No Known Next Of Kin

The cat you see in that photo? That’s Oatmeal.

She’d dead.

She died on Saturday morning. Rather, she was discovered dead on Saturday morning. She could have died at night, or early morning – there wasn’t any post-mortem done. I don’t know what killed her. I don’t know if she suffered or not. Or what her final thoughts were. She left no note behind.

She had no known next of kin to be notified of her passing apart from myself. It came in the form of a rather curt SMS from Ken: Paka Dead. No salutation, no nicety, just cutting to the damn chase. Paka Dead.

Ken never had much education. I suspect he didn’t go past primary school. His sentence construction is so horrible it feels like a middle finger at the education system, at language, at me. I suspect he often says, Oh screw it, and writes his SMSs in Bukusu. If you ever spot me in a restaurant, or traffic wearing a stressed look, squinting at my phone intently, and otherwise looking quite unsettled, most likely I’m reading a text from Ken. His texts are like Morse Code. The heights he can go to to abuse and disembowel language is almost petty. Of course I have become better at deciphering his SMS’s but most times I have no time for such mind games so I just phone him back to “hear” what he meant.

Paka dead.

I was at my desk autographing a whole bunch of the pre-orders of my new book when I read the text. I stared at the text to figure out what he might have meant. Maybe ‘Paka’ was a Bukusu euphemism for something else. Maybe ‘dead’ was. I phoned him. “Sasa, Ken.”

“Boa, boss,”he sounded like he had turned his head and was looking away at something. “Lakini, ni huyu paka amekufa.”

I remember thinking that he sounded like he was blaming the cat for dying. Like he was reporting the cat for committing death on itself.

“Oatmeal?” I asked, like an idiot. As if we had any other cat apart from her.

I don’t want to sound dramatic and say that I was in shock, but I was in a space of great disbelief. My first thought was No, God, not Oatmeal. My heart whirred with short and intense grief that came with a sinking feeling. Have you ever driven an old car on a hot day and put on the AC? That hot dusty air that comes out and scalds your face? It was like my heart was the old AC and it was whirring with shock and loss.

I looked out the window, at a community of clouds that had gathered, and asked him what happened. How did this happen? He was very nonchalant about it. Then I asked myself God’s question: how could I let this happen?

Lady, who had been following my conversation on the phone and was looking alarmed, asked, What is it? ” I considered telling her, “Paka dead” but I told her, Oatmeal died. She gasped. Oh My God, What happened? I told her I was about to find out. I started searching for the vet’s number in my phone book, then gave up and put my head in my hands. I felt an astonishing wave of sadness, an extreme sense of loss. Like I had lost someone I had just spoken to the other day, and they said they’d send me a contact. Lady hugged me from behind and went away to the bathroom. I sat there feeling worse and helpless by the minute. Feeling absolutely gutted with the news of this death.

You aren’t the guy you think you are. You build an elaborate character of who you think you are. You craft a personal philosophy of this man, things this man can and can’t do. Rules and codes he lives by. And you convince yourself that this is the person you are. But you aren’t that guy. That guy only exists in the character bible in your head. You are a work of fiction. A phantasm. A tale you tell yourself. The real you is more chaotic than you think.

I didn’t think I was the kind of guy who would be gravely affected by a cat’s death. When I say I’m not a cat person, I’m not just saying this because it sounds masculine. I really am not. I’m a dog person. I was born a dog person. It’s like being born left-handed, you just get on with life without interrogating it. It’s the card you were dealt. For those who are joining us on this blog for the first time from upcountry, you need to understand that I didn’t choose this cat. I didn’t want this cat. One day I went to shags and I found the cat in the boma, a wee kitten. Small little paws and things. It was fragile, like a man’s ego. I asked the then shamba-boy whose cat that was and he said he didn’t know, the cat just strode in the boma one day and asked for water. Then it never left.“Unataka niifanye nini?” He asked. “Naweza itupa.”

I might not like cats but I’m not a sociopath. “Naweza itupa” sounded like he’d stuff the cat in a brown sack and hurl it in a bush far away. I pictured this poor cat meowing constantly in that sack in the bush, day and night, then starving to death. It was a horrifying thought. We can barely breathe under the thump of this government but we aren’t those people who throw away cats in sacks. We can’t allow ourselves to be those people. Evil can’t win even if it means allowing cats to win. So I told him to leave it. I thought it would eventually lose interest in us and wander back to Catland where it came from. Over the next few days I’d see her around the boma, murking around, chasing butterflies, trying to climb trees, falling off, trying to climb the back wheel of my car, falling off. It followed me sometimes, at a distance, stumbling through the grass. I considered giving her away because I noticed that she had changed the behavior pattern of my beloved pigeons. They would normally hang around the little house I made for them, but now they were perched on the roof because she chased them around playfully. Pigeons don’t like the games cats play. [Put that on a t-shirt]

When I came back home I showed my offspring her photo and they named her Oatmeal because I love oatmeal. I consulted on how to take care of a cat. I called a lady called Naomi Mutua, who is the High Priestess of cats in Nairobi, the cat whisperer. I haven’t been to her house but I picture someone ringing her doorbell and her opening the door in a worn bathrobe with about 2,000 cats standing behind her, looking at who the visitor is.

Naomi wrote a long list of things I needed to buy with clear long instructions. I have decanted the list below for the sake of space:

Cat food, buy Bonnie, King or Purrfect.

Flea drops: get Frontline from Pet Store. Swing by their shop in Loresho or Spring Valley on Lower Kabete.

Dewormer. A ¼ tablet is an OK dose for a kitten under 2kg. Given every 2-3 months. [I remember thinking, how do I weigh a damn cat in the village?]

Then we wait for age 4 months to get vaccines and 6 months to spay/ neuter.

The offspring loved the cat. [Don’t worry, I’m like a child, I will tire of that word soon enough]. Whenever we were down in the village they would ask; has Oatmeal eaten? Have you seen Oatmeal? Can we feed her? Can Oatmeal eat bread? Each time I went down she’d be taller, longer and faster. She caught things in the brush. She climbed trees. She napped. Even the pigeons loved her. Well, maybe I shouldn’t speak for the pigeons, maybe they just learnt to ignore her. I sent money shags for her omena. Once in a while, on a hot afternoon, when bored in Nairobi, I’d look at the CCTV on my phone and see her languidly walking by the frame and feel warm inside.

Naomi gave me the number of a vet in Homa-Bay town called Dr Ngielo. Last Wednesday he went over to my place to finally spay Oatmeal. It was a short and successful surgery. When he left she was still under.

Saturday she was dead.

I called Naomi, the mother of all cats, told her Oatmeal had died. There was a long pause on the line. She eventually said, in a small whisper; Oh no. She was quite saddened. I asked questions because if Naomi can’t tell me why my cat died, who the hell can? Couldn’t be internal bleeding, she would have died the following day, she said. So, probably a post-surgery infection.

I then called Dr Ngielo and told him the cat died. She was fine after the surgery, a bit lethargic, playing a bit napping a lot but now she was dead. Otherwise, a nice fellow with good bedside manners, he sounded like a typical doctor; ennuied by death. I told him I was quite upset about this death. He said this was very sad news. The operation had been successful so it could have been an infection, hard to tell without a post-mortem. He advised that next time it’s better for the cat to be brought to Homabay for the operation at his clinic to allow him to observe its recovery. I thought, next time? Next time? This guy thinks I want another heartbreak?

I’m done.

No more death.

Talking of death. I once took Ivory, my manager, to a pet clinic in Muthaiga to put her old cat down. She kept many cats that time, all fat, entitled and spoilt. They did nothing but lounge about the whole day, sipping mocktails. She had made the poor cats think they were born from a long line of royalty. You have never seen a group of felines actually committed to group mentality. One of them, a particularly fat one with a constant resting bitch face, had three legs – Kichi. It was a charade. When I first went to her house I was convinced I had walked into a cat cult where the leader gives away her leg as an oath of Omerta.

You see “normal” people walking about in beautiful shoes, going for meetings, buying lattes, but you don’t know what happens behind their closed doors.

Anyway. She was extremely emotional about taking her cat to be put down. Actually, I secretly felt that she was a tad dramatic about it. How she asked to be given a final moment alone with her cat to say goodbye. She wept uncontrollably before she was put down, and just when I thought any human being wouldn’t weep any more, she wept even more after she was put down. She didn’t say a word on the drive back. Just stared out the window with sad, red eyes, perhaps thinking, what is this life without my cat? I, on the other hand, was thinking, why do I get myself dragged into this white shit?

Now the boot is on the other foot.

Now I get this white shit.

When I went to break the news to Kim he was in the living room playing a game on his tablet, an empty mug and plate next to him. I eased myself on the sofa’s armrest and asked, “What you watching?” He said blah blah blah without looking at me. I didn’t mess around. I didn’t want a soapy speech. I gave it to him straight. “I have some bad news.” He turned to look at me with his big gorgeous eyes.

“Oatmeal died this morning.”

He stared at me. Then he paused the game he was playing and sat back. He was wearing beige sweatpants and a Lamine Yamal Barcelona football jersey. “What killed her?” He asked. I told him she had surgery and then she was fine and then she wasn’t fine. “Oh no.” He said. He looked confused. We sat in silence. The TV and all the lights in the living room were all on because he has a rich father who grows money on trees.

“I’m so sad about it.” I broke the silence.

“Yes, me too.” He crossed his arms and looked at the table. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” I said.

Then I felt a wave of emotion attempting to breach my great wall of manhood , so I told him, “It will be fine. But for now it’s not.” Then I left him there with his feelings, thoughts and all the bright lights in the living room.

I felt like I should have called Ken many times to update me of the condition of the cat after surgery. I was under the impression that this was a simple procedure, like a colonoscopy. If I had known that on the second day she wasn’t active, that she lay in the shadows a lot, I would have asked Dr Ngielo to rush back and attend to her. But I was busy preparing to receive the books from the printers and the madness that comes with that. Now, Oatmeal was dead. My poor cat.

I asked Ken to bury her under the congregation of banana trees at the edge of the boma. I told him to place a rock on top of the grave, to mark it and stick a bamboo shoot at the head of the grave. Because I love bamboos. I will paint that rock white when I go down next. I don’t want to be those guys who stand over a grave of their pets with their head bowed but I also don’t want to be the guy who forgets his first feline love.

I will pick Tamms up from school this Friday for mid term break. I intend to tell her two minutes into the drive when she asks her standard question; so what’s been happening at home? As if there should be some news; the roof fell the other day while we were making eggs. A man showed up at the door looking for you, he had a parrot on his left shoulder, do you know him? Kim lost his blue boxers, might you have carried them by mistake? I was in your room the other day and I found a polaroid photo of a boy on your wall, is that your boyfriend?

Nothing new ever happens at home, Tamms.

I wonder how she will react to the news. She plays her cards very close to her chest, that one. Cool and collected. Never showing her hand. She thinks life is a poker game, so she’s holding a lot of aces. She will probably say, “Oh no, what happened?” Then I will have to tell her the story all over again. She will probably keep quiet and look out the window.

When she was four, she had two gold fishes; Baddie and Goldie. One day she found Baddie and Goodie floating on their backs. They weren’t sunbathing. They had died. It was a very sad day for her. Not so much for me because a dead fish is a good fish. It means lunch. I wasn’t into the idea of keeping fish as pets anyway; I’m luo. We eat fish, we don’t name fish. When the duo died, I wanted to throw away the fish with its water, like the proverbial baby with the bath water, but her mom thought it was a great idea if we made a ceremony of it, if we did it the right way, by her and by the fish. “To save her feelings,” she said. So I dug a hole in the ground in the flower bed one hot Sunday afternoon and we buried Baddie and Goldie. We had a fish funeral.

Like I said, you think you know the kind of guy you are. You don’t.

***

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