That woman in black, Susan Hill, gave me Silver. Susan lived on a nearby farm back then. I wasn’t looking for another cat – I had three already – but I went to tea one day and there in a box was a small scrumble of tarnished silver fur with bright blue eyes. A breeder of prize persians had discovered that her best queen had been out on the tiles with a farmyard tomcat. Only two kittens were born and one had died. This one was five weeks old – too young to leave her mother, but breeding is a brutal business and the queen needed to go back to work. Would I like to take this kitten home?
I am adopted, so I know what it means to leave your mother too soon. What could I say except yes?
From the beginning, Silver was the brightest cat I have ever had. She soon learned good English and waited for my call for us to go to the studio to begin the day’s work.
Reading and writing interested her. She liked to sleep on open books, no doubt absorbing the contents, and she particularly enjoyed using my sheets of paper as sledges to slide across the painted floor. As I typed and letters appeared, she tapped the screen tentatively with her paw. Sometimes she intervened in a sentence by writing her own. It was never safe to leave the keyboard operational while making a cup of tea: strange symbols appeared on the screen, or whole paragraphs were deleted. She must have wondered why I used only two hands, when she could walk over the keys with her four feet.
As a young cat, her favourite thing was to chase a ball. Or, rather, to steeplechase a ball. In the evening, she liked to walk with me in the garden while I threw the ball for her in a direction that meant she had to leap over clumps of flowers, her furry pantaloons stretched out behind her, her front paws forward in a diving gesture. And then the return: tail held high, ball in mouth. Dear cat, I miss you.
She loved an older cat of mine with a deep and abiding love – so much so that if he stalked by under the window when we were working above, she would hurl herself off the window ledge like an ardent and airborne Juliet. Her nimbleness convinced her that she occupied two elements – earth and air. In fact, she was at home on water, too. I lived by a river at that time and we sometimes went out in my canoe.
The element of fire she saved for winter, warming her face at the wood-burning stove. When it snowed, she chased snowballs, delighting in their inevitable explosion as she caught them.
Silver gave birth to five kittens. The author Ali Smith got one. One is still alive and lives in a country bus stop. She is a wayward, eccentric cat, nearly 20 now – friendly, but uninterested in family life. In theory, she belongs to a friend of mine, who faithfully feeds her in winter. In reality, no one can own a cat. They are not dogs. Their independence is their strength. They do what they like and that is why I love them.
Silver liked travelling in the car. I used to take her to London most weekends. As soon as she arrived, she took up her position upstairs, on a bed under the window, to monitor the traffic. Traffic fascinated her – it was as if she was watching metal mice.
As Silver grew older, we stopped travelling together and she no longer went out to the woods at home. She stayed in my yard in the sun, or slept by the fire. I knew we were running out of time, and so did she, her head on my hand, her low purr, as we talked about what to do.
The vet came to the house. I held Silver while the vet injected her in the kidneys and a warm rush of urine flooded me. Silver didn’t die. We had to do it again, using the dose for a small dog.
I laid her on the lawn so that the other animals could know what had happened. One by one, they said their goodbyes. I left her with a lantern at her head till midnight, then I buried her in my shirt, in a deep hole I had prepared near the studio. I wanted her nearby while I worked. I planted bulbs and hellebores around her.
Some months later, the first daffodil of spring opened by her grave. It’s a big garden, there are hundreds of bulbs and her grave is in the shade. Coincidence? Yes, I guess. But … she was that kind of cat.
