Ode to Charcoal
Charcoal 2 nights before going to Kitty Heaven
Charcoal, the family cat, has gone to be with the other cat angels. He lived to be 15 years old.
Rewind those 15 years… I was just starting high school, as the lonely, awkward teenager I was. Our cat Charity had just run away, and after searching the South Philly streets for her as a family, we had given up after a month. There was a brief moment there, when my mom convinced me that neighbors a few blocks away had stolen her and fattened her up. I later figured it was nearly impossible for a cat to gain 10 pounds over night.
Almost instantly my mom came home with a cat named “Cassandra”. My first inclination was to change the poor thing’s name, but before I had the chance, she was returned because of a faulty eye. Don’t quote me on that. A few days later our next door neighbor came to our door with two male kittens: Charcoal and Smokey (much better names for cats), and in our house they stayed for the rest of their lives. Sad, kind of, the way I worded it, but we lived in a city! Alright?
Charcoal and Smokey tore up the house bit by bit. When they weren’t satisfied with 9 Lives tinned food, they tilted the kitchen trash can, foraging for chicken bones. I did try to explain that we only ate processed food, but they just never understood. Charcoal was always eating two portions–his and then Smokey’s. Smokey dealt with his hunger pangs by getting high on cat nip. Charcoal would glance over disapprovingly.
In the early years, Charcoal slept in a shoe box I had put a blanket in for him in my room, but then one day the box collapsed, and it was onto my brothers’ lair…
I eventually moved onto university, but kept in touch with Charcoal via telephone: “Hi Charcoal, I am pulling another all-nighter just for the hell of it. This time I mixed coffee granules with jolt.”“Meowwww”. Seriously. Charcoal talked on the phone with me for years, my brother Josh had trained him to meow every time the phone was put up to his face.
Sad to say my junior year of university Smokey dropped dead by the front door. The finger was pointed at a poisonous olive from a certain martini glass, but ya know how those Philly cops work–they don’t!
The case was dropped needless to say, but poor Charcoal felt the full impact of his brother suddenly disappearing. No one thought he would live another week, but he ended up surviving eight more years.
The last time I saw Charcoal was back in August 2006. I had just dropped in on the way back from my friend’s wedding, and spent an hour or so catching up with the family cat. He talked about how strange it was to suddenly have a 6 ft cardboard cut out of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer hanging out in the dining room, and I of course agreed, as I felt I had been hallucinating. I have pictures to prove it.
I patted Charcoal on the back one last time before hopping in a cab to go home. Looking back I think I took him for granted, never realizing he would one day be gone.
Charcoal the cat has lived a very exciting, tumultuous and adventurous 15 years. We all will miss him dearly.
