CALYPSO my Birman cat
Calypso was giving me that steady, penetrative, forlorn look again… a wireless gaze into my soul… being transmitted every night for several nights now as she sat on my lap on the couch. Calypso, my beautiful Birman cat with round blue eyes…Clippy… Clipsy Von Doodle… names we called her affectionately. A stoic, no-nonsense cat, who never understood why we had other cats….who forbid with steely stare any other cats on the couch! Especially Jaguarundi, the mischievous tabby, who lurked in close proximity, within eye view, too afraid to leap onto the couch, but brave enough to needle her from a safe distance. Daggers from her eyes would keep him at bay. Clippy wanted us humans (wife and me) all to herself. She allowed only Katascali her brother into her realm, as long as he groomed her, but soon dispensed with him when he inched closer to us on the lap. He would meow and whine in protest, jump off the couch, and then try to bully Jaguarundi in the wake of his reduced state.
Poor Jaggy. Always being shunned. But we loved him and his antics. Found in a parking lot, and wilder than the sibling Birman cats, he was the most creative, independent, clever. He knew how to get back at Clips and Mr. Kaats. He would station himself by the door to the kitchen, knowing that at some point they would want to use that route to the food bowls, thus forced to leave the couch. The two Birmans became trapped and hungry in their divan heaven, unable to leave. They would have to suffer the indignity of entering his guarded passageway! A stare-down ensued most nights, Jaggy like Clint Eastwood by the saloon swing doors, Birmans like cowpokes reclined on their bunk beds, all three frozen in space and time. Was that a tumbleweed that just rolled by in the dusty back yard?!
All Clippy wanted was love unhindered and undiluted from us, my wife and me. She strived to create a matriarchy, with the boys at her beck and call. They lacked discipline and manners, she had concluded, and thus were to be put in their place. And she wanted to give her love back to us. To us only of course. Her love was a vector, an arrow, directed towards my wife and me. 180 degrees away from Jaguarundi! He was allowed to love us only from a distance, outside a ten-foot radius! Her body on our laps, the instant we sat, was warm, compact, her presence charismatic in a quiet way. And on our laps she stayed, until we had to get up and leave the couch.
Of late Clippy had been acting different. Although she would jump up as usual on the lap, shoo away all other cats etc., she would begin to stare at me unblinking, for what seemed forever. Usually I would be watching TV. I began to steal a glance now and then at her. But no. There was no stoppage to the stare. I would feel uncomfortable but also mildly amused at her behavior. I tried staring back occasionally but became cross-eyed and disoriented. Her gaze was simply too steady and penetrating. Thinking it was a passing phase, I dismissed these episodes. So did my wife.
Then suddenly one day Calypso became sick. First the vomiting, then soon accompanied by lack of appetite, lethargy, detachment. She would not be interested in coming to the couch, and stayed in her room. That was very much unlike her. We changed foods, litter etc…without effect. This continued for some days. Jaggy continued to sit near the couch in the evenings, eyeing the empty couch, but was still too afraid to jump up. Her presence in her absence was too strong for him to defy.
One morning I was at the computer when I heard her cough and scream. I rushed to her room to find her vomiting. Her eyes were clouded. I immediately took her to the emergency hospital. The doctor soon called back and said her vitals were dangerously off all measured metrics. She had to be put to sleep.
No way, I said. I took her back to the house armed with medicines that gave her a small chance to recover. The next two days were hell, especially for my wife. We created a makeshift enclosure for Calypso away from the other cats. As she lay on her pillow in the enclosure peacefully, her wracked body looked small and vulnerable, a shadow of her strong powerful self. Her large blue eyes were vacant and clouded.
In the evenings we would pick Clippy up and bring her to her favorite couch, where my wife would hold her against her chest all evening and cry. Two beings with clouded eyes with hearts beating next to each other, within each other.
That’s how she died. In her mother’s embrace. I was sitting beside them. I saw Calypso’s pupils get larger and larger, until the whites disappeared. I knew then she was gone. It was peaceful, but all so sudden. A mysterious illness the vets could not diagnose had overcome her. In the midst of my sadness I was relieved I had brought her back home, that she was not euthanized in the cold colorless room of the emergency. Even through her weakened state she knew she was home with her family.
These days Kata and Jaggy walk about in a daze, not knowing why the evenings are so calm. Without a shootout. The living room is like a morgue now. A shrine was created in the corner of the room. Kata can be found sitting and looking at it, still not clear where his sister went.
Calypso’s presence was like that of a powerful monarch, ever present….who of sudden, without a coup, or a war, or a revolution, in a day, disappeared from the palace.
Nowadays as we sit on the couch, with Kata and Jaggy sitting on either side of me, my lap empty, I think of her gaze…her stare…deep and meaningful. She was speaking to me…telling me….reaching out to me.
I never understood…
