Kittens for Sale, Near Me
I clutched at his arm as we sat in silence on the cold park bench. It was late October, and he had flown to England to deliver the bad news to my sister and me.
The Cancer had returned.
“I’m so sorry this is happening to you.”
I whispered, breaking the silence and holding the anguish tightly in my forearms. My dad was always calm and collected in his reply, but I could tell he was tired and suspected that he too was sorry.
In the taxi on the way back to my sister’s house, she inquired about how I thought I would cope with the news. I replied with a darkly humorous yet truthful quip about how I planned to continue as I had been for weeks prior: drinking, to excess (we had an inkling for a while about the grim news to come). I don’t think I returned the line of questioning; too wrapped up, as I often was (am?), in my own troubles.
On her sofa, and with the reality of a probable return to the crippling depression that had gripped me three years prior (when my dad first got ill) settling in my stomach, I opened my phone. Typing into the search bar, I returned to a habit of digital window shopping that had previously served to quell some of my sadness.
“Kittens for sale, near me.” I typed, thinking nothing of it.
In darker days, when I lived in the cold attics of Tyneside student flats, I would browse Gumtree’s fuzzy offerings and imagine a situation wherein I had a little chum to sit on my lap and catch my salty tears in its fur. I never acted on the urge, however. A mixture of upwards of 6 housemates at a time, cleanliness that would make even Kim and Aggie hurl, and the fact that I was only in England during term time always stopped me in my tracks.
But now, as I scrolled in my sisters living room, sadness enveloping around me, I thought: Fuck it. I was finished university and working full time; I only had one flatmate, who I knew would be an easy target to convince, and besides, I was sad.
Within the next few hours, I had returned to my flat, convinced my friend, hopped in a taxi and returned again with a tiny, terrified ball of grey and white fur in a ratty old box.
It was done.
After we coached the kitten out from underneath the sofa where it had promptly shot after being released from its cardboard holding cell, we got to know each other. We named it, Orwell, fed it and basked in the wholesome glow that only a baby animal can emit.
It was like everything that had unfolded in the park earlier that day hadn’t happened. For the next week, we, Orwell and I, stayed in a blissful bubble of cuddles, catnaps, and the less-than-occasional crying session (you can’t block out reality completely).
And then, a call from my dad brought our love-fest to a blistering halt.
“I need you to come back to Belfast for your birthday… It might be the last one we can spend together.”
These words hit me like a tonne of bricks. The last? I was confused; he had previously emphasised the treatment plans that were being drafted and the hope we were to hold on to.
There was something else going on.
Another tonne knocked me to the floor when I realised how could I leave the country this weekend. I’d just bought a fucking kitten. Not that my dad knew that, or anyone else in my family for that matter. No, I had neglected to let them in on my little feline frolic for the fear, and definite certainty, that they would use logic and reason to talk me out of my purchase.
I made arrangements for the kitten to be looked after and returned to Belfast, believing that the phone call had just been a blip in tone and that I’d be back in no time…
Flash forward to February, and I had finally returned to England.
The six months that the doctors promised my dad had turned out to be around six weeks, and I, broken, had stayed cocooned in the safety of my mum’s home for two months post-funeral. Partly paralysed by grief and partly so she could keep tabs on me (my choice, not hers).
As I turned the key to my flat, I was met by a creature unfamiliar to me, and I to it. It was Orwell, the kitten I had so impulsively purchased and almost simultaneously abandoned (not literally, he was cared for by my flatmate and various good friends) when life, or death, had come knocking. Except, he wasn’t a kitten anymore, and he was terrified of me. They say animals take on their owners’ energy, so if the formative week he spent with me before my departure was anything to go by, he and I were twinned in anxiety.
For the next few weeks, the now-young-cat slowly warmed to my presence in the household - with the help of numerous bags of cat crack (Dreamies, if you’re not a cat owner). These days are thick and gloomy in my memory, plenty of emotional nights in bed with wine and a cat who was less-than-sure that I was to be trusted.
The thing about owning a cat is, they’re kind of like humans in that they don’t always want to please you. You have to earn their affections, and you also have to be consistent or else they just won’t give up the love you crave. But, for me, in my grief-stricken state, having a creature that demanded consistency in my actions when all I wanted to do was call in ‘sick’ to work and drink wine in bed, was a godsend.
You must get up and feed this animal.
You must clean its litter box and the area where it lives.
You must move around every so often, so it doesn’t think you’re dead and start plotting to eat the skin from your face - Okay, that one’s not true and actually, a harmful rumour started by the anti-cat ideologists. But you see what I’m getting at.
Since those early months of trying to pull my life back together, whiskers first, Orwell and I have become thick-as-thieves. We’ve lived in five different houses, moved countries (back to Ireland) via ferry, and accepted a new member of our nervous little clan in the form of my partner, Alex.
Orwell is still a very anxious animal, and I, person. But I honestly believe we help each other every day. I do my bit to minimise the flow of people who enter my home (Covid has been bliss for this cat) to avoid a flare-up of his social anxiety, and if it can’t be avoided, I create for him a ‘safe-space’ in my bedroom away from the fanfare.
His ability to quiet the vibrations of my soul is slightly more subtle but nonetheless appreciated.
He’s always there to greet me at my door when I come home and flop onto his side, exposing his soft fluffy belly to show he sees me as ‘safe’. He’s constantly checking in on me as I work from home, often sitting completely still beside my laptop screen with a serenity that brings me calmness even on harder days or placing his paw onto my arm as I type as if you say, “You good?” And a million other tiny things that make me laugh or smile, when sad or otherwise, that I won’t list because if you wanted to read ‘10 things that are great about cats’ you’d be on Buzzfeed instead of here.
What I will say is that my cat is forever living up to his well-deserved household nickname of “Serotonin Machine” with just his mere presence in the background hustle of day-to-day life. And look, I’m not recommending that you go out and purchase a creature without any consideration as to whether you can care for it. Buying a cat because my dad was sick was very possibly one of the least-thought-through, selfish and impulsive decisions I’ve ever made, and I am extremely lucky to have the friends who stepped up when Orwell and I needed it. But I also don’t know where I’d be without all six pounds (lbs) of my little dread-cat, and I certainly don’t want to find out.
Written by Dominique Daly
Dominique Daly is a Belfast born music-fanatic and stalker of neighborhood cats. When she's not writing about technology and marketing for her day job as a Content Marketer, she can most likely be found somewhere comfortable drinking wine and moaning about politics.