The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Twenty years ago, Sy Safransky started writing an essay about his cat, Cirrus. Now, as he grapples with Alzheimer’s, Safransky returns to the piece and delivers an ode to one of the great loves and teachers of his life:

I tried not to impose on her my ideas about how “sweet” she should be. Cirrus had a temper. If you put her down before she was done being petted, she might swipe at you with her paw. I’d hung on the wall an intricate Indian fabric decorated with small glass mirrors, but I had to take it down because Cirrus kept pulling off the mirrors. For years afterward she’d swipe at the empty space where it had been. Talk about being attached. Yet maybe she was also saying that I prized my intricate fabric more than my living, breathing companion. She never forgave me for taking it down. Cats don’t like change. Me either.

When we decided to have the cats spayed, it felt wrong. The decision to spay was emblematic to me of how much damage we’ve done to the natural world. How much damage I’ve done. And then this further insult: letting them be cut open and having their reproductive organs removed, as if I were gutting nature as well as them individually—two cats, two mysteries, two sentient beings to whom we’d given names, just as we were given names. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I felt so much grief.

How often Cirrus pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts, my preoccupations, my melancholic reveries, just by entering a room. She was my meditation teacher. She sat very still—hard for me to do. She didn’t accomplish anything. If she was my teacher, was I a good student? How much awareness did I experience when I slowed down to be present with Cirrus? How often do I encounter such an authentic, aware presence?