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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

A man, a cat and a conversation about friendship

Posted: 02/11/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The bearded, middle-aged man sat alone, as he has every morning I've seen him at the breakfast diner we both frequent.

Basically, we were strangers, although obviously he had a certain familiarity with me. Once he had come over to my table, the way people I've never met do, and offered a lead on a possible story. Another time, he made the effort of kindly remarking that he enjoyed a column.

I can't recall which one.

But this week, when I met him again in a much different way, I wondered if he had read last Saturday's column about my pub pal who answered my bar-table question about the toughest time he'd ever been through.

I wondered that because of what happened this week when I saw the bearded man sitting alone again.

-- -- --

I was on the way out of the diner, almost at the door, when I spotted him.

"How are you?" I asked, the way we all do, never really anticipating an honest answer.

"I just put my cat down," he said quietly. "He'd been sick for the last few days."

John, the name I'll give him, didn't look at me as he spoke, perhaps because he was afraid I would see beyond his glasses to his eyes.

I was still standing when he quickly added something else about the cat he'd been with, for the last time, less than an hour before. Something that made me understand what I needed to do beyond saying I was sorry.

"He saved my life," John said.

John still wasn't looking at me, but this time his attempt to hide his emotions was betrayed by a solitary tear trickling down his cheek.

I sat down across from him.

"How did he save your life?" I asked.

"He was someone to come home to," John said. "It was just nice to have a friend."

But there was more to the relationship, and the story, than that.

A decade or so earlier, John had been married to a woman who had a daughter. When John's stepdaughter was 10, someone gave John the cat and he gave it to the little girl. But Curious George, as they called him, quickly became his cat, constantly rubbing up against his long beard and cuddling with him.

By the sounds of it, the marriage was already on its ninth life.

John cited the adage about there being three sides to every story. Her side, his side and the truth. John said the truth in this case was he was to blame for the failure of the relationship.

"I messed up pretty good on it and alienated a lot of people."

And when John left -- under some sort of no-contact condition by the sounds of it -- he left Curious George behind, too.

"I told them to take the cats," John said. "There were two of them."

He was alone.

"How did you get through it?" I asked.

"I just existed," John recalled. "Work, eat, sleep. That was my life."

Actually, at first, there was one more component.

"I found the only two things that help men," he answered, "were the Men's Resource Centre and the liquor store."

The bottle, of course, became his new best friend.

And then, about three years ago, he got a call from Animal Services.

They had found a cat with an identification chip that led them to his phone number. John recalled how Curious George reacted when he saw him at the shelter. It was as if the cat was holding out his paws, asking John to take him into his arms.

Begging for John to take him back.

And that's how the two best friends were reunited.

"I guess it was my way to make things right for someone I'd hurt in the past," John said.

But there was more to it than that.

"Having him back in my life gave me a purpose. I guess we all have it in ourselves to look after someone."

Then I asked John about what happened when he took Curious George to the vet for the last time.

"It's strange. It was only 45 minutes ago and I don't remember what I said."

Gradually, though, it came back to him.

"I brought in one of his toys. I sat there. And I just held his little paw and said goodbye."

In the end, I asked John how he was going to get through losing his best friend.

"I honestly don't know, Gord."

Then, he thanked me for listening.

And I stood up to leave.

But before I left, I told John to stand up, too. And then I reached out my arms, the way Curious George once seemed to do with his paws. And I held him -- the way I sensed no one had for years.

Not even his best friend, Curious George.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2012 B1

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