Where The Stories Are

My cat, Olive, died last week. We’ve had three cats over the last fifteen years, and each has passed differently, though Olive departed in the grisliest fashion – which I will get to in a moment. I loved all the cats, and it’s possible I’m getting used to pets dying because the mourning process has sped up with each death, Olive’s being the shortest of all.

I should point out that Olive lived with us longer than the other two. What’s more, up until the day she disappeared, she had developed a habit of coming into my workroom every morning and sitting on my lap while I began writing. I didn’t think I could write with a cat in my lap, that it would be distracting, but it wasn’t. Eventually, however, it being summer, I’d get a little too warm and I’d carry her to the back door, and she’d bound off into our neighborhood where should would spend the rest of the day and night doing whatever it is cats do out and about.

But last week she did not return for breakfast or dinner, and after we put posters up around the neighborhood, I got a call. A very kind man had found Olive’s body by a playfield. I grabbed a trash bag and went to retrieve her. I thought maybe she’d been hit by a car and then made it to the field before dying. That’s not what happened. It was a cayote. Her headless body was stretched in the grass, a swarm of flies gathering around the carcass. Her collar and tag lay nearby.

It was a kind of horror show moment, a scene I’d only ever experienced in fiction and film. Here was death at its goriest and its ugliest, the sight of the exposed bone and flesh reducing what had recently purred and mewed into something’s meal. And yet, my very first thought was, “That’s not Olive.” I couldn’t make myself pretend it was Olive. That was something Olive left behind for which she had no more use.

You, readers, are the first people with whom I’ve shared this story. I did not think I could tell this story in such a way that I wouldn’t elicit pity or even empathy, as I was more or less done mourning by the time I sat down to write the next day, and condolences would only lead me to start the process all over again. Easier to tell it here, in writing, at my desk, where every day the first thing I must do is forget about the world around me, the walls and trees and the chair and everything going on everywhere, forget what I sometimes think I am, and go where all the stories are and where Olive is too.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com