As I begin this column, my cat is sleeping in the next room. Through the half-open door, I can see him drifting off to sleep. His breathing is slow, one of his legs is hanging off the bed, his body is sideways. With part of his head buried under the pillow, he seems to have withdrawn from the world, indifferent to its incessant gesticulations and ruminations.
For several years now, I have shared my solitude with my cat. We are alone together. He sleeps with me, I snore next to him. Our days pass slowly, without clashes or noise. I know everything about his spells, he knows my moods inside out. We don’t hide anything from each other. From our silences, we make conversations that last until the evening, sometimes even in the depths of the night.
Without him, without his reassuring presence, without his brilliance and his fun, my life would lack a fantasy that characterizes him. It is the joy that transforms my daily life into a funfair. If I’m away, I miss him; but if this absence lasts too long, it is me who is missing from his life. When I return from a more or less prolonged outing, he welcomes me with the delight of a hostage who has just been freed. He will have thought I had abandoned him, and in his eagerness to rub against my legs, I sense his relief and gratitude that I came home to take care of him.
He grew up before my eyes, I aged under his gaze. His energy is intact, mine wavers a little, alternates between despondency and melancholy, rises again, sags, rebounds, collapses, is reborn; like this, a thousand times a day. He remains equal to himself: both placid and impassive, crazy as geniuses are, with this gravity in his eyes which seems to conceal all the secrets of the world.
Since I work from home, my cat never leaves my side. Sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t like me to clear the floor to get a better taste of his solitude.
Loners are big cats who ignore each other. The commerce of humans tires them, the noise of the cities irritates them, life in all its untimely variations abruptes them, the crowds frighten them. They need calm and silence to feel like they exist. Otherwise, they suffer from not being themselves. So cats who like nothing more than to be accompanied by their own presence and run away at the first suspicious noise.
Their respective solitudes complement and respond to each other. They don’t need big declarations to know the attachment that binds them. A single look is enough, a caress, a rub, a meow, a mutual gentleness where each person confides in the other through interposed silences. The team thus formed is unlike any other: they are two solitudes which keep each other company.
Since I work from home, my cat never leaves my side. Sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t like me to clear the floor to get a better taste of his solitude. Why didn’t he have as his master a busy man, a banker in a hurry, a merchant, a minister, an individual always on the move rather than this funny bird of a writer whose life passes in slow motion, between the writing of a book or a column? He would have had the house all to himself instead of sharing it with this stranger who likes nothing more than to come and bother him when he’s struggling to work.
Both of us are indolence itself. One reads on the sofa, the other sleeps in his armchair. The music lulls us, a piano sonata that can be heard in the distance. Night has fallen, everything is calm, peaceful. Sometimes he agitated with such vehemence that the devil seemed to be on his heels. I saw him go back and forth, jump from the table to the chest of drawers, run from the bedroom to the living room, from the kitchen to the bathroom, go up to the top of the bookcase, come down again to rush under the bed before rushing out again.
What would his reaction be if I did the same, if suddenly, abandoning my reading, I too started running around the apartment, crawling at his paws, spinning around in the middle of the living room? Would he call the emergency services or would he just look at me with the same indifference that a brothel owner would see one of his customers being chased by one of his employees, a whip in her hands? I don’t know. He will probably make fun of it like his first mustache. He will be right. After all, my madness is just as great as his.
My cat woke up. He asked for his pittance. I served him a handful of kibble. His hunger satisfied, he came to see what I was writing. He was so upset that he immediately went back to bed. I’m used to it. I don’t hold it against him though. But when this weekend, I bring a lover back to my bed, he will understand the scope of his offense. His solitude, for once, he will experience far from me and my infinite attachment!
