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Terminal Ailurophilia
A condition I will die of
My Geriatric Journal #16
I am going to do something that few self-respecting men would do. I’m going to write in my geriatric journal today about my cats. My wife and I, healthy seniors leading a retired life in our home on a semi-isolated mountaintop in Puerto Rico, enjoy gardening and gentle hobbies. We also love cats.
Cats, I should explain, are not popular as pets in this culture. Indeed of the hundreds of people I have worked with and befriended in the more than half century I have lived here, I remember only three who have cats inside their homes. There are lots of cats outside, some are informal pets but most are semi-feral. There is no general cat-culture as there is in my natal state, Pennsylvania. Everyone in my family there has or had a cat or two as members of the family.
I could list the names of the cats that have shared our lives from the time our children were born until today when our grandchildren and great grandchildren visit. But that is not my purpose. Most have lived (the cats, not the kids) a dozen or so years with us, a few have lasted up to a score, all left special memories behind: one would play hide and seek with our daughter and dance with her. Another loved climbing ladders and watching me garden. Each was an individual and each was adored for different…
