The cat is driving me crazy. She’s a little annoyed by us working from home more, having been accustomed to her days alone and uninterrupted sleep. Near the beginning of Arizona’s shutdown, I handed her through the car window to a veterinary tech; as a result of that visit, she’s been on steroids for about a month. She’s almost seventeen, so this is the best way to treat current health problems that we’re not worried about curing.
However, a cat on steroids is just as bad as a human on steroids. About a week in, her appetite doubled, maybe tripled. She is now known as the hobbit, hopeful for second anything. Any time we walk near her food bowl, she’s hopeful for more food. She has dry food all the time; she’d just rather have the (expensive) canned rabbit. She’s gotten second dinner a few times. It doesn’t seem to have sated her hunger.
Her thirst has increased with her hunger, and we are regularly scolding her for sticking her head in one of our drinks. It is not uncommon for every glass to end up in the dishwasher as a result. I should note that not only does she have a water bowl that is full, it is actually a water fountain so that the water doesn’t get stale and unappealing. It was a recent Christmas present and we can talk about me becoming that person another day.
Oh—I missed all the extra energy from steroids in my summary of complaints about the cat. Luckily, she cannot share her complaints about me.
But I am also remembering how I got the cat, more than seven years ago now. One of my college professors lost her husband in a plane crash; her childhood sweetheart had lost his wife to cancer. They got married. She was not a cat person, but he had three cats from his first marriage. They went to work on rehoming the cats after a few months of marriage. His daughter ended up with two of the cats. I got my cat, transported from Virginia to Kansas City by my professor and her new husband. They arrived just in time for Thanksgiving dinner with me.
The cat’s original owner has since died of cancer, too. It was a shockingly aggressive cancer caused by Agent Orange from his service in Vietnam. My partner and I went to his funeral in Nashville, somehow more connected by the cat he was so glad we loved. The primary way we could care for him during his illness was to send cat pictures.
Somehow, the cat remains a symbol of connection stretching across the years. I even talk to her previous owners more often because she is in my care. As we sit in this pandemic that both isolates and connects us at the same time, I think most of us will come away with neighbor stories. Some of them are good stories of comfort and friendship; others are stories of neighbors like mine who start drinking at 10 a.m.
But at the end of the day, the command to love your neighbor is about remembering the ways we are connected and honoring them. In my case, an uncharacteristically annoying cat still turns me to my neighbor. Maybe even more importantly, those connections remind me that I have neighbors who love me, too. And we’ll probably have some good stories to tell along the way.