Cats in Retirement

One of the unexpected fringe benefits of retirement is that you acquire cats. Not your cats, obviously. Other people’s cats. Cats who have homes, names, owners, feeding arrangements, vet histories, and yet somehow decide that your house is part of their working day rota. In our case, this did not begin with feeding. It began, as these things often do, with summer.

In summer we invariably have the French doors wide open. The house becomes porous. Air, smells, insects, the odd leaf – everything drifts in and out without anyone getting a vote. That openness is what started the interlopers off. They wandered in during one of these open-door spells, unchallenged, had a look round, and established that this was a safe and permissive environment. No heating was involved at this stage. This was reconnaissance.

The real discovery came later. When winter arrived and the doors were shut, they returned anyway. That is when they found the underfloor heating, and the log burner, and realised that the pleasant summer annex was now a five-star winter facility. From that point on, the arrangement was no longer seasonal. Once a cat has updated its mental map, it does not revert.

Two such cats have died in recent weeks. Both were at the end of life, both were loved, and both were humanely put to sleep when the usual mechanical failures set in. One was Gingey, a ginger male with reduced processing power after being hit by something large and fast. The other was Jimmy, known locally as Jumbsy, a large black and white fluffball who had also been hit by something and, like the Six Million Dollar Man, had his hips reconstructed. The result was a slightly awkward, un-cat-like gait and a tail that no longer worked, hanging uselessly beneath him during defecation and occasionally repainting furniture as a by-product.

None of this diminished him. Despite his rebuilt rear end and compromised tail, Jumbsy remained an effective predator. He still caught mice and rats with professional competence, which made his ungainly walk all the more endearing. Gingey may have been cognitively compromised, but Jumbsy was living proof that mechanical limitations do not preclude usefulness, dignity, or affection.

They were interlopers. Regular ones. Having learned the layout, they would sit outside the now-closed French doors and paw at the glass with quiet insistence, as if checking in for a standing reservation. Entry was generally granted, unless our own cat, Kitty, was being fed, or unless there was anything vaguely edible on the kitchen island, which was always their first stop in a frankly mercenary sort of way. Gingey may have been impaired, but he could still detect protein at twenty paces.

Their owners knew exactly where they were during the day and approved of the arrangement. This was not theft or betrayal. It was a village-level care system, operating on nods and mutual understanding. We provided underfloor heating, a tolerant door policy, and working-hours supervision. They went home for food and medical insurance. No lines were crossed. No bowls were put down. This mattered to everyone involved.

And this is the bit that feels oddly relevant to retirement. These cats were not there for sustenance. They were there for warmth, safety, and company without obligation. They wanted somewhere to exist quietly, to sleep near a heat source, to be around people without being required to perform. Which is, if we are honest, a pretty good definition of what many of us hope retirement might be.

Kitty, for her part, despised them. She is a virago and had no truck with interlopers of any description. She hissed, postured, and made it clear that this was her house, her heat, her humans. And yet, since Gingey and Jumbsy have gone, she has taken to sitting by the French doors, staring out in a slightly wistful way. As if to say that while they were clearly beneath contempt, they were at least familiar. Cats notice absence. They notice when the pattern changes.

There is something unsettling about end-of-life deaths clustering together, even when they are entirely expected. It thins the background. The neighbourhood loses a layer of movement, a set of shapes that used to appear and now do not. You feel it even if you were not the primary mourner. Perhaps especially then.

Gingey and Jumbsy had good endings, which is more than many manage. They also left behind something smaller and harder to define. A reminder that retirement is not just about stopping work, but about becoming infrastructure. Open doors in summer. Warm floors and a log burner in winter. A place where damaged, eccentric visitors can come in, exist for a while, and then leave again, without ever needing to be fed.

One positive - not as much cat shit in the log shed now.....