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Misha home again
2 August 2005
It’s odd, what happens when there isn’t a cat in the house. Thing is, I guess, there always has been; Sophie and Misha moved in here the month after I did, ten years ago. So I’m accustomed to being overlooked, criticised, expected to perform; and the only other time that’s been true as a continuum was in the family home, when I was a child and a teenager. Which means, when that regime is interrupted, I really do come over all adolescent. The emptiness gets to me, double-barrelled, as it always used to on those rare occasions when I was on my own at home: I feel freer and lonelier at once, finding my own unmediated company both delightful and inadequate. I tend to stay up later and lie in bed later, as I used to do; I read for long, long stretches (always tricky, with a small cat interposing herself restlessly between eye and page); I either bury myself in busyness, or else I run away.
It’s all right, though, Her Mishaship - I should say the Lady Artemisia - is coming home. Full of drip and breakfast, and facing a lifelong regimen of pills. Fun, fun...
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.