Caleb Perry Murdock

Tillie

This week she is sleeping near my head.
Why does she feel the need to move her spot
every two, three, four weeks? At my feet,
at my head, by my side (always on my bed).

Instinct, perhaps, tells her she must move
from time to time to avoid predators.
(Some sorry predator it would be that could
not find her on these twenty-four square feet!)

She doesn’t know that she is already safe,
though she isn’t really. If there were a fire,
she would die — but she is already dying.
Her kidneys are failing, and I don’t know it.

She is in the box way too often, and I
am vaguely aware that something is wrong.
She is so small, a black powder puff,
dependent on me for every little thing.

How can I let her down?  But I do.
Cats are supposed to take care of themselves —
that is my callow excuse for not seeing,
for not noticing what is happening.

So much water in the box — but I am busy,
or I am lovelorn, or I am playing at
some game that I don’t want to interrupt
long enough to see that the only creature

who loves me on the whole earth is dying.
And I have the nerve to think I am unloved!

              *     *     *

Tossed by fate into a frustrating life,
I am a stone without patina, in some
fundamental way unlikable to all
from whom I sought love, except to Tillie,

poor girl, subject to my chaotic whims,
who always liked to be near me, to watch me,
so much so that it made me self-aware.
I would shoo her away repeatedly

to avoid those sun-yellow eyes on me
like spotlights on a stage, only to find
her gazing at me through the open door,
or back in the room hiding in a corner.

My single kindness was to let her roam,
for which she thanked me with a wealth of gifts:
mice, fleas, water bugs the size of mice,
poop and hairballs on the kitchen floor.

So little value I felt for what I had,
so little love for one who was so sweet,
but I am a foolish human who must have
the love of humans to feel complete.

              *     *     *

The crisis unfolded as the weekend came.
She was thirsty but couldn’t drink. She cried.
She knocked over a bucket of stale water,
and I started to scold her but then held back.

Her cry was an eerie wail; it spoke of deep
pain or dysfunction in her tiny frame.
(I know now it was the sound of life leaving.)
The doctor was costly and I was poor,

so I waited a day while her suffering grew.
I laid out her favorite food (she couldn’t eat).
I petted her and prayed; but when the night came,
I inserted plugs to block out her weeping.

That night she rested at my feet.

              *     *     *

Tillie died with a needle in her foreleg.
I cried nine times before the month was out,
eight times more than when my mother died,
nine times more than when my father died,
neither of whom I miss.

But I miss Tillie.

Caleb Perry Murdock was born in 1950 and lives in Rhode Island. He spent most of his life as a word-processing operator for law firms. He has written poetry since his twenties, but he didn’t lose his chronic writer’s block until his late sixties. He is now writing up a storm to make up for lost time.