Small Treasures – The Orange Fluffy Stuffed Cat

A fluffy orange stuffed cat, a source of comfort, though not the toy or comfort of a child, sits on the back of the sofa in my study, the only stuffed animal upon the green and wine-colored plaid sofa.  The cat’s color is not overly complementary to the sofa, but stands out against the dark green lower portion of the wallpaper, and acts as a type of bridge, an artistic link, between the sofa, the dark green area of the lower wallpaper, and the border of the small brown pine cones and green sprigs of pine needles and leaves, that accentuate and enliven the overall effect of the mountain cabin themed wallpaper of my study.  This theme is incongruous for the most part with the vast majority of the weather and feel of Southern California, but I like the wallpaper, and it’s been there for more than twenty-five years.  And I like the cat.

But the orange fluffy stuff cat did not originate within my study, or home, but within my mom’s house, within the bedroom we made out of the den for her, positioning her hospital bed so that she could face the large sliding glass doors to look out towards the patio, the pots of flowers scattered upon it, and to the day beginning to unfold every morning within her backyard, at least what she could see of it – and what she could understand. For this was the extent of the visual reality of my mom beyond the four walls of her makeshift bedroom for the last year or so of her final journey, our final journey, with her deepening dementia.  

However, to occasionally provide my mom a wider view of life, I and the caretaker of the day, in good weather – not blistering hot – would ease my mom off her hospital bed and into her wheelchair and then push her about the neighborhood and up the hill for a better view of Sylmar where she had lived for the greater part of her life. The neighbors, English and Spanish speaking, would come out to greet my sweet mom, but neither of us, especially my mom, of course, could not completely understand the words spoken in Spanish, but we always heard the kindness and affection within them, and, at times, my mom would smile.

My mom, when she had moved from the house we all grew up in, a few years after my dad died, she acquired a dog, a German Shepherd, Dylan, a companion and a security for the home she would live in alone, by herself, the first time ever in her life.  He was a gentle dog, and a faithful dog for years, and when he died, my mom acquired a cat, then eventually another, and a few more after that, all who she cared for and fed and let in and out of the house during the day, and occasionally at night.  Over the years, some of her companion cats died, and she acquired others, and her life was then always surrounded by cats.

As she declined, her life became centered on the latest cat acquisition – a half-feral older kitten dumped one day over the wall according to one sister – a feisty, aggressive, possessive little cat my mom named Taffy, a pretty little thing of various gray shaded stripes.  She acquired dominance among the cats and became my mom’s favorite, but Taffy mostly hissed at everyone else and could not be petted or even approached, and we learned to keet our hands a safe distance from her. Eventually we instructed the daycare providers to keep all the cats outside and only allow Taffy in the house, who now spent most of the day with my mom in her room, sleeping on the floor, laying on the bed at times, just quietly looking at my mother, faithful to her, and faithful in her hissing to everyone else.

But even with Taffy’s faithfulness, after a time, even she could not always attract and maintain the attention of my mother as my mom progressed through the last nine months or so of her slow five-year long retreat within her dementia.  During that period, one of my sisters – the one who a few years after my mom’s passing, developed cancer and began her own medical journey – brought the orange stuffed cat to my mom. And then, when I would come to visit or stay with my mom overnight, I began to notice that when she was sitting up in the hospital bed, with one hand resting upon her cheek, she would just stare in peaceful contemplation at the orange cat, that sat in quiet repose upon the wooden windowsill, four feet from my mom’s wondering eyes. 

My mom’s contemplation of the cat seemed to capture her mind and quiet her with a peace and calmness that was never within the realm of our understanding or knowledge.  For when her eyes were upon the orange cat, we had no way of knowing the thought and feelings, or memories and cognitive awareness, the orange fluffy cat brought to her or upon her – but it seemed a good for our mom that we had just stumbled upon.

For her ability to truly communicate had ceased months before, and without words, the only way of giving voice to her remaining human emotions and thought, was through her eyes, which then, for the most part, merely communicated the absence of thought and recognition – an emptiness and haze not of her own choosing, with only a very vague and distant awareness of who we were, where she was, and of her own relationship to her surroundings.  It was only through our love and knowledge of who she was to us, that provided the very fragile bridge to her life within California, and to the even more distant one of her childhood in England, in Southampton, and of London and the war and her evacuation to the countryside with her school, and her later meeting an American soldier with chocolate candy, whose first kiss she described in her diary of 1944, as rather lousy, but which eventually led to my existence and that of my five sisters.

When my mom died, one of my mom’s daycare providers, who had grown attached to Taffy, thankfully requested to have her and she took her to her home, the other cats variously taken by my sisters and others.  When it was time to begin to clear the house and divide up my mom’s possessions – with pieces of my mom’s house and life already leaving the house bit by bit – I remember wandering through the house, and when I entered the room my mom had occupied for her last year or maybe more, I saw that the orange stuffed cat still sat upon the windowsill, still looking towards where my mother’s head had been, but now, of course, the object of the stuffed cat’s faithful vigil, my mother, was gone.  And so, obviously the orange fluffy cat and its gift of comfort to my mother, was no longer needed, as the room where my mom had died was no longer her habitation, and even the hospital bed was gone.

I stood still for a while contemplating the cat, as my mom had, but without my hand upon my face as hers had been. And my thoughts, calm and peaceful, had no real context or goals to consider, or any depth of understanding that I can remember, but at the end of my quiet meditation, I decided to take the cat, the orange stuffed animal – now looking a little worn and scruffy – that had been the companion to my mother – and I took it, not in the sense to give it a home, but just taking it along with the other things that I had chosen of my mom’s possessions, many small, but some very large like our old heavy maple dining room table and chairs that I had grown up with.

Weeks or months later, when I finally found the time to go through all the smaller things that I had chosen from my mom’s belongings, I again came across the orange fluffy cat and just put it on the back of the sofa in my study, for no reason at the time, other than to place it somewhere so that I could finish unloading everything else.  And there it remained for a while, then for weeks and months, and now literally for more than ten years since my mom has died, not as a faithful companion to me, but more as a gentle and now treasured reminder of the gift of the orange cat from my sister to my mom – the sister who died a few years ago, finally succumbing to her five-year battle with cancer – and as a reminder of the last year or so of my mother’s life and how this fluffy stuffed cat – an inanimate toy – gave my mom so much peace and comfort.  And maybe now, missing the hands that brought the stuffed cat to my mom, and being thankful for what it produced within my mom, this also settles my heart, knowing that my mom did enjoy a calm and comfort in her last days from its presence, as it sat in quiet repose upon the wooden windowsill, four feet from my mom’s wondering eyes and her dimming life.

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