Postscript
Copper
P.J. Kavanagh
Years ago a solicitous and older friend 11 was appalled to discover that I had not read a newspaper for several months: She regarded this as a sign of dangerous withdrawal from the world. In the cir- cumstances she was probably right, and I have dutifully read newspapers, and listen- ed to broadcasts, ever since. Yet when I remarked in this column recently that listening to news bulletins is a 'lazy interest in the surface of the world' (a mysterious enough phrase, I admit) I realise I was to some extent defending my old posi- tion. When we hear, on the hoar, by the hour, of destruction in the Lebanon, of murder in Northern Ireland (the list, of course, is endless) we are sorry, and hor- rified, are convinced that the world is a ter- rible place, and we turn back (as it is right that we should) to our personal lives distracted by shame and guilt. What we should do, of course, is turn back to them shamelessly, but with increased concentra- tion. What we are seeing, or hearing about, as shells crash into apartment blocks in the Lebanon, is all the tender associations and accumulations of individual private lives being smashed to pieces. Therefore we should the more fiercely appreciate our own — though not self-protectively, or selfishly. On the contrary, it is by our inattentiveness to the good, large or small, which moment- ly surrounds us, by our refusals of insight offered, all the time, by things apparently trivial, that we shall be judged. It is our coarseness and obtuseness in this respect that makes the gunfire possible. We all know this, but are frightened of being sentimental, or wet, or of seeming so. To be either of those things is a pity, but so Is fear a pity, which is why I propose to write about the death, the other day, of our 15-year-old cat, Copper. She was called Copper because she was brought to us, a stray kitten, by the local Policeman. Also because, a tabby, she had a copper-tinged blaze on her forehead. She grew into a good-looking cat with a par- ticularly beautiful face, but what was most remarkable about her, and knowledge of it settled on us over the years, was her gentleness. Voles, young rats and the occa- sional weasel would not agree; but about the house she padded in stately fashion, with a low murmur of greeting if anyone addressed her, and when she was hungry she never asked for food but sat patiently by her plate mil somebody noticed. Un- bidden, she used to accompany us on long walks across the fields, a camouflaged shadow along the bottoms of the hedges. I never saw her claws unsheathed in anger even when painfully manhandled by children; she just went limp and waited for it to pass. took not much notice of her un- til one day I realised, so soothing was her presence, that I drank peace from her. I
seriously tried to learn from that aware self- containment. However apparently asleep, you only had to whisper her name and one
ear would twitch, the one nearest the noise (no wasted effort) and she would stretch and purr and settle herself again. She stopped coming for walks. She, who had grown portly, now grew thin, her backbone discernible through her fur. The vet did all that was possible. The day before yesterday she followed me into the garden, which seemed a good sign, and then com-
posed herself on the windowsill of my workroom. After a while she half rose and
stretched and then fell from the windowsill. It is a shocking thing to see so sure an animal do that. I took her in front of the main fire where she lay, looking healthy enough, eyes open, in her favourite sleeping position, and vari- ous members of the family lay beside her. She seemed content, and gentle as ever, and after some hours her breathing stopped. In the morning we dug a hole for her in the garden and one of the burial party con-
fessed he felt almost ashamed, so deeply did
he feel. I do not think he need have been. I found myself saying out loud to her, now stiff in that favourite position, 'Copper, for 15 years you have given me nothing but pleasure.' To speculate about the form of any after- life, that might happen to us, has always seemed to me futile; about what happens to animals even more so. But a thought struck me: if it is only human souls that survive, in the after-life there will be only us — which is a hellish thought, and therefore unlikely.
'One doesn't get carol singers any more they just send a video round.'
Previous page
