Morris, the Cat
I could swear I had already written a blog about Morris some time ago, but I cannot find it. So here I go again. If someone does find an earlier entry, please let me know.
I came across two photos of Morris which brought back the sweetness and sadness that Morris brought to my life. Well, he didn’t give me sadness. I gave myself sadness. He gave me love.
Must sadness follow sweetness? It should be enough that I was blessed with Morris while I was.
Here’s the background you need to know:
I had a cat phobia all my life. It makes no sense, but I was terrified of cats. I even had bad dreams of cats, where a cat would jump from a tall staircase and land on the back of my neck. Really scary.
Once I was over a friend’s house (they had seven Siamese cats. I had been promised the cats would stay away) and one of the cats jumped on the table, and, in my fright, a good china teacup flew out of my hand. That’s how bad my phobia was.
What I am going to tell you about Morris covered a period of a year or more.
One day he simply appeared. He was feral as best as Lauren and I could tell. He would run away when she put food out. When he was sure she was gone, he would come back and eat. As feral as Morris seemed, there was something awfully sweet about him.
Over time, there was also something about Morris that made Lauren and me believe that it wasn’t by chance that he came here. We had the growing feeling that he was really an angel. There was something about him that made us feel he just wasn’t an ordinary cat.
All the animals that come around choose Lauren, but, after a time, Morris would come to my door. Morris, who was so afraid of people, started coming to the door of the one who was so afraid of cats. Over the months a friendship grew between us, and somehow we tamed each other. It took a very long time, but finally I could bring myself to pet him, and he could bring himself to let me pet him.
Little by little, he would come into my front hall for a few seconds and then panic. I learned that if I left the front door wide open, he knew he could escape, and it was more comfortable for him.
Little by little, he would stay inside longer and let me pet him more and more. Then, one day, he accepted my house as his home whenever he wanted to come in. Somehow he had cured me of my cat phobia, and somehow I had cured him of his people phobia. We were made for each other.
Morris was still very much a free agent, and yet he was my cat. He was comfortable in the house and would come and go as he pleased. Nights he was always out.
Then I had a stupid accident. I was changing a ceiling light bulb in the bathroom. Do you know how you kind of sense an accident is going to happen, and still you keep going? I knew I should have brought in the ladder, but I was standing on a chair. Then I knew the chair was not positioned in the right place and that I had to lean over too much, but I was too lazy to get down and move the chair.
Well, stupidity gets rewarded. I fell, and my ribs landed on the edge of the bathtub. Four adjoining ribs were broken. Ouch.
I have read stories of spies and such who break ribs and keep right on fighting and leaping everywhere. It cannot be true. I couldn’t even move. It was a battle to breathe.
The long and the short of it was that an ambulance came, and I spent ten or more days in the hospital begging for morphine.
While I was in the hospital, Morris was gone. Lauren did not see him once in all that time. Not once.
The day I came home, Morris who had been away all that time, was sitting on the front path, waiting for me. How did he know?
I couldn’t go upstairs. I was still in terrible pain (no one was ever in such pain!) I slept on the couch. Morris would no longer go out at night. He slept on a chair across from me. It was very sweet. I felt like he kept an eye on me all night and all day. From then on, every night he slept in the house.
After about a month, I was able to go upstairs and sleep in my bed. And every night, Morris wanted to come up and sleep with me. I had the idea that, no, I wouldn’t let him. I was going to be disciplined or something. So Morris slept outside my door. And every time I wouldn’t let him in, it was a great disappointment to him. We’d have a race for the door, and every time I “won.”
I can’t even tell you why I wouldn’t let Morris sleep in my room. I suppose I thought he’d want to sleep in the bed with me. Maybe I thought he would disturb my sleep. I don’t really know what I thought. I, who always had dogs sleep with me, had the idea I was going to be adult or something like that. I really don’t know. Maybe it was no more than that I had the idea I wasn’t going to sleep with a cat, and I held on to the idea. But I’m sorry now.
This one particular night he was so bound and determined to come into my room that he almost beat me to it. Oh, how happy he would have been. He wouldn’t have kept me out.
It was strange that night because after I had closed my bedroom door, he went downstairs, and he howled at Lauren’s door that adjoined my apartment. She let him in, and he insisted on sleeping with her. She was happy to have him.
She commented to me the next morning that wasn’t it strange that all of a sudden, if he couldn’t sleep with me, he had to sleep with her?
And that night was the last night that I wouldn’t let Morris into my room. That was the last time I ever saw him. He was gone. Simply gone.
That morning, when Lauren let him out, that was the last she saw him. We never saw him again. We never knew what happened to him.
I am sure that if he were able to come home, he would have. He would never not have come back. Something must have happened to him. And, somehow, the night before, when he was so desperate, he knew that it was his last chance, and, for some reason, only known to him, he had to sleep near me.
Maybe he was an enchanted angel, and it was his mission to be responsible for me. Maybe he had been given only so much time to be with me, and that somehow it was important that he sleep in the same room with me.
Or, of course, it’s possible he was only a cat that I had missed an opportunity with.
Then came Morris, and the ensuing cat parade. Cats are tuned in to the unseen world, and they have tasks we can’t understand. It must be the same for them; humans must seem so odd at times. Nice, and needy, and just plain weird. How can they eat that stuff? Why do they like that noise, and so loud?!? A friend of mine was talking about her cat, her first foray into the Feline. (A former Dog Person.) She said she thought her cat might be a healer, and had I ever heard of that. I said the only cat who isn’t a healer is one with a big grudge! Even then, they get over it.
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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