Farewell, Joey

This blog has at times attempted to be quite high-minded and instructive, other times more introspective. Today it is going to become sentimental in an adolescent way because today I am going to mourn the loss of my cat, Joey, pictured here about 7 years ago.

This picture does not really do him justice. His fur was a beautiful, soft, shiny silver that caught the light like water. He had long legs and a small head like a cheetah, and though he was at least 14 years old, he looked as beautiful the last time I saw him as he does in this picture, and indeed the first day.

Joey was not really meant to be mine. The first time I saw him he was running down the street at top speed with his ears laid back, with two neighborhood dogs hot on his heels. The dogs didn't catch him, they almost never do, and the cat disappeared into a hedge. I saw him again a couple of days later; he was on our front porch peering in our window and meowing at the top of his lungs. After a day or two of this I was a goner. I wanted to put food out for him but I knew that would be delaying the inevitable, and I told Rob as much. We already had two cats that I had before we were married. It was early enough in our marriage that Rob probably had a hard time saying no to me. He has since got past that.

With what seemed to be Rob's blessing I brought the cat inside. He had a cut over his eye and his paw pads were bloody from his high speed chases on the asphalt. We cleaned him up, fed him, and took him to the vet to make sure he didn't introduce any new feline diseases to the population. He slept for two days straight.

At first things seemed to go well. He looked like another silver cat I used to have named Chloe, so Rob named him Joey. Joey was about a year old when we took him in and very playful. Rob used to entertain both himself and Joey for hours poking his finger out from under the sofa blanket or seat cushions. The cat was endlessly fascinated with this game, which we called blanket thing.

Joey was fearless, often tempting fate in a way most cats are too cautious to try. We had an older cat named Ben who had developed some curmudgeonly tendencies by this time, and didn't cotton much to the younger cat crowd, preferring to sit in meatloaf position on the sofa with his eyes half-closed. Joey used to take a bead on a dozing Ben from across the room, run across at top speed and do a drive-by pounce on Ben, making at least 3 passes each time. The first pass he would get away with the sneak attack, but by the second Ben was ready and he would deliver a perfectly timed blow to Joey's head just as he came into striking range that would send the younger cat reeling. Just to make sure it was not a fluke, Joey would make one more run at Ben, get sent packing, and call it a day.

Joey was also the most friendly and curious cat toward dogs I've ever known. He always wanted to engage them, surprising since he first came to me because he was running away from dogs. Once he greeted a friend's dog who had come visiting. A skirmish ensued and the next thing I knew we were picking silver fur out of the dog's teeth.

Joey was an easy cat to live with in many ways - clean, low maintenance, no vet bills - except one important one: he developed a habit of marking the belongings of people he liked, and since he liked almost everyone, there was a lot of marking. No one was spared, although I seemed to get tagged the least, and nothing we did seemed to discourage him, despite seeking advice from every source we could find, knowledgeable and otherwise. Over time Rob developed a deep loathing of Joey which he attributed to the marking problem, but the visceral, almost pre-verbal nature of his animosity for this very small animal seemed to me disproportionate to the crime. Many, many times I offered to find another home for Joey but Rob wouldn't take me up on it, insisting for some reason to put up with it. It became one of our rare points of contention, the kind of issue that can be a pressure valve in a marriage: you bicker about these little things to let off steam from daily life.

As Rob's animosity increased, Joey found himself restricted to smaller and smaller sections of the house. Recently he spent most of his time in my office curled up on my desk chair. Whenever I worked at my desk he jumped onto my lap and settled there, purring and gently working his paws. I was the only one who showed Joey any affection at all, yet as though he remembered all those games of blanket thing, Joey never stopped trying to get Rob to pet him or play with him, which of course did not happen.

Earlier this week we noticed that no one had seen Joey for at least a day. We looked everywhere, in all the closets and under all the beds. Joey was nowhere to be found. The only thing we could think of was that the door was left open when Rob was bringing stuff in from the car and Joey got out while I was at work. An indoor cat with a curious nature, an open door had always presented a flight opportunity and we were usually careful. But on that day, not careful enough. Since then I've looked around the neighborhood for him, waiting for the dogs to chase him down the street, but he is gone. It looks like Rob got his wish.

I am sad that it ended this way. It hurts to think of him out there alone, frightened and hungry, his beautiful soft fur matted and dirty. I hope someone has taken him in as I did all those years ago and that he is sitting on her lap right now, purring softly and working his paws.

Home

A blogger called Jung At Heart that I follow with some regularity did a post on home this week that got me thinking abut what defines home. (No I don't knit, but a couple of my blogger friends do.) I am still on summer break from teaching and need to start thinking about my curriculum for the fall classes. But since I have nothing relevant to post on clinical research ethics or the like, I will muse for a bit on the idea of home.


In our house, my husband and I have tried to establish a no-shoes policy. We have a large basket near the front door for shoes. The policy hasn't seemed to take hold for a variety of reasons: my feet are usually cold, so I keep them covered; Rob takes his shoes off and deposits them under the living room table - within clear view of the shoe basket - approximately 4 seconds before he hikes his feet up on the sofa. Our kids mostly leave theirs on because we rarely enforce the no-shoe rule.

Near the end of last term, I had a little gathering at my house for some of my students, most of whom come from India. Each of them left their shoes on my front porch as they stepped inside, just as they would do in their own homes.





A couple of months ago I was in Bangalore working with my business partner. I stayed in a lovely apartment that she provided. When I arrived and she went into this apartment with me, we kept our shoes on. As I settled in by myself after she left, I put my shoes by the door, like most Indian households do. When in Rome, and so on. A few hours later when my partner came back to collect me for dinner, she walked in and without the slightest pause, ditched her shoes by the door where mine were. I interpreted this to mean that this space was now, at least for the next few days, home to me, and she treated it as my home instead of an unoccupied space.

My Jungian blogging friend posted the following questions as a springboard to understand the definition of home. Let's see what we can learn, shall we?



Where is home for you?

These days my definition of home has expanded beyond a physical space and a building, and I find I feel much more at home within myself as I get older. Having said that, home is very much the space I share with my husband.




What is the difference between home and house for you?

When I was a child my parents loved to go house-hunting and to look at model homes. I hated this. I couldn't see the point of looking at a house that no one lived in. The difference between a house and a home was whether or not someone lived there, and more to the point, whether or not I lived there. Not only was I not interested, it scared me to look at houses. I was always afraid we would move into one of them, and none of them was home.


Are you at home now?

Indeed yes.



Have you always felt at home?




I have often felt not at home even in my own home, usually having to do with who else I might have been sharing my home with. Recently we converted one of our bedrooms into a music room - fresh paint on the walls, brought in all the various instruments from various parts of the house, set up the electronic keyboard that I use for a piano (which I bought specifically because it has a true piano-like action to the keyboard). This opened up a room that I had previously not stepped into for several years, and gave me access to a little bit more of my house.



What makes a place a home for you?

I think it must have less to do with the physical space itself and more to do with my state of mind, and who lives in it with me. I lived entirely alone for maybe 16 years of my adult life, usually in smallish apartments, places I generally felt at home. Having my stuff in the home helps - my pictures, books, animals - but I don't necessarily have to make all the choices about how the house looks. For instance, for the music room above, Rob chose the color on his own pretty much sight unseen by me. The same thing when we had the exterior painted last year; he chose the color, which was a different tone than we had before. While I actually preferred the older color, I didn't prefer it enough to make myself part of the decision making process.

How has where you lived impacted you?

I lived for the first 20 months in an orphanage. I lived with other relatives for about 18 months when I was 5-6. In my childhood through college I lived in 10 different houses; as an adult or well over three quarters of my life, only another 5. I would say that where I have lived as a child has impacted most substantially my choices of where and how I live as an adult.

Do you think you can go home again?

No. I think you move on from each home and there is only forward movement, never backward.



How did you find your home?

We went house-hunting - which I still hate - on a Sunday afternoon. When we walked into the house we now own, which was I think the second one we saw that day, Rob said this is the one. We made the offer the next day and had it accepted by the end of that week. It has three 60 foot tall liquid amber trees in the front yard, hardwood floors, and lots of windows. I dislike dark rooms. We are hip-deep in fallen leaves every November and December. The house is small, only 1500 square feet. But we have great weather. My friend Mary says that's why we pay prices this high for houses this small.

What is your ideal home?

A little less cluttered than my homes tend to me, especially living with cave-bear Rob.