I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice

Author:Ruth Fitzmaurice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

I might just have a thing for babies. Animal or human, it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps it’s a kind of madness. I’m such a sucker for a cute face. ‘She’s got that look in her eye,’ my friends will mutter. Hold on to your pets and babies. I might just steal one.

In our first Greystones home, just married, a stray cat took up residence in our backyard. She gave birth to five kittens. We kept one kitten, she had another litter and the cycle continued. Where did all these cats come from? I unwittingly became resident mad cat lady of our housing estate.

Growing up, we had lots of pets but our house leaned against a busy main road. So many cats sped through some fast cars and short lives. My mother would solve this conundrum by simply getting another pet.

Our cat went wild with the move to North Cottage. She wandered far and left mouse guts by the half-door. Simon found her in the ditch one day with the life knocked right out of her. Her hair stood on end but her body had no marks. A fast lorry had swept her off her sturdy clawed feet. Even cat paws can’t dodge a death that swift.

When a pet dies, there is an empty space left where they used to be. You no longer feel or hear them moving through your world. They are just gone. There’s an empty cat bowl. The door of the cat house is left ajar. Death has come quickly, easily, as a matter of course. Dying is a brutally banal occurrence, like pouring the milk into your tea. A cat bed covered in hairs and some unopened tins in the press. It happens so quietly, definitely with no fuss and a cruel finality. All you have left is this sad echo of things.

We got busy soundproofing sad echoes. Our cat’s nine lives were up, so we searched for a puppy. We drove to Wexford and found ourselves a basset hound. He bounded on to the lawn with his brothers and sisters, tripping up over his long ears. Our own babies couldn’t have been cuter. It is love at first sight and we name him Pappy.

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