Eulogy for Pumpkins

(This blog-post is not part of the series on Pumpkins’ life. That series will be continued soon!)

Pumpkins has disappeared.

He’s gone. Disappeared. Just like that. We went to bed like normal one night, and the next morning he wasn’t there when I woke up. Normally when I get out of bed, he will be sitting on my deck or pop up from underneath, but this time he didn’t.

I went about my morning as normal, thinking he would walk in a little later, that he had just fallen asleep in a cozy spot and hadn’t realised it was morning. After a night of prowling, he usually sleeps his deepest sleep in the mornings, on the doormat or on my lap. So maybe he was just zonked out somewhere else.

But he never walked in that day, heading for his food bowl, as he normally would.

I spent the day hoping that he would pop up in the evening, that maybe he had been wandering off too far in the night and decided to hide out somewhere safe during the day before he would walk back under the protection of the darkness at night.

I hadn’t woken up during the night from screeching cat fights or barking dogs in combination with cat screams, which could indicate that he got in trouble. None of my neighbours had heard anything alarming either. So I didn’t think he was lying somewhere half-crippled and bleeding from a dog-attack, the way we first found him, several years ago. Or maybe I was just hoping he wasn’t.

But then he didn’t show up after dark. And he wasn’t there the next morning, or the next.

He was very affectionate, really attached to me, loved the fish I fed him every day, so I don’t think he just decided to go and live somewhere else.

He has never shown any interest in she-cats, so it’s hard to believe that he left me for a girl. I will know in a few days, if he shows up with a sheepish grin on his face when the she-cat, pregnant with his off-spring, will no longer be interested in him, but this is a very unlikely scenario.

He was an old little cat, sometimes very sick with digestive issues, but he would always perk up again, gain weight again and keep going. He had just been sick for a week, but was fine again, eating heaps of fresh fish meals, regaining his weight and strength.

Without any vets around, I have often wondered what was bothering him, and could only hope that he wasn’t in too much pain when he was sick. I always told myself that he had just eaten some trash somewhere, or a poisoned rat, but I could imagine that there was something much more serious going on in that soft white belly of his, that sometimes bloated so much that it looked like it could explode any moment.

Maybe he had cancer, or a perforated gut, or a huge wad of plastic in his stomach, from all the trash he has eaten in his years of living wild. Who knows, anything is possible.

Fact is, he’s gone.

That little wild cat, that decided to adopt me a year and a half ago, and slowly learned to be loved and love back, is not with me anymore.

That cute little old kitty, that managed to show me so many life-lessons that I started to write them up, is not going to squeeze in between me and my computer anymore when I sit down to write, giving a querulous mewl now and then to tell me that there is not enough space for him or that I move too much.

My furry muse and guru, who changed my life profoundly, is not going to jump on my lap anymore the moment I sit down to meditate.

That little bag of bones is not going to sneak into the Karma Shack anymore, to curl up on a mat and be just a little bit in the way when I teach a yoga class, capturing the hearts of all my yoga students with his cuteness.

I loved him so much.

I miss him terribly.

But he will live on forever in my writing. He will always be my muse, inspiring me to write about whatever catches my attention.

And he will be featuring on the cover of his own book that I will write about him, about everything that he has shown me, has taught me, has helped me do for myself. You all might learn a lot from him too.

I am forever grateful that he was in my life.

For now I am just going to cry a bit.

(Postscriptum. A few days later we found him washed up on the beach. That crazy little cat had managed to drown. He got a little spot now in the front of the Karma Shack garden).