Elegy For A Black Cat

Noir died three years ago today. This is a memoir of sorts, a reminiscence of our time together, and a cautionary tale about how you treat the ones you love.

Noir was born on October 16th, 1998, in Philadelphia, though I didn’t meet her until a few weeks later. She was part of a litter of kittens that my brother’s cat Salvatore had given birth to. I was visiting around that time and I had decided to take one of them. All that was left was to decide which one. I chose her. Partially because she was solid black and partially because… to tell the truth, I don’t know what drew me to her. Call it fate or call it a sixth sense, but I knew she was mine. I held her tiny body in my hands and she fit perfectly.

Noir grew up to become a beautiful cat, the statuesque and regal kind the Egyptians had worshipped as gods. From the right angle, the light reflecting off her black fur made her look like she was carved from obsidian, and you could understand their point of view. Noir was something. The two of us shared some similar personality traits – to strangers we could be aloof, even hostile; but quite loving and affectionate when around the ones we trust. Then there were also the quirks that were hers and hers alone, like her thing about plastic bags. Noir loved to play in plastic shopping bags. Couldn’t get enough of them. On more than one occasion she would get the handle of one stuck around her neck and run off while I chased after her, terrified that she would choke.

When I moved away to Philadelphia I took Noir with me. Instead of seeing it as a homecoming, a return to her place of birth – and how could she – Noir saw it as an upsetting change to her routine and environs. After a few weeks of her being unable to adjust to her new surroundings, it was with great sadness that I put her in a cat carrier and sent her back home to live with my parents. I often wonder even now if Noir knew something that I didn’t. But for the next two years, Noir was distant with me when I visited, as if she hadn’t quite forgiven me or wasn’t sure what I might do next. Once the life I had built for myself came crashing down house-of-cards style, and I too had to return home, Noir opened right back up to me. All sins forgiven. At that low time in my life when I didn’t know who my friends were and who I could trust, Noir was there for me.

And me? I loved her in my way. I loved her as best as I could. Translation? I was an ungrateful little shit who took her love for granted and often, far too often, reacted to her signs of affection with annoyance and impatience. It made sense to me at the time – I would be at my computer, playing a video game, and all of a sudden Noir was up on my desk, in my face, on my keyboard. Invariably my inner-Cartman would come out: “Goddammit, kitty!” Like I said, it made sense to me at the time. Like I said, I was an ungrateful little shit.

A little over three years ago Noir got sick. I didn’t even know it at first. I only caught on when I realized that Noir had been hiding somewhere for the last twenty-four hours. Once upon a time I had a dog who got sick and we did nothing and we waited too long to get him help and in the end nothing could be done. My dog was put to sleep and I never saw him again. I was determined not to make the same mistake, so I brought Noir to the animal hospital the next day.

And it was too late.

They said it was a congenital problem, and indeed some of Noir’s litter-mates had already died from one thing or another. They said it was going on for a while, that by the time it became apparent it was already too late. They said they could put her out of her misery. I nodded, and I told them they could kill my cat, who had loved me and I had not loved back enough. Now there was no more time. So I stood in the examination room and I cried. I kept myself in check, fighting back tears in an unsafe public place, but in my heart I was burning with a conflict of emotions. Grief and sorrow that my cat was going to die. Empathy or sympathy for the cat’s suffering – each pained yowl Noir made sent a chill through me. Blind and white-hot rage at a world that permits death in the first place, at God for filling creation with beauty and then systematically destroying it all. But mostly I just felt guilt and shame. All I could remember was my impatience, my ingratitude. I sobbed in silence and I wished desperately that none of this was real. Then I drove home, and threw out the litter box. She wouldn’t need it anymore.

A year or so ago I dreamt I was sitting on my dining room couch. The shades were pulled and the light of the autumn sunset was coming through the window. Noir was on the couch, in the spot where there was light. I sat down next to her and I cried and I cried. I told her how much I loved her, how I missed her, and how sorry I was that I hadn’t been more loving to her when I had her there to love. Even in my dream she said nothing. Then I woke up.

I held her in my hands, and now she’s gone.