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The Cat Who Lived Inside His Head
I arrived at The Lost And Found Home late that afternoon. Lucy and Ginge were in the window to greet me. Lucy who yowled and meowed and sometimes you didn't know whether she was lonely or not. Or whether she just yowled to place her own existence in a room. She held her old skinny body like a faded flower pot. It was something you ignored but couldn't get rid of. She was the loneliest oldest kitten like cat in the world. Touch her hips and she would turn and yowl loudly. It was as though her emaciated body was ready to store a room inside it. When you receive an adult cat how can you know where it has been, or what it has experienced and its small joys that kept it alive? How can you know of its horrors that drove it slowly mad, and caused it to escape its situation? Our open arms at the refuge were waiting for cats like Lucy. Our heartbeats were ready to enter her own. Our eyes were moving into hers for a moment, like fresh water poured into stagnant ponds. Her old ponds were so bright and stagnant. It was like all those enclosed water spaces from your dreams. Waters that are still on the surface, yet with things very peculiar and creepy living underneath. Then there was a cat called Ginge who only lived inside his head. If his body was touched, he would scream out as if reminded of it. Ingrid called him the Cheshire cat. We could all see his head floating above his body. He loved it when you touched his head because he lived inside it. All his body and heart was squashed into it. It was very painful for him to be reminded that he was a full cat and not a part of one. It was as if he could leave the world when he chose to more easily through his head. Yet to me it appeared as if he carried not only the weight of his painful body, but the pain of his life and the whole world inside his head. Ginge was heavy headed rather than heavy hearted. I remember his head when it finally nestled into Ingrid's chest after weeks and weeks of rehabilitation. His precious head ginger and soft with the most betrayed eyes in the world. His head butting her heart, so that all her heartbeats would pulse into his head giving it life. His aim was to have those heartbeats reverberate through his own body. But I was not sure at this stage whether they would make it. It was such a long journey for anything to get from the tip of his ear to the end of his tail. They were worlds apart for a cat who was moody and journeyed entirely inside his head. |
