Tracy’s Bum

Posted on April 5, 2003 in Cats Grief

I got predictably mixed reviews about the tail end of my blog about taking Tracy to the crematory the other day. The other Tracy that I know — who walks on two feet and has far less fur — urged me not to try to “make it funny”.

I have to say that I wasn’t trying to be funny: just about everything that has ever happened that involves Tracy the Now Dead Cat turns out funny. I understand where Crazy Tracy is coming from: we just have different perspectives in how to grieve over the death of a lovable cat.

In the back of my head I have a book half written — the autobiography of Tracy the Cat. If I get it done, it’s going to be like no cat book ever penned. For one thing, I intend that she tells all exactly as a cat would see it:

I’ve always said that “a clean bum is a happy bum”. Joel and Lynn could never understand the importance of this basic principle of hygiene and cogeniality. Among cats, you see, the presentation of your bum is an act of trust: you show your loved ones your vulnerability and when you lick their bums, you are telling them that you are a true friend. I know Joel and Lynn loved me, but when I presented my bum to them, they balked and threw me off their chests. “Tracy!“, I’d hear them cry as if I’d committed a heinious offense such as blowing in their face, “I’m not going to clean your bum!” Such outbursts are inexcusible in another cat, but I had to keep reminding myself that they were only human.

My own observations confirm that the licking of one another’s ass is a most sacred procedure for cats. I often watched Tracy as she did Ambrose or Virginia. Her eyes developed a fixity; she entered a state akin to that which the Balinese call nadi — a holy trance like the ones which possess artists and writers as they work. Sphincters — bursting as they did like black stars in purple gray heavens — were her subject, her canvas, her page, and her palette; her rough tongue her brush and her pen.

Some may be laughing as they read this and others may be grossed out. My defense and my explanation are the same: that was Tracy, as she happened — a chemical reaction that when taken in by the human heart produced laughter.