Page 201 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

I could still feel the weight and shape of his body when I awoke to find it was a dream.

The sweet glow of mutual adoration lingered for a moment or two before giving way to

discomfort edged with shame. The one who held me with such tenderness was not my

husband. It was Duncan, my cat.

Such a sensual exchange between human and animal felt a little dangerous, maybe

even illicit. The roots of my Roman Catholic childhood woke and stirred in my belly: was

it wrong to enter into such an intimate embrace with an animal? Unnatural? This was

not, after all, the simple, playful affection of a woman toward her pet. Neither was it an

anthropomorphized embrace between human “mother” and animal “child”. What

transpired with Duncan felt like a deep, almost mystical exchange between equals, like

the meeting of two souls.

Duncan. Regal and self-possessed, his

green-gold eyes registered everything. When

he held me in his gaze, I felt emotionally

bare, my thoughts and feelings transparent

as water. Duncan, whose thirty-three pounds

of presence belied a disposition so gentle

and kind it made us weak in the knees. He

was not much of a climber, not much of a

mover at all, so it was my habit – as well as

my need, and my pleasure, if I am being honest-- to drop to my knees, thread my

fingers through the silky white ruff at his throat, to bathe his head and cheeks in kisses

before sinking all the way down to enfold him, my belly to his back. Once there, I would

tuck his head under my chin, or nuzzle the back of his head, allowing my breath to

attune to his. His purr was a symphony of low bass notes threaded through with

complex harmonics, a soft, bell-like trill at the top. It was music, and it was medicine –

medicine best taken in the closest proximity to its source that one could manage.

When my husband found Duncan, he did not think it right to move him before I saw him.

His body was cooling by the time I arrived.