Shadow. My best boy. This is post two of my paean to my miracle cat. My boon companion for the past fifteen-plus years.
I no longer think about Raven every day, but he is still tucked in a corner of my heart. It was such a shock when he died, I had a hard time accepting it. My sweet and gregarious, playful and high-strung, loving boy with a swagger. He was so full of life–and then he wasn’t.
It was hard on me, but it was much harder on Shadow. I tried to explain what happened, but of course he didn’t understand. His lifelong playmate, brother, and friend (though also sometime competitor when it came to food) was gone in the blink of an eye.
For six grueling months after Raven died, Shadow grieved. He looked around for his brother and couldn’t find him. When I went out back to smoke, Shadow would stretch his front paws up on the sliding glass door and just howl mournfully. The entire time I was outside. He could see me, but couldn’t touch me, which bothered him tremendously. He had lost his brother, and he did not want to lose me as well. When I was inside the house, he stuck close to me. He wanted to be in the same room no matter what, which was not like him at all. I hated seeing him so sad, but there wasn’t much I could do about it other than love him and reassure him that I wasn’t going anywhere.
Six months or so after Raven died, Shadow began to change. He started meowing at me for his breakfast, which he had never done before. He was more outgoing in general, which was not like him. At all. He stayed out of hiding when people came over and while he would not necessarily let them touch him (except my brother and Taiji teacher, and Ian, of course, his favorite human other than me), and he was not nearly as skittish as he’d been in the past.
Side Note: While he had been a nervy cat in general, he has never cared about vacuum cleaners or fireworks like most other cats. His brother hated both. What I realized, however, was that Shadow is like me. He freaks out over little things, but the actual big things? Nah, son. I ain’t got time for that. I’m cool under pressure because of my PTSD, which it seems is the way Shadow works, too. He’ll jump at his own shadow (pun semi-intended), but he won’t even flinch if I vacuum next to him. Sometimes, when he was younger, he would jump up from a deep sleep and race around the room in a panic before settling down again. That was so much like me, it hurt.
I used to call Raven my heart and Shadow my soul. I was very much like Raven in terms of emotions–high-strung, vocal about any distress, walking with swag that I couldn’t always back up, I was touchy the way he was. Loving and affectionate one minute, cross and pulling back the next. However, I was also like Shadow in that I freaked out over the little things while not being fazed in the least over the big things.
Shadow seemed to come into his own after Raven died. I think it’s because he used to rely on his brother to do certain things for him. Like, Raven was in my face the second I woke up, demanding breakfast until I got up and did did his bidding. Since of course I was going to feed Shadow at the same time as when I fed Raven, Shadow didn’t need to say anything. This was the one time that Shadow was aggressive, by the way, when there was food. Raven was a slow eater and would sometimes taunt his brother by chewing every morsel a million times. Shadow is an inhaler of his food (again, like me), so once he was done, he would try to horn in on Raven’s food. I sometimes had to hold Shadow so Raven could finish his food in peace. Of course, Raven sometimes taunted his brother on purpose by eating even more slowly, but normally, it was just that Shadow is a super-fast eater.
Shadow became even more comfortable with people other than me once his brother was gone. And, once I had my medical crisis, Shadow became very outgoing. He would nose and nudge anyone who came into the house, whether he had met them before or not. It was as if he had a new lease on life as well. He had seen me collapse in the front hallway (which still haunts me) and watched as I got hauled away. I cannot imagine what went through his fuzzy brain when all that happen. I’m just grateful my brother was able to come over every day to feed him while I was in the hospital. My mom took over that duty when she arrived, and then within a month of me returning home, I took back the duty.
Now, Shadow is the perfect blend of him and his brother. He is confident and outgoing, but he’s also a loner at times who needs his space. He’s more apt to cuddle with me by sitting on my chest as I’m trying to type on my laptop while sitting on the couch (and you’ve never lived if you haven’t had a 15-pound cat sitting on your chest), making biscuits with his slightly too-long nails.
I can’t tell you how content I am as I cradle him in my arms, softly kissing the top of his furry head. He’ll tilt his head up so he can blink his eyes at me, and he’s softly purring the whole time. It’s a literal weight of love in my arms, and it roots me in myself. Yes, it makes it difficult for me to type, but I can just chill out for ten minutes to love on my cat. He usually starts squirming to move within five, so it’s not a big deal.
I’ve joked about writing a children’s book about a miracle person and my miracle cat, but it’s not really a joke. Both of us should be dead, and both of us said, “Nah, I’m not about that.” When his number reached the mythical number, the vet was amazed and said it was a miracle. When I woke up after a week unconscious following non-COVID-related walking pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke, and I didn’t need any rehab afterwards, my medical team could not stop saying what a miracle I was.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to write about our miraculous lives, even though it’s pretty boring in general. Sometimes, being alive is the only thing that matters; this is one of those times.