On a cold day in 2012, a skinny brown tabby walked out of Humboldt Park and up the stairs to my friend Cat’s back porch. He was friendly and unafraid, maybe 9 months old, with a big scrape across the front of his perfect nose that spoke to some parkside scuffle. She named him Omar, but he was a lover not a gangster, and since big Cat couldn’t keep him, this little cat came to live with me.
Under the tutelage of Bob, the tabby already in residence – who had himself been a stray until I took him home – Omar grew and thrived. He put on weight, his nose healed, and when it was time for Bob to shuffle off his mortal coil, he took up the mantle as First Cat. In time, he taught the ways of apartment living to another kitten, Mewy, who my friend Serena found hiding in the wheel well of a car in a rainstorm when he was just six weeks old.
But while Mewy is indiscriminate in his affections, lavishing them as much on my roommate Brian, and now on Paul, as he does on me, Omar remained, politely, a one-woman cat. He liked to sit on the table in the sun and observe goings on with quiet dignity, and if I passed by he would press his forehead against my arm and purr. He sat on my lap during Zoom meetings and curled up against me under a blanket on the couch throughout the worst days of cancer treatment. He was not reactive; he never lashed out unless gravely pushed (usually by Mewy). He had no fear of strangers and was gentle and patient with all visitors but he was, everyone said, crushed out on only me.
Last week he got suddenly, catastrophically sick and on Saturday it became clear he was not going to get better, and we made the terrible decision to put him down. It all happened so fast – every time I turn around and see Mewy, or my grandma’s fur hat, I start with shock. I loved him so much, this scruffy street fighter turned Zen master. I’m thankful he’s no longer in pain but the hole left by his abrupt disappearance is going to take time to heal.
I am 56 today – but I swear I’m not sharing this sad story of pet loss as a bid for birthday sympathy. Really, it just put me doubly in mind of the eternal truism that time is precious, and whether human or feline we never know how much we have left. This is something that became shimmeringly clear when I passed into the kingdom of the sick in 2022 and it was clear again last weekend. Omar was fine, or seemingly so – watching squirrels out the window, purring on my lap – until suddenly he was very not fine at all. We are fine, until we’re not, and no matter how universal that moment is forever a shock.
On Monday I sat with Menominee writer, organizer, and educator Kelly Hayes’s meditation on her own birthday, which she shares with MLK. If you will forgive me the unfathomable leap from the death of a cat to Dr. King and beyond, I was moved by her spin on this notion, and her exhortation to make the most of the time you get. King was just 39 when he died, she points out, but he inarguably made the most of that short time on earth. How will you spend the days you have left, is the question she asks herself, and will you spend them in alignment with your ideals? Will you speak out against injustice? Will you march, make sacrifices, make yourself inconvenient? We all like to think we will but, she notes, just as far more people now lay claim to having marched with King than credibly possible, so too will those who are passive now in the face of Palestinian genocide claim, in later years, to have been on the right side of history.
I’ve always been a haphazard activist, my GenX cynicism baked to a hard crust. I’m not proud of this; I fight against it constantly. But when the moral call is so loud as to crack that crust, to move me to march and to scream and to make myself inconvenient, I remember that it is right to be on that right side. The unfurling humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza offers one of those moral calls, but this year, in the face of this horror, I cannot march; I can still barely walk. All I can do is send money and post feebly online. Is this really living in alignment with my ideals? I’ve been struggling to figure it out and I deeply appreciate organizers like Hayes who light the way. Of the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza on December 7, she writes:
Alareer shaped hurt and hope into words and poured them into a keyboard, which let them loose upon the world. In doing so, he summoned hope and action in the face of death. That is not only a feat but also a gift. As we struggle to make sense of life and death amid broken buildings, worldviews, and futures, Alareer's words tug us by the sleeve and urge us onward, despite our confusion and grief. Who can decline such an invitation?
Alareer's poetry compels me to say that if I am to live another year, let it be a challenge. May I practice hope. May I build power in concert with others. May I move through the world with love, solidarity, and an unshakable belief in our potential. For this is what we must make of time.
I’ll let these words guide me into another year, whatever each day brings next.
Thank you for this reminder, Merv, that love and justice are one in the same. Love to you and your beloved Omar. He sounds like he was a true gift. <3
Love to you for your birthday and for the loss of Omar and thank you for these brilliant words