Catsongs: Music And Cats, Memories And Love

by Kevin Burton

   Had I had the mind to write this while she was still alive, my late sister Pat would have loved this series.

    It has been more than five months since she died, and reading that “late sister Pat” line above is still jarring and surreal. This is visceral.

   Nothing I can do will bring her back, but her memory is still with me. I hope that in writing this series of articles I’m calling Catsongs, I can talk myself through some things, tell a little of her story, a little of my story and take a hard look at real life.

   Pat had and I have, a range of hobbies as most people do.  The two that we had in common were true passions: cats and music. The fact that she and I will never talk music again is crushing to me.

   We had a game we played, where we’d listen to the radio and the first one to name the artist who did the song that came on, got a point.  I don’t remember any of the scores to these games. But I remember them being great fun and I remember not dominating this game in the way big brothers often dominate games.

   We laughed ourselves silly listening to “Where Did Our Love Go” by the Supremes, when we realized the backup singers mostly sang “baby, baby,” over and over and over.

   When we were miles apart, one of the questions she would always ask in our phone conversations was what new music I had bought recently. Little sis loved her some rock and roll, as I still do.

   Pat had two cats of her own, Kelly and Toby, that she loved and took good care of.  She loved to hear me talk about my cats, Graph, Mex, Ronnie and Gabbie and then Lakin. She did cat puzzles and got a kick out of all things feline. 

   Pat would have loved Catsongs, and she would have helped me think of songs to write about, I’m sure. These will be stories about songs with cats in the title, or maybe in the lyrics.

  I don’t have a handle on just how many articles will be in this series. If you know cats, most of them are aloof. They come around when they feel like it. I will let these Catsongs articles do the same. I can see already that these post will be difficult, but necessary for me to write.

    Pat and I had the same visual impairment but she also had spina bifida and got around on crutches and then later in life in a wheelchair. As children, we were sometimes combatants, but with souls knit together, the way most siblings are. We had some very good times in midlife as well as we navigated life and compared notes on grown-up things.

   After our father died in 2000, my brother Steve and I became the leaders of the family, the ones Pat looked to for guidance is some cases, permission in others.

   And see, this is what I mean about my talking through some things. As I write this I am just now putting together that when Dad died I went from being a big-brother buddy to being an authority figure. Things changed between Pat and I when that happened. That’s why our later years together were not always as harmonious as in the old days. I wish I had stumbled upon this insight at the time.

   I never had or wanted children. Whatever paternal love that I have had over the years has been lavished on my cats. That didn’t work so well with my sister. I can see that now.

   Things that could and should have happened after Dad died, my faults, Pat’s faults and my reactions to them, I anticipate talking through all that in a different way at a different time.

   For now, Catsongs.

   Every song has a rhythm, or sometimes more than one. A family has a rhythm, for better or worse, a pattern for the flow of things. Time and circumstances will add variations to that rhythm. Melodies and harmonies emerge.

   Inevitably some of life’s music must be sung in minor keys. That will taste a little different to the being you thought you were, as you learn to drink it all in.

   And if you think I just mixed a metaphor there, bringing taste into this, take a step back, slow down, think it over.

   In the meantime, do yourself two favors: hug your sister, and turn the radio up!