A Prayer for Alfredo

Published on Nov. 28, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

     “Say a prayer for Alfredo,” I asked my friend Robert Friday night, feeling the urge myself, not knowing what kind.

     Alfredo was a cat who’s lived on my front porch for four years.  His end was visibly coming, and for months I’ve spent extra on canned Friskies to buffer the ill effects and comfort him with my caring.  The truth is, he’s comforted me with his appreciation and caring since he arrived, and I wanted to receive that comfort as long as possible.

     But Thanksgiving Day I didn’t see him, nor that night.  Friday he was still missing, and when dinnertime came but he didn’t, I began to sense Alfredo’s time had come.

    He left his body where I could find it, thankfully, and Saturday morning I buried him near the porch.  Then his spirit showed up in a cascade of scenes reminding me why I loved him:  his crossed blue eyes looking up when he’d greet me; his thick creamy coat in winter with handsome mink-colored face and tail; his peaceful, non-warrior nature; his nurturing of Taffy’s litters of kittens and the way she loved him.  His patience, and the hole he scratched in the front door to let me know his patience might be wearing thin.  His contentment.

     I’d like to say he lived a good long life, but I suspect his time at my place was a demotion. He was elegant and had manners, possibly purebred.  It was not hard to imagine him living indoors in style, bathed and brushed.  Had my inn not been so full, I’d have taken him in, though he was still intact.  But Honey Boy, my yellow neutered male I’d brought in years before, attacked Alfredo every chance he got, leaving clumps of white fur behind.  Honey has stayed indoors for four years as a result.

     So I protected Alfredo the best I could.  He was at home here, and for that I’m grateful, though he deserved more than a yard.  When it turned cold after Halloween, I resurrected a hidey-hole for him on the porch with a recycled cat bed he’d claimed last year, padded with a towel.  I placed a stool over it and draped the stool with a blanket over a bassinet pad that insulated the small space well.  Just as I finished its construction, he crawled in, curled into a ball and went to sleep, rewarding my efforts enough to make me cry.  Minutes later it started to rain, but I went to sleep thankfully knowing he was dry.

     This morning, as I placed his cold, stiff body in his grave, I saw that I, too, one day will be cold and stiff, the breath of life gone.  It made the day better, somehow, and his passing less sad, another gift from him to me.  Some words from William Penn then passed through my head. “Death, then,” he said, “being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live, if we cannot bear to die.”

     This is a prayer of thanks, then, for joy of loving Alfredo to the end.
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Trudy Wischemann is an animal-loving homemaker who also writes.  You can send her your animal love songs - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA 93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.