In November last year, I said goodbye to my beautiful mog, Tallis. She was the very best of furry friends, and I am quite determined to prove that to you all right now.
I adopted Tallis from an SPCA shelter that was situated in the Pets Smart store in Gainesville, Florida. I actually began by fostering her, but since the branch removed her details from their website almost instantly, the outcome was apparently a forgone conclusion! Tallis was about 9 months old when she came home with me. Despite being in a shelter, she’d been relatively lucky. It seemed that she had been picked up as a kitten by a student who later left Gainesville, leaving Tallis with housemates who didn’t really want the responsibility of looking after a pet. They brought her directly to the SPCA no-kill shelter, which was unusual as the shelter normally took cats from the main animal control centre. Given Tallis was not the best with other cats, she probably lucked out as she might have been thought less adoptable due to the bad language she would undoubtedly have hurled at any feline neighbours.
It was her defiant down-with-cats attitude that placed her with me. I’d said to the SPCA I would be happy to foster a cat that was more difficult to adopt, and I was initially baffled as to why they’d given me this friendly, cuddly bundle of fun. But they’d wanted to find a home for Tallis with no other cats, and I’d been the only person to visit the Pets Smart where the SPCA shelter was located who did not currently have a pet. Apparently, people typically go into a pet supplies store because they actually have pets. Who knew?
Brought into the shelter at Christmas, Tallis had originally been given the name “Tinsel” by the SPCA volunteers. I chose the name “Tallis” after Briony Tallis, the fictional protagonist in Ian McEwan’s novel, “Atonement”. To be perfectly honest, I had not enjoyed the book all that much. But there is a scene where Briony is working as a nurse and is asked her name by a wounded soldier. She tells him her name is Tallis, as she has been instructed to use her family name while at work. The soldier replies, “That’s a pretty name”… which became my main takeaway from this deep and emotional story and thus the name of my cat. Don’t @-me.
Tallis firmly believed that any second she was not being cuddled was a moment lost from time that could never be reclaimed. She was into everything. She would sleep with me at night, insisting on curling up in my arms and making reading a book before bed a balancing act of one hand. She would want a cuddle first thing in the morning, sometimes inserting a paw beneath arms or covers to bob me on the nose if I were attempting a lie in. She would sit on my arms while I was at my computer, curl up on my lap or on the sofa next to me while I watched TV, perch on top of the cabinets to stare intently while I cooked (she could have won any Iron Chef episode, paws down) and balance precariously on my stomach if I crashed on the sofa for a nap.
The one activity she did not like was the shower. Despite safely executing this procedure nearly every day for the 13 years we were together, there was still a finite chance I’d emerge from the shower to find her having a mini-meltdown on the bathmat outside. When she first came to live with me, I thought perhaps she did not like the bathroom door being shut. Since I lived alone, I tried opening the door while I was in the shower so she could see I was perfectly safe. When I stepped out to find her hanging upside down from the top of the door frame I concluded that—on reflection—that had merely confirmed her worst fears! It is very hard to fill the hole of someone who cared so very much about you so very early in the morning.
Tallis was also surprisingly sensitive to my moods. I admit to periodically shouting abuse at my computer (it always had it coming) or re-enacting arguments with people who had vexed me in front of the mirror. Rather than taking cover until I had come to my senses, Tallis would sit at my feet and meow loud enough to match my volume. The “cut it out!” message was very clear, and she was always right.
She also knew when I was not well. I occasionally (fortunately, very occasionally) get migraines severe enough to cause vomiting and usually require a hospital visit to get under control. When the sickness started, Tallis would whizz around the apartment vocalising a distress call. In absolute truth… this was not completely helpful! The need to emerge from the bathroom to reassure the cat felt rather extra for the situation, and there was always this haunting worry concerning stories about animals being able to detect mortal illness. That said, I did return from the hospital on one occasion to find a collection of cat toys in the bathroom, presumably left there as some kind of offering. Since I’d made a full recovery, it would be foolish to dismiss the prayers of cats.
Tallis loved all my friends, and was the life and soul of any party I hosted, often stuffing her face into cups to sample the beverages on offer (mercifully never the alcoholic ones). The only humans who she did not like were vets. How she even knew they were vets was a complete mystery. But she did know, and she wanted them to know she knew. While some cats might meow their protest from inside the carrier, Tallis would wait until she was eyeball-to-eyeball with the vet before informing them under no uncertain terms that they were an abomination to the human race. It was an attitude that usually got her coned (the anti-bite shield that is clipped gently around the neck) during medical examinations, until the vet knew her better. Not that she became politer with better acquaintance, but they realised she was all talk and absolutely no action.
Perhaps because of the association with vets, Tallis was a poor traveller. She would typically urinate (and more often, worse) in her carrier before we made it onto the highway (literally 100 yards from my apartment). I say “highway” as I always took a taxi to the vet. This was after one incident where she managed to projectile wee out of her carrier so that it formed a long river town the subway car in Tokyo. After that… I was more than prepared to pay quite extortionate fees to be able to take a taxi with a towel tightly wrapped around the bottom of the carrier.
Tallis became ill quite suddenly when fluid collected around her lungs. I battled with multiple vet appointments per day, trying to drain the liquid while searching for the cause, but I just couldn’t save her. When the vet told me there we were out of ways forward, I opted for humane euthanasia as I knew a natural death would probably involve choking. Prior to that moment, I did not know if I’d ever be able to make the decision to put a beloved pet to sleep. But it turns out you only do it when the option of not doing so is even worse.
My vet arranged for Tallis to be cremated at a pet cemetery in Tokyo. I originally had not wanted to accompany Tallis’s body to the cemetery, as I felt Tallis herself had gone and it would be very hard to keep myself together. This is perhaps a slight difference between western and eastern beliefs: in Europe, I feel we tend to assume a spirit has left the body at death and moved on to whatever comes next. But in eastern—particularly Buddhist—traditions, it is thought that the soul stays for 49 days between realms. My vet had previously worked in New York, and was therefore not surprised by my feelings and offered to handle everything without me. But in the end, I felt I wanted to demonstrate how important Tallis had been to me by making this last journey with her.
It actually turned out this was a beautiful experience (given the circumstances). The cemetery was a lovely and peaceful place, with large elephants carved at the entrance. Everyone was terribly kind, and I was able to leave Tallis by a small alter where I’d lit a stick of incense for her. Her ashes were added to a communal shrine whose alter is always full of offering from people visiting their departed pets. I bought a small plaque in remembrance that reads “Tasker family beloved cat, Tallis”.
Following Buddhist traditions, I visited the shrine regularly during the next 49 days and dedicated good acts to Tallis to support her in the next life. This largely involved feeding each and every stray cat I saw around Tokyo. It is hard to judge the impact it had on any divine watchers, but the moggies I stuffed full of biscuits seemed impressed.
In total, Tallis and I lived together in five apartments, in four cities and three countries. We had an amazing time together and I will love her until the very end of my life (and optimistically, beyond that if someone feeds a bunch of stray cats in my name too).
A beautiful portrait of Tallis, gifted to me by my friend, Selena.