Unveil

His name is Rudy, he’s a ginger cat with half a brain cell, and I love him with every fiber of my being. Perpetually startled, fluent only in the language of meowing. He has been part of my life since before I could form coherent memories.

I didn’t choose him.

I only have a handful of real memories from my early childhood.

I’m in a crib, and I want Rudy beside me. In fact, I need him beside me - he doesn’t know me. He goes to my sister, he goes anywhere except close to me.

I love his fur. He doesn’t like me. The craving has no other shape than grabbing, so I grab. I take hold of his tail and pull him toward me.

I don’t know it hurts him. Then I realize: he jerks and twists, trying to escape. I drag him in and hug him. I want him close, and I’m owed what I want.

After doing it for the umpteenth time, something changes. I feel it. A whisper starts. It comes after each craving. It knows. I’m hurting him.

I’m twelve. I have no friends to speak of, and my fuse is non-existent. I’m ahead of everyone around me, yet secretly, I believe my ceiling is lower than everyone seems to think. Everybody’s just trying to make me happy. My mum’s friends don’t want to be mean, and the teacher won’t tell me I’m stupid even if I am. WHY WON’T THEY?

So I scream. I scream because I’m mad. Mad at my sister, at life, at God, whom I don’t even believe in. Slowly the pressure builds until it’s unbearable. My stomach churns, and then Rudy meows. He meows at walls, at silence, at the concept of being indoors, at four in the morning. Pop. I take him, squeeze his mouth shut so he can’t meow anymore, and throw him onto my bed. Hard enough to make the goddamn meowing stop.

I feel it. It’s there again, the whisper. But it was gone, wasn’t it? I’m healthy, right? So I look at him. He’s on the bed, startled, fur ruffled, eyes wide, and I feel sick. I want to vomit. What did I do? How could I let this happen?

I wake up, and he’s there, looking at me. I feel the whisper creep up, but he’s back - simply back, the way he always is. Sitting beside me. Purring when I reach for him. Head-butting my hand. Asking for nothing except to be close.

I tell myself it won’t happen again; I won’t hurt my cat again.

But the whisper is forced to return many times, more than I can count.

And each morning after, he’s right there, back next to me.

Rudy doesn’t know the rule.

Rudy doesn’t know the truth - everything is a transaction.

Someone gives you candy, you give them a coin.

Someone hurts you, you hurt them.

He doesn’t agree with me.

I do it again, but less forcefully.

I do it again, but I don’t pick him up.

I don’t do it again.

Finally, quiet. And warm.

He hates being touched unless he chooses it. On my worst days I pick him up anyway, and he lets me. Sometimes he comes on his own and takes his spot on my pillow, like it’s reserved for him. He’s right. I bury my face in his fur. Or his fur buries itself in me. It all melts together. I feel his heartbeat; it’s always there.

On those days I don’t talk to anyone. I’m emptied out, and my brain won’t stop feeding me reasons to step back from everything. He doesn’t know what any of that is. He stays. Steady breathing, steady weight, steady beat.

When anything happens, anything at all, I go and hug him, even in the middle of a game, or in the middle of reading. When I want to feel at peace, I listen to him breathe. When I want to feel inspired, I look into his eyes. You see, eyes are the most beautiful part of any being.

He presses himself against my sister, who needs it even more than I do, and he stays.

I know the feeling, the comfort, the safety, so I go looking for that in people.

So I attach myself to anyone, just to feel, chasing the high - it doesn’t come. They use me, they reach for me, they tug my tail.

Then my first real relationship. She cheats on me, more than once. I forgive her. She cheats again. I’m not looking at the person in front of me. I’m daydreaming. I get jealous. Really jealous. I reach for her. Every time she comes back, I meet her at the door. She says she thought it was just a joke.

Every night I come home, Rudy meets me at the door.

How does Rudy do it? It’s so painful.

Eventually he gets old. His senses start giving out.

The second he notices I’m next to him, he walks up to me, cheerful as always. When I walk, he walks with me, his body against mine, and slowly we walk.

Sometimes I take him to the park. He’s excited about it every time. The moment I set him down, he runs off into the grass and plays. He sits in it, or nibbles it. Whenever he gets the chance, he walks around.

Every time I lift him, he hugs me. A tight hug. His claws pop through my shirt. I feel the pinch. I don’t like it, but I love him enough to put up with it. I always have to hold him up a bit. And once, I loosen my grip, and he tightens his, holding on around my neck.

I know I lean on him. I don’t know how much. I’m afraid that when he dies, I’ll break.

What’s the worst way to break? What does it look like?

That’s one thought I never let myself finish. Being alone and forgotten, rotting on the inside from the loneliness, and not because I got unlucky. I never think it to the end.

We’ve had death scares with him before. After every one, he gets up. He’s twenty-two years and ten months old. I’m seventeen.

This time it’s a tooth infection, and it’s killing him. He doesn’t really have teeth anymore, not ones he can eat with. So I feed him snacks, a lot of them, the soft mushy ones he can still manage.

On Thursday, two days before he dies, I cry like never before.

All my life my face twists, but the tears rarely come. That Thursday they come. I make a mess of his fur. I go through an embarrassing number of paper towels.

On Friday I try to distract myself. I play games. I chat with friends. I make plans to see my friend on Sunday.

Near noon I get his pain medication. The moment it starts working, he avoids me. He leaves every room I walk into. Every time I step toward him, he goes the other way. I want to grab him and hold him. I lie down on the floor instead, far across the room, and wait.

I stay in the same room, and I know not to approach him. So I lie there and listen to him breathe across the distance. For hours.

I’m afraid he hates me. For not doing something earlier. For not seeing how much pain he was in. For not protecting him, when that’s the one thing I’m supposed to do.

Eventually he comes closer. Not within reach. When I go to my room, he follows. By night he’s in my bed, where he has always been.

I google it. He doesn’t hate me; he was just remembering the pain. Yeah, that must be it.

That last night we sleep in the same room.

On Saturday I wake at five-thirty - I’d set an alarm. For over two hours I hold him and lie with my face in his fur. I’m trying to memorize him. His weight, his texture, his smell, his breathing, his heartbeat. Twenty-two years and ten months, and I’m trying to fit them into something I can carry.

I feel like I’m letting him die. I’m the one choosing that it’s his time.

My sister comes with us to the vet. I talked her into it. I carry him the whole way, and I keep trying to feel him. Not just his fur or his smell. Him.

Inside, I keep petting him. I shush him and tell him it’s all fine. The shushing was more for myself than him. The vet needs about two seconds. I keep petting him through it. I don’t even notice the moment he goes.

His eyes don’t close all the way. I can still see a little orange in them.

We put him in the box we prepared and drive to the forest near my aunt’s house. We find a place I’ll be able to come back to. We dig a hole. I cut off some of his fur to keep. I come home empty-handed.

That night I go to kiss him goodnight. I go to block my door so it can’t close, so he can come and go. I go to give him his meds. I reach for the foot of the bed. For half an hour I search the apartment before it hits me.

I feel like vomiting, but not food. Like I’m going to vomit my emotions. Everything is cloudy, surreal.

For the first time I can remember, I go to sleep without his fur. I fall asleep fast.

I wake up rested and full of energy. I wait for the feelings to hit. They don’t. I’ve heard of this. Did I bury my feelings? Will they go off later, when I’m not ready? Then something else comes. I’m happy. Hopeful, like I haven’t been in a long time. The whisper is back: he’s been dead less than a day. No, I feel it, the weight is still there. So I let the happiness join it.

I can’t sleep another night in the apartment. On Sunday I go see my friend. All day I keep looking through Rudy’s photos, and I keep smiling, slightly lighter now.

When I come back and meet new people, my head is quiet. For years something has been running under every conversation, measuring, assigning places. It’s off now. Where’d it go? What was it?

I also notice the craving: it’s gone! So is the fear of tomorrow.

I can write the thought out now, the one I never let myself finish. Alone, forgotten, rotting, a lone failure. Because of my own mistakes. Every relationship poisoned by my grabbing. My cat, gone. Never making anything. Just a lone failure.

I carry the shape of it. I’m not afraid of it anymore. I don’t know when the fear left. I think it left with him.

I start filtering who I let near me. The feeling I’d been ignoring returns.

I pick what I wear now. I cook almost every day. I try new recipes. I’m disappointed when one doesn’t work and satisfied when one does. New rituals.

In September, four months after, my sister leaves her two cats with us for three days. I spend a lot of that time with them. After she takes them back, I can’t sleep. My head hurts. Everything is so heavy. I feel him within reach, right there - no, he’s buried.

I can’t get a new cat, so everybody says to just get a weighted blanket, get a purring machine. Something that purrs won’t do it. A blanket doesn’t meet me at the door.

I’ve got a bit of his fur left. I’ve got nothing for his breathing, or his heartbeat.

Half a year later, a bit more, I visit my aunt and go to his grave. It isn’t marked, and I’ve lost exactly where it is. I sit down in the general area.

At first my family stands there while I cry. I think about everything I didn’t get to do with him. Everything I couldn’t work through with his help. All the times I’ve missed him. After a while they leave me alone.

Later my sister shows me where he actually is. I was more than fifty meters off.

I sit down there and talk to him. I tell him what’s going on in my life. I tell him my plans. I tell him about the university I’m planning to go to.

Transactions, transactions, transactions, everything is a transaction.

He didn’t agree.

So I’m trying not to.