Ghost Cat

Dear reader,

As you very well know I am a cat mum. And in LOVE being a cat mum, so when I haven’t finished a new book for this blog I’m going to go ahead and post about a new cat poem I found. (Yes this will continue to be a thing. It’s my blog, my site I can do what I like thanks). This time, I found a good one by Margaret Atwood called ‘Ghost Cat’.

Now this is a sad tale. We start right off with 

Cats suffer from dementia too. Did you know that? 

No, I did not. But she writes about this cat like all cat lovers would write about cats calling hers ‘the furrier’s muff, the piece of fluff. Because what cat isn’t a fluff ball at some point? But like all cats, cats are a bit mad and this poor soul is quite literally losing her mind, the chaos is endearing sometimes ‘she’d prowl the night kitchen, taking a bite from a tomato here, a ripe peach there. Bless this mess.

But then it gets a little darker:

Ar-woo! Ar-woo!
So witless and erased. O, who?
Clawing at the bedroom door
shut tight against her. Let me in,
enclose me, tell me who I was.

This more reflects the human-like tragedy of dementia, notice how the language changes from animalistic to human ‘ar-woo’ to ‘O, who?’. It’s the shedding of self, the basic instinct of what a cat is and what a cat does. Where is cat, what is cat, why is cat? 

There is no way to stop the heartbreak, how do you tell a person who doesn’t understand, who they are? How do you tell them ‘I love you’ when they might not have any idea who you are. Their brain that was once full of life, energy and all the goodness that they have known is gone. And here they are left clawing at the bedroom door wondering who they are nor knowing what is on the other side of the door.