This morning, Shannon, as usual, was sitting on the end of the kitchen counter eyeballing me through my bedroom door. As I groggily padded to the kitchen he started his morning plaintive complaining. "I'm starving. You don't love me. Why haven't you fed me yet?"
I checked his food dish, and sure enough, it was full of his Friskies Special Diet dry food. The saucer contained the congealed remains of last night's Friskies canned food, Ocean Whitefish. Of late, he has gotten into the habit of licking the sauce around the edges and leaving the rest. I, in turn, have gotten into the habit of doling it out a tablespoonful at a time, so it is always fresh. Isn't it interesting how well the little buggers train us?
I gave him a fresh saucer of canned food and washed out his favorite coffee cup and refilled it with water. Shannon took a couple of tentative licks at the whitefish, gave the rest a disdainful look, and then looked at me accusingly, raising his meat-hook paw to claw at my arm. I gave him a few scritches on the sides of his face, as he clawed me to redirect my fingers to more needy areas.
I fixed my morning instant decaf "wake-up" and went toward the bedroom to dress. Shannon ran ahead of me, but took a wrong turn at the stairs. He was halfway up to my office, when he realized I wasn't following, and looked over his shoulder at me with a puzzled look. Shannon hates any disruptions in his daily routine, and I alwaysread my email first thing in the morning.
Have you ever shared a standard-sized desk chair with a 16 pound cat? That is my punishment for being late to work. The six inches I am allowed at the front edge of the chair puts me in an unusual position with my knees bumping my chin. It makes for some interesting effects as I try to type. Of course, the catconsiders those six inches an infringement on his real estate and braces himself against the seat back to push at me with all fours. I push back and the territorial battle is temporarily ceded to me as he decides to sit on my desk instead. I settle back into my chair, but the respite is short, as I see he has chosen an open notebook to sit on, one that I need to leaf through.
This cat is uncanny. I will leave my desk, with him sleeping peacefully underneath, to go downstairs to refreshen my Diet Coke; guess who is sitting on the counter waiting for me? Starving? Needing attention? You got it, and I can't explain how he manages to pass me on the stairs without being seen.
Last night, just before we went to sleep, I was complaining about what a pest Shannon had been all day. Shannon was in his normal place, on the pillow between our heads rumbling his usual "pillow talk".
"He loves you." Asa said. "You're his whole world."
I guess that's what it's all about. I've never been anyone's whole world before.
This is an essay I wrote in 1998 about my aging cat, Shannon, who went to the Rainbow Bridge in 2001 after enriching my life for 19 years. His legacy carries on in the form of Jaspurr, who at the current age of five years, is already like Shannon in many respects.
