My grandfather had a birthday party when my brother told me he knew someone who could give us a cat. His friend had an older cat with kittens, and she couldn't take care of all of them. We just had had a French Puddle, and it really hadn't been a good experience, so I had no idea if having a cat would be different. Nevertheless, I was sort of enthusiastic 'cause I had seen alot of kittens and I thought they were interesting and mysterious. I felt attracted to cats, 'cause they always seemed involved in honest playfulness or boredom. Certainly, cats were not like a noisy, smelly and dependant dog.
Once I was kind of convinced by my brother, we started to talk to our parents. When they were kids, they were more the kind of kids with dogs, so I thought it would be difficult to convince them of having a cat. Besides, we didn't take a good care of that French Puddle we had.
Surprisingly, my father was enthusiastic, too. He told us that, among several dogs, he had had a little cat when he was a kid, and he immediately asked us "How are you gonna' call it? Is it a male or a female?" My mother wasn't sure at all. "You're not going to take care of that cat. You didn't do it when you had a dog", said. After all, she was right. We didn't care, or even got sad, when one of her friends took away Cookie from us.
After a long discussion, we decided to call it "Socrates", and I don't remember exactly why. I think I wanted to name it "Kerouac" or "Hitchcock", or something like that, but my brothers just thought those names were so pretentious.
Socrates was an amazing cat. He looked like a tiger and he was so intrepid. In a few hours, he learned how to climb up the stairs. He was really too connected to me. Early in the morning, he just scratched the door of my bedroom to wake me up and asked me to feed him. Standard food was available for him all the time, but I just gave him palatable food every morning.
I opened the door and he started to purr and allowed me to touch him. He used to sleep in my bedroom all day long, and I remember being writing or reading a thousand times, while Socrates just stared at me with his sleepy gray-yellow-blue eyes. Somehow, he seemed to know how much I loved my books, 'cause, even when he scratched or bit everything, he didn't touch them.
Socrates grew up too fast, and started to run away from home. He learned how to run away after three or four months since he arrived home, and I thought it was the most natural thing to happen. He used to dissapear for days and then to returned thin, starved and dirty. He ate desperately and slept for hours.
At the age of six months or so, we decided to neuter him. It was thruly sad. He changed alot. It was like if he were angst and couldn't understand why in the hell we had done to him so.
When he recovered from surgery, he became more rebel and intolerant than he ever was, and he started to run away from home more frequently than before. One night, Socrates went away and never returned. For months, I couldn't stop thinking how would it be for him, if he could survive. I didn't want to believe that it might be possible that he was already death. It was awful. I felt terrible.
via GIPHY
After almost ten years, I still miss him. He was my best first friend.
A dog-lover would say it was karma, for not taking care of that French Puddle.
WHAT else do they know?
