I’ve decided to bring a new kitty into our lives. But before he arrives, I want to write a tribute to our beloved late cat, Honey. It wouldn’t be right bringing a new kitten into the house, without paying my respects to our old kitty.
This post has been a long time coming. I’ve been wanting to write about it for months but my feelings were too raw. It was too painful, and in all honesty it’s still just as painful. Time heals all wounds, so they say, but I say that’s bullshit. We just get better at stuffing pain down deep inside. We learn to forget, but dig below the surface and the wound is right there, same as it ever was.
Honey was a good cat. She was my mum’s cat, but everyone loved her. She was a wee scrap of a kitten when she first arrived. She could sit in the palm of your hand, a bundle of fluffy cream fur with razor sharp teeth and claws. She was a British Burmese, the colour of creamed honey. So we called her Honey.
A highly intelligent, playful, affectionate and inquisitive creature, she did not suffer fools gladly. I loved that about her.
Honey grew up into the most beautiful cat I have ever seen. Her fur was like silk. She was a miniature mountain lion. A wild and wanton feline, who flirted her way into everyone’s heart. Ferociously vicious when out on the hunt, but sweet as sugar at home with her family.
When I first got pregnant with bunny back in England, I was so stressed out and sick that I had to move in with my mum. Honey looked after me. She would sleep snuggled up against my belly, under the covers. I like to think that bunny could hear her motor purring through my skin. On sunny days, she’d scamper outside and entice me to play hide-and-seek with her in the grass. I’ve never met a cat who would play games like Honey.
When she wasn’t trying to play with her humans, she loved to torment butterflies and dragonflies, and the occasional velvety shrew. She killed a bird once, but once she saw that we were horrified, she never did it again.
I decided to move to California in my 2nd Trimester and I brought Honey with me, all the way from England. She had to travel in the hold, and when I picked her up from cargo her paws were all bloody from where she pulled a couple of claws out in her desperate attempt to escape her crate. She was delirious to see me, and I was over the moon to see her.
We lived alone together in a hotel and then a rented apartment for a few months. She was my only friend and companion. We lived through our first earthquake. We watched DVDs every night and gorged ourselves on tuna steaks and smoked salmon. We played together every day and slept together every night. We were inseparable.
Eventually we moved into a bigger house and my mum came over and moved in with us. We decided not to let Honey outside, because there wasn’t a garden, only decks butting out onto a steep ravine, and monstrous big redwood trees all around. We thought she might climb up one and never be able to get back down.
She continued to sleep with me through my 3rd trimester, and when I went into labour she came and jumped up on my bed all wild-eyed and bushy tailed. She stayed next to me throughout my “home birth”, right up until I had to be rushed to the hospital. She was there on the bed in the action, amidst the puke and blood and poop, waiting to greet bunny when he arrived.
When we brought bunny home from the hospital, she sniffed him carefully all around and seemed very weary of this new stranger in the home. She was cautious of bunny, and kept her distance. She didn’t want to get too close. In my paranoia I kept my door closed at night so she couldn’t come in and sleep with us. All my attention was on the bunny. I didn’t have time for Honey. I neglected her. I will always feel bad about that, and I hope she understands and forgives me. Being a new mother was so overwhelming, I didn’t have any love left over to give Honey.
We had to move house again, and this time we had a big garden, but we still didn’t want to let Honey outside. We were afraid she’d run away or get attacked by wild animals, or run over by a car. But she pestered us so much to go outside. She wanted to be free to roam in the open air, and eventually we gave in.
A week after we let her outside, she disappeared. I came home one afternoon and noticed that Honey was not around. She usually hung close by the house, and I called and called her but she didn’t come. Then my landlady phoned and asked “Have you seen your cat lately?” My heart started hammering, and I said “No, why?” And she said “Are you sitting down?”
Those 4 words that you never want to hear.
She said that the lawnmower guy had seen a cat hit by a car in the road outside our house, and she thought it was probably ours. I could not believe it. Please God. Not our cat. Someone else’s cat.
I can’t remember exactly what happened next. I told my mum and she screamed and wailed and ran outside the house, crying and frantically throwing herself around. I think her heart broke clean in two. Honey was her lifelong companion. Her beloved pet. Her best friend.
She was mine too, but I had to hold it together, to find out what happened. Like a detective. There was no cat lying outside in the road. I went to all the neighbours but no one had seen anything. I called the lawnmower guy, and he said he saw a car hit a cat that looked like ours. He said the car didn’t stop. He said he didn’t want to go out there himself, so he left it in the road. I went outside and looked at the road. It was covered in blood. I could see exactly where Honey had been hit, and where she laid to die. Her lifeblood spilled in a huge red puddle.
I hate the lawnmower guy for leaving her out there alone to die. He was here today, and everytime I see him I want to scream You killed our cat! I know it was him that scared her into the road with his big lawnmower machinery. I’m sure of it. She’d never seen a lawnmower before, and it would have scared the life out of her.
And I hate whoever hit her even more than I hate him. May they suffer as she suffered.
I called the local Humane Society and found out that there was a cat picked up that an anonymous person had called in, and they had it in their facilities. They said we could go and identify the body the next morning. I knew it was her. I just knew it. We all did. The whole evening I had this stupid voice in my head saying “she was just a cat” but you know what? I told that voice to fuck off. She was not just a cat. She was part of our family, and we all loved her dearly.
That night we scrubbed her blood from the road as best we could, and we held vigil on the place where she died. We lit a candle and prayed for her little cat soul. We hoped she died quickly without pain.
The next day we went to see her body. All stretched out like she was asleep. Her fur was so soft. We cried and held her, and we brought home her ashes in a box. She rests on the mantlepiece in my mum’s bedroom, forevermore.
There will never be another Honey. We miss her so much. She will never be forgotten. May her pusskins soul rest in peace.
