Opa was not a cat person

My dear old grandfather, Opa, would be 98 years old now if he hadn’t died when he was 86. He lived much of his life as a solitary artist in a house in the hills of the Eastern Townships. He lived alone and I think he was lonely.

Opa married frequently and poorly, and these marriages tended to crumble quickly under the weight of their own wretched improbability. Then he would be alone again.

His loneliness saddened me. I wanted him to have pets so he wouldn’t be lonely: dogs, cats, parrots, chimpanzees. One time he said he wished he had a goat to pull him around in a little cart and eat the grass. I wanted desperately to make that goat come true.* (Years later, when I reminded him of this, he said he had no recollection of ever wanting a goat; he probably just didn’t want to mow the lawn.)

Opa was a kind and humane man, but unfamiliar with the ways of domesticated animals. Living in the country as he did, he lived among animals but he bore no  responsibility for them. Despite my incessant urging, which persisted for decades, he did not get a pet. (My mother gave him a puppy once, but he left it at our house. It was his puppy in name only.)

When Opa was an old man, my mother and her partner went on a cruise, and they asked him to come and look after their three cats for a week. He agreed. They gave him the standard cat-sitter tour before sailing off into the sunset.

A week later they arrived home, tanned and well-fed.

“How did it go?” they asked Opa.

“Fine, no problems,” Opa replied, “The cats were very good, very well-behaved. But they don’t eat very much, do they?”

My mother glanced up sharply. “They eat all the time!” she said.

Opa frowned. “Well maybe they lost their appetites because they missed you,” he said, “I filled up the bowl once and I never had to fill it again. They barely ate anything.”

My mother and her partner made a beeline for the basement  to inspect the cats’ bowl.

“See?” said Opa, somewhat defensively, “The bowl is full.”

“It’s full alright,” replied my mom incredulously, “Full of kitty litter!” 

“Kitty litter?” asked Opa innocently, “What’s that?”

It seems that Opa, with his octogenarian eyes, had seen the big bag with the picture of a cat on it and assumed it was the cat food bag. It wasn’t his fault; he just wasn’t a cat person.

 The cats were pleased to see the return of the cat people.

 I stopped urging Opa to get a pet after that. But I still wonder if a goat might have worked out.

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*It is one of life’s great ironies that there is never a goat when you need one, yet sometimes you’re stuck with an unwanted goat.