Cat’s Eye

So we have a cat: Woofa Butterball Popsicle Asher.

(Not taken today)

We got her at a time when I maybe wasn’t going so well.

When you have a kid with a “thing” sometimes you can be a bit of a mental as you chisel away the entrenched stone of your heart that is made up of all the ridiculous notions of perfection you had, and sculpt yourself a new shape.  One that encompasses the reality of loving the kid you have.  I say “you”, but I mean “me”.  It was ME who was a bit of a mental.  I guess I was working my way through the stages of grief, but not of a loss of something tangible, but of a potential.  A potential life for our daughter that existed only in my imagination.

There was also the sense of loss in knowing that I would have no more children, for I couldn’t, once I knew that we both carried secret mutations on a precise spot on a particular chromosome that when coupled, would make a kid with a thing, one out of every four times.  Again, a loss of potential, a fleeting wisp of an idea of a baby that I allowed only to exist in my peripheral vision.

So when I saw that Ragdoll and her deep blue eyes- kind of like the eyes of a kid I know- I had to have her, even though it wasn’t the best time for me to be looking after another life.

And if you could see that kid with a thing cuddling that cat, pushing it in a pram or touching noses together, you’d probably agree it was a good choice.  Even if you think cats are a bit shit.

Her name was Popsicle when we got her, but we wanted to name her ourselves.  I wanted to call her Johnno or Chairman Miaow.  Liam wanted to call her Fooey Fooey Meow Meow, and Nath didn’t give a toss ‘cos he hates cats.  But Coco wanted to call her Woofa, so of course that is what she was named.

Woofa is the laziest cat in the known world, and usually comes in around 5pm on a big day.  Today she didn’t.  And then tonight she didn’t and then late this evening she didn’t.  And even though I profess not to like that cat, I started to feel sick at the thought of what we might be scraping from David Low Way tomorrow before the kids got up.  I called her one more time tonight before bed, even doing the silly “pusspusspussPUSS” thing that no self respecting cat has ever heeded.

And she came.  She came all wobbly and miaaaoww-ing and strange.  I couldn’t tell immediately what was wrong although I knew it was something.

It’s her eye.  The entire thing is full of blood, so much so that at first when I held my breath and prised the lids open I thought there was no eye, just a dead red socket of eyelessness.  I’ve looked three times and taken a photo and sent it to the vet, and I’m still not convinced that what I’m seeing is her eye.  Her azure is crimson.  I want to quote Lady Macbeth and say “The multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the blue (sic) one red”.  Or something.  A bit melodramatic, but it’s her eye.  Or not an eye.  I can’t decide and I can’t sleep yet until I look one more time and be sure that someone hasn’t just done a King Lear and an “Out vile jelly” to it, like I first thought.

Seems I’ve read too much Shakespeare and Stephen King (the World’s two greatest storytellers, by the way) for sleep to come easily tonight. (But of course the bloody cat is asleep next to me on the Time Capsule, dreaming the dreams of the innocent.)

I guess you don’t see with your eyes when you dream.

Do you want to see the eye photo? (You know you do)

What are you, lovely readers, Team Dog or Pussy Lover?

…From The Ashers xxx