Lunch time. Today represents the first day I've had tuna since Max died. The old bachelor cupboard's pretty bare at the moment so if I weren't going to actually buy lunch today, it pretty much required the opening of a can of tuna, something I've been avoiding.
There were six cans in the cupboard, the remnants of the ten I bought Tuesday three weeks ago, after Max was given the appetite stimulant the night before and ate most of the two cans of tuna I had left, all in one evening. He and the other cats, mostly him, managed another four of the ten new cans in the handful of days he actually turned out to have left to him. The other six have just sat since them.
Till this morning.
It was a sad thing, for the first time in pretty much ten years, to open a can of tuna and not have the sound of it, the alluring waft of it, result in the appearance of Max at my feet, with his plaintiff, beseeching "oww... oww... ow..." Being bothered by Max was one of the secret joys of opening a can of tuna. As it turned out, this time Ally showed up, perched on the counter behind me, doing pretty much the same thing. In a way, it was nice consolation; in another way, it made me even sadder. Life goes on. Feels like, somehow, it shouldn't. But it does.
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3 comments:
Ah yes, the small ways we're reminded of lost friends. I'm sure there will be more to come.
I can't eat marshmallows without thinking of Sally, a cat my ex rescued from a barn and who loved to eat marshmallows, of all things.
Marshmallows... what a quirky thing for a cat to enjoy. :) Ally, my newest cat, seems fine to nibble on bread, which I also find strange. I suppose one day that'll be an unusually little memory too.
I can relate to the secret joy of tuna. My current feline companion can't eat tuna--it's the opening of the ostrich that brings her racing to the kitchen, wrapping herself lovingly around my pantlegs as I squash the stuff into a soup, her cry not loud and plaintive but a kind of laryngitic squeak. When I put the dish down, it has to be tilted away from her so she doesn't inadvertently dip her luxurious bib into the slop.
My secret sadness is peas. One of my sweetest pets was a plump, black guinea pig named Grimley. He would jump on my hand when I extended it to him and race up my arm to nestle in the crook of my elbow and "purr." Since guinea pigs have a general notion of litter-training, he would squirm when he needed to back into his corner but then come back out for more armtime, therapeutic for both petter and pettee. He loved steamed peas, especially when hand-fed one at a time. The main disadvantage of guinea pigs is their relatively short lifespan; Grimley made it to four.
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