Jacqueline Doyle

Ode to My Cat, Ten Years Gone

Like a boy named Sue, you were a girl named Bert, because our young son loved his uncle’s cat
Bert so much. I don’t know why I’m missing you today, Bert, when so many more important
deaths have followed yours. My brother, mother, father. My best friend from college. All those
who’ve died in the pandemic. All those innocent schoolchildren, and innocent shoppers, and
innocent churchgoers randomly mowed down. Every week, it seems, more of them. And here I
am, shaky and near tears, thinking about death and my cat instead of the big picture. I talked to
you when I was blue. Maybe that’s why I’m missing you now. “Things aren’t so great today,”
I’d say, stretched out on the couch with you on my stomach, kneading me with your paws, your
noisy purr vibrating through my entire body. At night you curled up on my feet on the bed, a
soft, comforting weight that made it hard to move. You were our illegal kitten in a rental house
that didn’t allow pets. The runt of the litter—so tiny when we brought you back from the pound!
That first week with us, you almost drowned yourself by jumping into a flushing toilet, and my
husband scooped you up, drenched and shivering, a reflex before any of us even knew what was
happening. Death foiled, just like that. If only it was always so easy. I look at the newest
headlines, once again stunned and helpless. “Things aren’t so great today.”

Jacqueline Doyle (Twitter: @doylejacq) is the author of The Missing Girl (Black Lawrence Press). One of her previous publications in Sweet will be included in the anthology Essay Form(s), edited by Jill Talbot (forthcoming from Columbia University Press) and was featured in Creative Nonfiction’s “Sunday Short Reads.” She has also published flash nonfiction in Midway Journal, Trampset, Atticus Review, Sonora Review, The Collagist, matchbook, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and her favorite dessert is: coconut flan with caramel sauce.