Fiction: The Lamentation of Cats

My mom is dying. She is in palliative care in the hospital right now. Unless a miracle takes place, if she lives through the night, she will go into hospice care in the morning.

Ten years ago I wrote this story about cats trying to prepare for the coming death of their owner. It was a challenge story: in my writing group I had a reputation for writing stories where people died. I was challenged to write a story to the prompt "The fluffy gray kitten played with the ball of yarn" where no one died. I came up with this.

The story is based on a projection of how I might feel in such a situation. My mom was 79 when I wrote this. The cats are not based on any of our cats. Sugar was a real cat who lived across the street and would wander over to get petted; we have had one of her grandchildren for the last fourteen years. The rules of cat seniority are real, at least in our house. The title comes from something I half-remember my father telling me about, how his mother had volunteered in the 1960s in an institution for children born with severe developmental issues, how some children would simply yowl through the night making a sound dubbed the lamentation of cats. My father was long dead when I wrote this, and had passed into the forgetting of dementia years before, so I could not verify the memory with him.

The cat poisoner next door was real. He died a few years after I wrote this, alone and unloved.

I forgot about this story for a long time, then came across it a few weeks ago while looking for something else, and it made me cry.

The lamentation of cats

The fluffy gray kitten played with the ball of yarn. She rolled in ecstasy, purring away with the pure joy of being a cat. She planned to play with her ball of yarn for a long time, and then maybe take a nap. Maybe two naps.

"Princess," said a voice. "We need to talk."

Princess stopped playing and looked up. It was Sugar, the Senior Cat. She had a very serious look on her face.

"Am I in trouble?" Princess asked.

Princess wasn't a kitten, not anymore. But at nearly fifteen months she was the youngest cat in the house, and she had chosen to hold onto her kittenhood as long as she could.

"No, you're not in trouble," Sugar said. "Though I do want you to stop pooping so much by the front door. You need to use the litter box."

"But I like pooping there," Princess protested. "And besides, Mom doesn't mind."

"Yes, she does. And you're making a lot of extra work for her, work she shouldn't be doing. But let's wait for Slinky before we discuss more."

"Here I am," came a muffled voice from the hallway. A young tabby padded out of the dark with the stealth that had inspired his name. He held something in his mouth, but set it down before he approached the other cats. "I was just checking on Mom," he said. "She's taking a nap."

"She sure takes a lot of naps lately," Princess said.

"Yes, she does," Sugar said.  "That's something I wanted to talk about today."

Princess cocked her head and looked at Sugar. Why would she want to have a meeting about Mom taking naps?

"Princess," said Sugar, "Mom is getting old and tired. She's taken care of us all our lives, but someday - maybe soon, maybe not for a while - she won't be around anymore. We have to talk about what we're going to do when that happens."

Princess looked back and forth between the two other cats, confused. Sugar sat there, dignified as always, while Slinky chose that moment to start licking at his leg.

"What do you mean, 'won't be around anymore?'" Princess asked. "Where would she go? Maybe out to the country to visit Tommy and the kids?"

Slinky stopped licking and shook his head as if he had a bug in his ear.

"No, Princess," Sugar said. "I mean Mom's getting old and tired and is eventually going to die. Then she won't be around anymore to take care of us."

Princess tucked back her ears and put her chin on the carpet. She began to meow plaintively. "But...if Mom's not around, what are we going to do? Who's going to feed us, and change our water bowls, and clean up our poop?"

"There'd be a lot less poop to clean up if you used the damn litter boxes," Slinky said.

"But if Mom's not there to feed us, we'll starve!" Princess howled softly. "Unless...wait! I have an idea! We'll find a bag of food, and tear it open, and eat it!" She brightened up. "We've done it before, we can do it again!"

Sugar shook her head slowly. "It doesn't work that way, Princess. Somebody needs to buy those bags of food from the store and bring them into the house. Without Mom, there won't be any new bags of food."

"Then we're doomed," Princess cried. "Mom's gonna die and we're gonna starve."

Slinky chewed at his back foot for a little bit, then looked at Princess. "Maybe, maybe not. Sugar and I talked about some scenarios here. We figure there's three ways things can go, with variations of each."

Sugar nodded. "The first possibility is that after Mom dies, Tommy will take us to live with him in the country."

Slinky scratched at his ear and let this statement settle in. "Now, we'd like to think that this is the most likely scenario. But we've got reasons to think it's not gonna happen"

"Why?" asked Princess.

"Well...you.  Tommy found you when you were a newborn kitten, abandoned in his barn. From what I hear, you were darned cute as a kitten."

"I still am," replied Princess.

"The point is, he didn't keep you then. What makes us think he would take you in now? Plus an old cat like Sugar and a part-feral like me. It would be nice, but we've gotta consider that it might not happen."

"I like Tommy and the kids," said Princess.

Sugar and Slinky exchanged a glance. Sugar began again. "Scenario two is less pleasant to consider: After mom dies, we get sent away to the pound."

"What's a pound?" Princess asked.

Sugar thought a moment and responded "It's a place where unwanted dogs and cats get sent so other people can see them and adopt them."

"Well, that sounds nice," Princess said.

Slinky scoffed. "Sure, it sounds nice. Truth is, there's too many unwanted dogs and cats for them to handle. They need to free up space. If you don't get adopted in a few days, maybe a week, they put you to sleep."

"I like to sleep," said Princess.

Slinky hissed and spit. He was about to say something but Sugar interrupted. "'Put to sleep' doesn't mean what it sounds like," she said. "It means...well..."

"Dammit, it means they kill you," Slinky said. "Jab you with a needle or gas you in a box, then toss your body in a furnace with all the other cats and dogs they 'put to sleep.' And there's no waking up, not ever."

Princess began to whimper and cry. "First Mom dies, then we die? I just want to take a nap and forget about all this."

"Slinky, you've frightened her."

"Dammit, Sugar, this is frightening stuff. It scares the hell out of me. I don't want to end up stuffed in a furnace either. So that brings us to scenario three."

"Is it worse than being put to sleep?" Princess asked.

"No," Sugar said. "If Tommy isn't going to take us, we wait until people are coming and going through the doors. They'll do that when Mom...when Mom is gone. And we wait for our chance, when maybe someone has a door open a little longer than usual, and we run away."

"Run away? Where?"

"There's a stable colony of ferals in this neighborhood," Slinky said. "I used to be a part of it. There's a lot fewer left than there were before, thanks to the poisoner who lives next door. We'll take our chances with them accepting us into the colony. If not, we move on."

"What do you think our chances are of being accepted?" Sugar asked.

"I...don't know." Slinky grew somber. "I was sick and dying when I left them last year. Mom took me in, made me better. But...I think they resent me for having left them and come in here. They might be more willing to accept the two of you. Or maybe none of us. Still, it's a better option than the pound."

The three cats sat in silence for a while. Finally Sugar spoke.

"That's a lot to think about, I know. And it might not happen for months, or even years. But we have to start thinking about it now. And there's more we need to discuss."

She looked at a reflected sunbeam on the ceiling for a moment, then continued. "If Tommy comes, he might want to take just you, Princess. He might decide to send me and Slinky off to the pound."

Slinky looked at her. "Well, we'd just run away then. Let Tommy take her, but the two of us can stick together."

Sugar shook her head. "I've been with Mom for fourteen years now, but I was already a grownup cat when she took me in. See, I was a pet who belonged to the people across the street. They let me wander the neighborhood. I got knocked up. I was almost ready to have my kittens when I found out my owners had moved away and left me behind."

Princess forgot about her problems for the moment. "But, why?" she asked.

Sugar shook her head. "They weren't good pet owners, and weren't ready to deal with a litter of kittens. I had my kittens next door, in the Bad Man's garden. That didn't turn out very well."

Slinky looked at her. "I didn't know. I had no idea."

"Most of them died, either from sickness or from drinking the bowls of antifreeze he put out for us. One or two got to grow up, at least survive long enough to strike out on their own. I don't know what became of them. Maybe one of them is your great-great-great-great-grandfather, Slinky."

She closed her eyes as the first traces of the afternoon sunbeam began to poke through the curtains. "My point is, I'm old. I've lived outside, until Mom took me in, and I'm not ready to live like that again. I'm too old for that sort of thing. Heck, maybe I'll die before Mom does." She looked at Princess with a steely gaze. "The thing is - if I die, or if I get taken off to the pound, you're the Senior Cat, Princess."

Princess looked shocked. "Me? But...but Slinky in older! At least nine months older, maybe more!"

"Seniority is based on years in the house, not age," said Sugar. "You've been in the house longer. Nearly a year longer. That makes you senior to Slinky. He understands this."

Slinky nodded somberly. "So the upshot is, after Sugar dies, I'm going to be looking to you for leadership and guidance."

"But...but if we have to go outside..."

"Then I'll give you whatever support and assistance I can," Slinky said. "But you'll still be the Senior Cat."

Princess meowed sadly and rested her head on her paws.

"Mom dying...you dying...all of us getting killed and burned up in a furnace, or running away and living in the wild..."

"This is all a bit much to take in all at once," said Sugar. "Let's adjourn this meeting for now. We can continue our discussion later. The sunbeam is about ready to show up. Why don't we all lay in it for the afternoon?"

Slinky turned away from the other cats and padded over to the thing he had dropped. He picked it up in his mouth and brought it back to where he he had been sitting.

"Lookee what I found in Mom's room," he said. "The catnip pillow we thought we lost last month. I thought we might need it after discussing all this heavy stuff. It's still good." He chewed and batted at it for a minute, then looked at the other two cats. "Want some?"

"No, thank you," said Sugar. "I quit that a while ago."

Princess looked at it sadly. "No, thanks," she said.

"Suit yourselves," Slinky replied, his eyes dilating.  He carried the catnip over to the spot on the floor where the sunbeam was already stretching out.

"Will you join us, Princess?" Sugar asked.

Princess stood up. "Maybe later," she said. "I think for now I'm going to go and check in on Mom. Maybe see if she needs some help taking a nap."