my dressing gown over her head, she would jump up in the air to try and catch it. And when she did catch it, she wouldn't let go without a fight.

I think she sometimes saw things that weren't really there. She used to chase after the gap under the door when it swung, and she developed a technique of lying on one side and clawing her way from one side of the sofa to the other in order to chase whatever was underneath.

She really, really loved Neko. He brought out a whole new side of her when he came to Ireland with me last September. I've never seen a cat flirt the way Josephine did with Neko.

Whenever I go back to Ireland, I seem to develop insomnia. I used to deal with this by shutting myself into the living room and watching TV. Josephine would get up on my knee and watch TV with me for a while before curling up and going to sleep. I always hated having to lift her off my knee when she was settled.

She had a sense for which knees weren't going anywhere for a while. She used to climb up on my mum's knee when she played the piano, and when my gran came to visit I think Josephine looked forward to the inevitable time when my gran would sit down to read. Watching the routine that the two of them went through every time never stopped being amusing.

She used to sit on the floor next to me at dinnertime in the hopes that I'd give her something from my plate. Once I had been eating salmon and when I held my hand out to her, she sat up on her hind legs and hit my fingers with her paw. I used to wave pieces of chicken over her head and she used to watch it intently. I used to slip her little bits and pieces too, when my parents weren't looking.

Once, she ate some raw, smoked antelope meat that my dad had been given by some African medical students. For a couple of days afterwards she stalked about the kitchen like a tiger. The "tiger" act faded away as soon as she thought you were going to feed her, of course.

Everyone who ever met Josephine commented on what a beautiful cat she was. She won second prize in a pet show once - she was the only cat in show. The dog who won first prize wandered too close to her cage at one point and she smacked him in the nose.

She and Mittens used to fight all the time. They would ambush each other. They were kinda like an elderly married couple in some ways - constantly attacking and plotting against each other, but now that Josephine is gone, Mittens probably won't know what to do with himself.

The last time I saw Josephine was in January. I can't help but feel really horrible about that. I don't consider any of my cats to be mere pets, and I've always been close to all of them. I've not just lost a beloved pet. I've lost one of my best friends too.

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