Open Writing

I first heard Tammy before I saw her. Tom and I were in bed. Finally, I couldn't stand the crying any longer. I got up and, in my dressing gown, walked up the driveway to the street. On the footpath was a little kitten, black but with a brown sheen in the sun. Our neighbour came outside. 'I've fed her,' she said. 'She's lost. Gran Ban (a neighbour further up the street) is thinking of taking her.'

'That's cruel,' I said. 'She's only a baby.' I picked her up and smooched her. She started purring very loudly. 'I'm taking her. Tell Gran, will you?' I walked off with her.

'Look what I've got,' I said to Tom. 'She's lost.'

'I thought we'd agreed - no more pets?' he said. Tammy settled into the crack in the pillows between us, purring loudly.

She followed me around everywhere I went, sitting on my feet while I hung out washing, sleeping on our bed with us. During the day when we were at work, we'd leave the garage door open slightly, so that she could get in and out. She made friends with the cat who lived in front of us, and they played up and down the shared driveway.

One day she ran about seventy feet up one of the gum trees on the next door neighbour's property. I thought of ringing the fire brigade, but she worked out how to scrabble her way backwards. She was always inquisitive. When workmen laid a pipe across the back of the property she disappeared down one end, and one of the workman thought, Well, that's the last anybody will see of that cat! Until he noticed her come out the other end and run back up to the top for another go. 'Is that your black cat?' he asked Tom. 'Because she used up one of her lives today.' He told Tom he'd put wire netting in both ends of the pipe, so she couldn't get in.

Then she disappeared. Three days later I dropped off copies of a poster, asking people to look in locked sheds. I became convinced she may have fallen down the gaps in our ceiling cavity, and was dead. So I knocked several holes in the walls, but no Tammy. This created the conviction in my family that I was neurotic, or slightly bats. My son-in-law put doors on the holes, so we had more storage areas.

The next day I was wandering around the neighbourhood, calling her name, when I heard a faint meow. I was in Gran Ban's front yard. She came out. 'Gran, I can hear a cat meowing. She must be in the garage,' I said.

'Oh no, she can't be. That hasn't been opened in weeks. It's just used for Jim's storage. He hasn't been in it for ages.' Jim, Gran's son, was our neighbour with the gum trees.

'Please look,' I begged. She went and got the key and opened the side door. I called, 'Tammy, Tammy!' She came running out, none the worse for wear, but very hungry.

'I hate this,' said Gran.

'Never mind. She's all right,' I said.

Over the years, Tammy has lived in three houses with us, the last one here in the Peninsula Club Retirement Village, where she had to use a litter box because the neighbour refused to allow her to use the garden--after refusing to let us have half, which we were supposed to get!

Nineteen this year, Tammy had been on medication for a thyroid problem for a few years and survived two operations for cancerous growths under her mouth line. Then she started dragging her back legs. The vet was at a loss, and suggested that if she didn't improve in ten days we euthanise her. I asked whether she might have had a stroke. 'Possible,' he said.

She came right for a while, but then slowly deteriorated: just sitting . . . watching the rain ... and sleeping. When the summer belatedly started I wanted her to have some sunshine outside. She would lie on the path in the sun, asleep most of the time, not wanting to come in at night. Then I noticed her walking crookedly, and developing a throaty 'Hello' meow. When I detected blood, I knew it was time. After a sedative to relax her, she lay peacefully watching the vet shave her fur and insert the needle. And then, eyes wide open, she was gone.

My beautiful little Tammy cat.

© Shirley Henwood

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Shirley writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au