Seasons go and come
Thoughts on Chilli
The title quote comes from Ahmed, a Moroccan cab driver who often drives me home from Redhill station of an evening. (My routine is to walk to the station in the morning, a 30-minute walk, and cab it home after a hard day.) I get a cab home from Redhill so often, especially with working in London six or even seven days a week at a time currently, certain among the regular drivers know me. A handful, the friendliest, the ones who chat, ask me how I am, and I ask them back and we fall in to conversation during the five minutes the journey takes. Ahmed, whose name I only know because of his driver ID, is so familiar he seems professionally insulted if I tell him the name of my street. "I know," he will say, usually adding, "my friend," as that's the way he talks. I know he was born in Morocco as he was reminiscing about how much simpler life was then. About a week and a half ago, as we agreed that the longer daylight hours were good for the soul, he said, philosophically, "The seasons go and come." The phrase has stayed with me.
Chilli's passing, last Sunday, was all too sudden. The pain her absence causes just proves that for such a small cat, she exerted a massive presence in the house. (We knew this already, and didn't need her taking away from us to prove it.) Very few people really knew Chilli, as she was shy, shier than Pepper, although neither liked visitors much, due, we think, to being traumatised by lesbians as kittens. (No offence to our old neighbours when we lived in the flat in Streatham, but their love of cats led one of them to pick Chilli up while cooing over them, at which she leapt five feet to the ground and scarpered back to the saftey of the bedroom, scarred for life.) The pair of them would retreat to the bedroom whenever foreign voices entered the house. Especially if the voices belonged to children. Only Pepper might emerge, tentatively, hours later, but even she preferred it to be the four of us. As such, heating engineers or other single visitors might meet Peps, but rarely Chilli. She was not a lap cat. But neither was she aloof, just quiet, considered and wise. When she wanted a play-fight with her sister, or a mad moment in the garden, or a game chasing small, rolled-up corners of paper flicked by us, she would get it. And because she was less vocal than Pepper, any sound she did make was cherishable: the tuna song, the warning before she leapt up on the surface, the bird-watching chirrup, the occasional announcement. It's only now that she's been gone a whole week that we truly appreciate how big these small gestures were. We couldn't haved loved her more.
Showing no outwards signs of illness, it seems she had a heart defect of some kind, which caused the blood clot, which caused her to lose the use of her back legs, suddenly, on waking up from a serene, curled-up sleep on the sofa after Green Wing last Friday night. It was, of course, horrifying to witness, normality snatched cruelly away, confusion, distress. I won't detail her last hours, needless to say, the epilogue to a happy, loved and active life involved vets, intervention, hope and an unecessary drive (she hated the car). I'd rather not think about the Saturday and the Sunday, which is not denial, just a choice. Grief has brought with it guilt and anger, but these must fade. She was only ten, too young to die. We were counting on a lot more of her. Pepper is bearing up incredibly well, but still looks for her sis.
I have had to work every day since last Friday, whether broadcasting or writing a funny sitcom with Lee, and it's been hard. I have felt distant, disconnected and physically run down, tired, sore throat, mouth ulcers. There is a picture of Chilli on my mobile. Although you have to welcome distraction, it also seems somehow disrespectful for any kind of normality to be resumed. (Anyone who's been through the grieving process will recognise this.) I keep looking out at the willow tree, which has just started to show green. That's why I took a photo of it. Chilli would sometimes dash out, with the wind up her backside, as we used to say, and run straight up the tree. It was an incredible sight, reminding me of her adventurous spirit when we first moved to a house with a garden and they experienced the outside for the first time. Up the tree she went. I had hoped, and expected, to see her do it again now that the summer was approaching. But seasons go and come.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 7:36 AM
10 Comments
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10 Comments:
Very honest and brave for you to put your feelings down in this public forum Andrew. There'll be many who don't understand but many more who'll recognise what you're going through or, like me, will see it as a pretty unappealing premonition of things to come. As it happens our 10-year-old had a scare a couple of months back and a blood clot was one of the possible diagnoses. Thankfully after several hours of anxious waiting and a visit to the all-night vets, it turned out she was only (only!) having a reaction to something toxic she'd come across (household flea spray, they think - we don't use it ourselves as we know its harmful to cats but she makes herself at home in all our neighbour's houses too). She's now fine again, but I'm not looking forward to the day (hopefully many years from now) when I'm in your position.
Bless you Chilli.
PS please forgive the punctuation in "neighbour's" - I know it should be "neighbours'" but I didn't proof it. I'm also a fully paid-up member of the punctuation police......
Oh, Andrew, that's really awful. My cat died of a tumour which started bleeding. Again, lots of pain, vets involved etc. (but obviously me sharing that doesn't make you feel any better.) I really am so sorry.
Hope you sore throat/mouth ulcers are clearing up and that you feel better soon.
Randomly (and apologies this is not connected to your blog whatsoever, but thought you might be interested) did you know that University of the Arts (as it now is) has sold off your old halls in Battersea? Turning them into luxury flats, or something...
Best wishes
Polly
Thanks, Polly. I may have to go and lie down in front of the bulldozer. Those halls are a heritage site for me.
They were the best! But now the uni is using halls run by Unite etc. They're all very nice, but all self-catering and in lovely (IRONY ALERT!) locations like Elephant and Castle and New Cross, and just no community feel at all (i.e. they are all split into flats so you never get the opportunity to meet anyone). New Chelsea site is pretty impressive, though.
Anyway, ramble over.
Px
Our second dog woke up one morning unable to get up and yelping loudly, apparently more in confusion than pain. He too had lost the use of his back legs. The vet kept him for a couple of nights but couldn't ascertain what the problem was. He returned home on medication and was a little happier but he wasn't getting any better. It was awful seeing him totally unable to comprehend what was happening to him; he required virtually 24 hour care. It was over a week after the initial event when he finally died.
It's pointless telling someone how to feel but you certainly shouldn't feel guilty and you should be thankful that her suffering didn't last longer. When our dog died it was a relief for us, and it shouldn't have been really.
So sorry about Chilli, Andrew. One of my two cats (Kelly) was diagnosed with mouth cancer on Thursday of last week, so I know some of the pain you are feeling. All the best.
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Andrew. Very brave of you to give us all an insight into your dreadful weekend. I totally understand your comment about confusion - one of the main things I remember about when my cat, Dylan, had his first fit about 10 years ago, apart from the sheer horror of seeing it, was wondering what the hell was going on. I was listening to my new Pink Floyd, Pulse, live CD that I'd bought that day and had just cranked up the volume for David Gilmour's 'Comfortably Numb' guitar solo. In my bewilderment, I actually thought that the loud music was really hurting him. After a tense night, he returned to his normal self and we had him until last year, when a brain tumour took him.
I still can't listen to that song without thinking about him, although I'm now at the stage where the memories are happy ones.
All the best.
Doug
Tim - I hope that Kelly isn't in too much distress.
That's horribly cruel Andrew, poor Chilli. My relations' super-fit 4 yr old labrador died suddenly without the slightest warning as they were all together on the sofa, also the result of a heart defect. Maybe it's a good thing Chilli wasn't alone.
If they're on it (and I know they're not) I'd let those lesbians off the hook! I don't know if cats scar that easily - one awful day our George came in through the cat flap with his face a horrifying mess - he'd been hit by a car. The only lasting physical damage was a missing fang and a slight Elvis-curl to his lip. If there was any psychological damage it didn't show many years later when I looked out to see him settling down in the middle of Reigate Road! It was a hot summer night and always a lover of a warm surface I didn't hang around to wonder why. Not the brightest, G.
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