My wife got her cat when she was in seminary, so she named the feline after the biblical Hebrew word for soul—nephesh. We shortened her name to Neffi. Our beloved Hebrew professor chuckled, “You’d better take good care of that animal.” I believe that we did.
Neffi knew my oldest son, but she had exhausted all nine lives before my daughter was born. But the other night, my girl crouched in the hallway on all fours, meowing plaintively. She figured that she could get out of her bath by pretending to be a cat. As I approached, she bared her “claws” and hissed, bearing a striking resemblance to our former pet.
They say all dogs go to heaven. I don’t know whether or not cats have a life after this one. There is talk of the rainbow bridge, a crossing into a land of sunlit fields where cat treats grow on scratching posts. This sounds rather cartoonish to me, but what do I know? Only this:
After the loss of a pet who has lived a long life — one in which that animal accompanied you in several moves across the state and tolerated your eccentricities, including your propensity to bring other animals into the home, some of whom are bipedal and liked to grab tails — you feel grateful, sad, and then grateful again to have shared so much. I remember how Neffi would occasionally nudge my textbook with her head in order to make room for herself in my lap, where she would commence to purr like a motorboat in low gear.
And something of Neffi came back to me just the other night as my daughter, finally coaxed in and out of the bath, cuddled beside me in her bed.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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