Alley Cat

Image credit: Photo by mirsasha on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

When I was a child, I had the best cat ever. No animal past or present could compare. It wasn't that he had a sweet disposition. He was almost universally mean, awful and belligerent. When almost any creature approached him, he'd snarl, hiss, scratch, bite. He would chase away dogs several times his size with his yellow eyes blazing. And it wasn't that he was beautiful. He wasn't. Or perhaps he may have been as a kitten, but I wasn't fond of him then for it to make any impression. When I loved him, he was ragged and scarred. His ears were shredded and mangled from countless battles and his tail had been broken and was permanently bent at the tip.

Nope, what made him special was mean and ugly, and that he loved no living thing but me. As ornery as he generally was, he would purr roughly as he butted my ankles with his head. And while my hands still bear some of the scars he gave me in accidental and instinctive response to our games, he was gentle for me like he was for no other. He was irretrievably broken to the world and it was broken to him, but he and I loved and understood each other, fiercely.

My current cat is sleeping beside me now. He's stunningly beautiful and friendly to everyone, he's both regal and loving. He's never scratched me, even in play. And yet he's just a decent cat, while the thin, jagged white lines on my hands from wounds thoughtlessly inflicted by an animal long gone are still lovingly treasured. I see in that awful, long-gone old alley cat the mirror for all I wanted in human romance: a broken creature only I could fix and fierce mutual love that denies and excludes all the rest of the world. And I wonder if, knowing how the search for that kind of relationship turned out and knowing all the work I've done since, I would love a cat like that today.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.