Thibault

How often must I write his epitaph?
First: when he arrived, visibly dying.
Articulated of coat hangers and black crepe,
Eyes sealed with pus,
Breath a calliope of anguish, gums innocent of teeth—
But he lived.

Just weeks in, the second veterinarian disclosed the diagnosis:
Feline aids, late stage.
So he was exiled from the house, where our indoor cat—
Who once survived life in the wild, too—
Holds sway:
Another false start on the obituary.

When the first course of steroids ended and he declined to eat,
We chose the tree to bury him beneath
And I built his cat-sized coffin.
Then we resumed his medications and he resumed his appetite,
Gained back half his own weight,
And kept living.

That was months ago.
Now we take our afternoon beer with him
Out in the garage from which he has evicted the vehicles.
He owns us, of course, though it’s not quite ownership:
More of a mid-term lease agreement.

We dare not travel.
We are housebound caregivers to a dying stray cat,
Who must have endured a novel’s worth of traumas.

He has bad days, and good. It’s the nature of the disease.
On the bad days I sharpen my pencil to attempt his memorial—
Then he rebounds, if not quite so high.

We brace ourselves for the bad days—
For the bad day that will portend finality.
We struggle to accept his inevitable departure.
We plan our restructured lives when we will no longer shape our days around him,
So his absence will be less of a sudden void,
More of an anticipated change.

I’ve written celebrations of his life
But still can’t manage a eulogy.
It’s been more than half a year,
And he just keeps on living.

Lawrence Blair Goral
7 August 2025
Durango, Colorado