Blue and Missy

Blue, looking at me and beginning that eye-blink by which cats signal affection

It's been a little more than two months now since Blue and Missy were taken away forever.  They officially belonged to a young family across the street, but they'd pretty much lived on our back porch.  That family moved to another part of California, and took the two cats with them.

young Blue

Blue was a part of my daily life for a long time.  He showed up some five summers ago, and kept coming back.  We didn't know where he was from, and that--plus another crucial error--probably encouraged him to return even more often.  Blue--the name I chose for those blue eyes--began to gain weight in the area that suggested pregnancy.  Alarmed by this, I started feeding "her."  Very soon we learned where his official home actually was, and the fact that he was male.  By then he was expecting kibble in his bowl on the porch.

Blue was not shy with people.  He cultivated each generation of nearby student renters--especially the females--and probably was given a half dozen names over the years.  (His official name is Richard, which I could never bring myself to use.)  He had a range for his wanderings, but he often wound up sleeping here on the porch, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes all night.  I could see him curled up on the chair just below my office window.  He and I sat together there, sometimes at night.  Once we happened to both be looking in the direction of a shooting star.

Blue knew us, and even if across the street, would come over to escort us to our door as we returned from walks.  Once when we returned from a week or so in the Bay Area, I opened the car door to see him waiting on the sidewalk.  He knew my car and on many other occasions he greeted and escorted me.

That family also had a black and white female cat.  For years she stayed on that side of the street.  We could see her with Blue when he returned to their yard.  Eventually I saw her making some tentative steps down our driveway, then hurrying away.  Then she started coming onto the porch, and pretty soon she had her own bowl.  Margaret named her Missy.

Blue and Missy tussled a bit but they definitely were a pair.  Blue was bigger and cuffed her, which she ignored, but when Missy finished her bowl and nosed into Blue's, he always gave way.

 Apparently Missy hadn't been too fond of the big dog of her official household, and two young children probably didn't help either.  She carved out her spots on the back porch--a hideaway and sleeping spot under a table, and an unused plantless pot for the rest of the time.  The more Missy stayed, the more Blue did.  He had his spots on the other side of the porch, on and under the outdoor furniture.

They presided over the backyard from their positions on the porch.  Other cats came through the yard, eager for their approval.  It was their Garden of Eden, and sort of mine, too.  "With two cats in the yard..."

They settled into this arrangement around the time that our cat Pema was in her final months.  (Blue was sweet on Pema, and snuck a kiss whenever he could bolt inside.  He managed a final one at the door when she was very weak and thin.) After Pema died, being with these cats and taking care of them was more than a comfort.  Just looking at them, watching them on their separate tours of inspection, etc. was nourishment.

We knew they were going but not when, until the last few days, when the big moving van showed up.  The last night on the porch there was a full moon.  I sat outside to look at it, and Missy jumped up into my lap.  She'd only recently begun to do that.  Some minutes later, Blue jumped into my lap as well.  Missy was by then totally relaxed and she didn't move, even when Blue was partially on top of her.  For the first and last time I had them both in my lap at the same time, in the slanting moonlight.

Margaret took this shortly before they were taken
away.  Missy is in her accustomed pot but Blue
is uncharacteristically close to her, and in the sun,
which he didn't usually like.  I guess they knew
something was up. 

In some respects, it was stranger to lose them in this way.  It was sudden and complete.  Though the cats remained alive, Blue and Missy ceased to exist the moment they were taken away.  No one will ever call them by those names, which they knew and responded to.

Now no cats come through the yard.  There seem to be none roaming the neighborhood anymore.

It is still impossible to open the back door, to take a walk and return unaccompanied, to take out the recycling which Blue and then Missy helped me do, to look out a window to the porch and the back yard, or from the front across the street, without being aware of their absence. I wonder about them--I worry especially about Blue, a cold weather cat who now must endure 90 and 100 degree days--but we will probably never know anything about them.

I have these photos and fleeting visual memories.  But nothing can even suggest the feeling of Blue's brown beige bulk suddenly leaping into my lap, rubbing his head under my chin, and crawling up my arm and around the back of my shoulders, his fur against my neck.