It's Not My Cat
Sebastian, only a few weeks before the fire.
After the fires, I spent a lot of time posting pictures of Sebastian on the various local lost pet Facebook groups. I knew in my heart he was dead, but I couldn’t help myself. Each time I searched for his pictures on my computer and posted them online, my chest squeezed tight, like I was trying to stuff myself into Scarlett O’Hara’s corsets. I wasn’t the only one, there were dozens after dozens of cats missing, but only one other that looked like Sebastian, another seal point Siamese male named Sinbad.
Worse was the constant tagging of well-meaning friends on every found cat post. To be fair, they’d only tag me on photos that resembled a Siamese cat, but usually the cat had way to much hair, or was female, or wasn’t Siamese at all. I’d always reply and say thank you, but it’s not my cat. Once I was shamed by a woman who literally tore me a new one because how would I know what my cat looked like after a fire? Well, he wasn’t a long haired cat before the fire and I doubt he is now. I know it’s not my cat.
Kind animal folk set up traps on my property and twice I was tagged on photos of a grumpy cat in a cage sitting in front of my bright yellow chicken coop. That really hurt. My stomach felt like a stake had been driven through it. How painful that they weren’t my cat. Sebastian has come to me in dreams and other meditative moments, asking me to let him go. Gently warning me that by clinging to my guilt of leaving him behind, I’m unable to enter into the portal of grief and move through the events of the wildfire. I’m being called to create something new with my land and my life and I risk missing out on the blessings of this loss. He’s right, it’s just so hard.
As the days warp into weeks and into months and one of the driest winters on record fades into a hot spring, losing Sebastian gets easier. I have begun to accept his death. Like the goats and D’ougal, Sebastian’s part in my life has ended. He was always going to die first, but it’s just that so much has ended so quickly. In a matter of days we went from a mountain family to a displaced one, unsure if we will ever own a “proper” home in California again, without our goats ruminating out the back door or Sebastian meowing at me every day. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I’d promised him that like my previous Siamese cat, Benjamin, I’d be there and hold him when he died. Instead, he died alone, I hope from smoke, while I remained by my son’s side in town, because there really was no other place I could be. Besides, I’d tossed my shame rock out into Mother Ocean and she’d taken it from me. Which is why when I saw the picture of the Siamese cat on the Bonny Doon Slice, I was surprised by how much it affected me.
It happened the day D’ougal was felled. After weeks of staring at his dead, broken body, I couldn’t take it anymore and called in the tree crew to cut him down, as well as a second massive Doug Fir, one of the twins, who was starting to lean toward the tiny home site where we’d begun camping on a regular basis. The last thing I needed was for her to fall on us in the middle of the night. The time had come. The last weekend D’ougal still stood, we held a workday and after dinner, our guitar friends played some final tunes for the great tree. I said goodbye and a few days later, returned to visit his corpse on the ground. It was a profound moment, seeing that beautiful tree strewn in pieces in the grass…looking at the horizon without him there was horrifying. When you befriend a tree, you understand how long they’ve been alive and it’s natural to assume that they’ll live long after you’ve left their lives. In this case, I’ve outlived him and it just so happens that his enormous trunk now lies in the same meadow as the goats’ remains.
I’ve placed a chair in this meadow, in-between the beehive and the goats’ grave. There’s a plaque on the place my husband laid the goats to rest and even though we never found his remains, Sebastian’s name is also on it. It’s a memorial to all of them. I call this the Mourning chair and I often sit in it, talking to the goats, Sebastian, the bees, staring at D’ougal’s huge, blackened form rising before me. Now that form lies near the rest of the beloved ones we lost and his body is still beautiful. He’s honestly one of the best looking trees, even chopped like this. He reminds me of a headless Venus de Milo, lounging on its side in the green grass. As I sat down in the Mourning chair to take it all in, three hummingbirds came to fly in a circle around him.
I watched in awe. Hummingbirds have long been magical to me. They really shouldn’t be able to fly like that and I swear they pop in and out of the material realm, like fireflies on a hot July night in my childhood backyard. One moment you see them, the next they’ve vanished. The native peoples of this area had a legend that the hummingbird lived in the spirit world and after visiting humanity for a day, fell in love with a pair of children, a brother and sister, so they began to visit more and more, eventually spending more time here with the children than in the realm of their home. When drought visited the land, the hummingbirds left the human children and returned to the world of spirit, begging the king of the water to return to the land and grant the humans water. The king of water said no because we were too selfish and he didn’t have to send the rains. But the hummingbirds begged their great brother, giving the children as an example. It wasn’t their fault that the adults had failed them. The king of water agreed and sent the cloud people over the land, ending the drought. The children would grow to tell their own children of the hummingbird and how he is the messenger of the gods.
They say cats have nine lives for a reason, they survive many things. My first cat, Bleu, survived a cat fights, getting hit by a car, and getting hit with a baseball bat across the jaw. My second cat, Benjamin, also survived getting hit by a car. As I watched the hummingbirds fly around D’ougal, I imagined they made window into the other world, the place where Sebastian now resided. What if the reason cats had nine lives is because they too, like the hummingbirds, are more spirit than body? What if Sebastian was right there, on the other side of that portal, waiting to return. I began to cry as I pondered the idea that he could just walk through a door between the worlds and return to me. It wasn’t possible, but I wanted it all the same.
So when I saw the picture of a stray cat on Facebook later that day, a cat that looked just like him, standing in front of a wood pile, stalking his prey, I nearly lost it. Kimberly, the young woman who had lost Sinbad, had tried one more time to find her fur baby, and posted his missing picture on all the lost pet Facebook pages. In response, a woman who lives close to my house replied with those pictures, stating this male seal point Siamese cat had been hanging around her house off and on for months. Was it Sinbad? Was it Sebastian? My heart was aflutter. I couldn’t concentrate. The next day I had to get my first covid shot, but all I could really think about was that cat. I knew it was impossible that he’d be alive, but I had to know. I had to know.
After my monthly ladies grief meeting at my friend Nicola’s, I borrowed a cat carrier from her and headed out to the neighborhood. The ladies in the group offered to join me, but I told them not to bother. I needed to do this alone. I met the woman who sighted the stray cat and she gave me an idea of where he came and went. I took in a deep breath, I really didn’t want to do this. I grabbed a pack of ham, Sebastian loved it, and began to call for him in a high pitched voice that my sons have often made fun of, “SEBASTIAN! MEATS!”
A few years ago, a friend of mine convinced a cat in her neighborhood to live with her by offering the cat tuna every day. Sebastian often hung out at other houses, he had a girl-cat-friend named Minuette down the street, he liked to fight with Charlie next door, and I swore he had another family because he didn’t come home every day. I feared that someone would convince him to love them more with some good eats. So I began to call for Sebastian every night, “SEBASTIAN! MEATS!” When he returned, I gave him lunch meat. The boys thought it was ridiculous I had to bribe my cat to live with us, but I needed him to know that I knew how the game was played. If he was in that woods and he heard the cry of the meats, he would come.
“SEBASTIAN! MEATS!”
Over and over, I repeated, like a mantra, in a screechy voice. I explained to the few folks outside what I was doing and they promised to keep an eye out. About ten minutes in, I saw a white Prius following me. It parked and out popped Regina, my fire/soul sister. She’d failed to listen to my plea for independence and instead offered to be by my side. Rather than feel irritated, I relaxed. If there was one person I wanted to be near, it was her. We chatted in between my calls.
“SEBASTIAN! MEATS!”
He never came.
I left knowing that it wasn’t him, but still feeling hopeful. I connected to Sebastian that night, telling him that if he’s alive, he needed to get his ass to that house and let the woman catch him. And if it wasn’t him, if he’s in the place where the hummingbirds go when we don’t see them, then I needed him to nudge whatever cat it was to reveal himself, so that I could rest.
The very next morning, Kimberly called me. The cat had been sighted, but it turned out it was a neighbor’s cat, named Buster. He wasn’t Sebastian or Sinbad. At first, I was heartbroken, both for her and for me, but then there was a sense of relief. Now I know. I’m not sure I want this to keep happening, to keep searching, to be alerted every time a Siamese cat is found. It churns up a storm of pain within my heart, my stomach roils, and I can’t focus on anything but the question: Could this be my cat?
No, it’s not my cat.
It’s never going to be him.
What will be, will be.
This feels like a test from Mother Ocean, to see if I really meant it when I let her take my rock of shame. I’m not sure if I passed or failed. Yes, I really wanted it to be my boy, yet I’m also okay that it’s not. I failed to save him, that’s true, but I’ve learned from that lesson—I’m not too great under pressure. I’ve probably always known this. Not sure how that translates into future plans, but I think it’s best to assume I’ll muck it up and make sure that whatever we build up on the property, it can be left behind to burn. That means no cat for a long time. That means no goats or chickens. It means my vital documents, cash, and other important items needs to be stored in a safety deposit box far from the mountain.
Which reminds me, they made a big deal at the vaccination center to not lose our vaccine cards. I guess I’ll have to keep that in the safe deposit box as well. Wait, they say I’ll need it on my person to do important things. Damn, I’m screwed.