My dear cat Lyra has died it was a privilege to share this life with such a remarkable creature

Having grown up with dogs, I was never a cat person – but he was a cat person. When we first met, he explained that dogs lie to you by pretending that every day is “the best day ever”, while cats “tell you the truth”. It didn’t sound terribly appealing. Dogs need to be liked, he said, modifying their behaviour to please humans while cats are always “basically raising one eyebrow at you while smoking an invisible filtered white cigarette”. I bought a poodle. 

He liked the dog well enough, but I remembered his enthusiasm for the sublime indifference of the feline. So, 14 years ago, I drove to the Kent coast to collect a silver kitten. The middle-born of eight, she was not bold like the oldest, nor cuddly like the smallest, who had been much-petted by the breeder’s children. I thought she was shy and aloof and would come out of herself. I’d never had a cat.

The children named her Lyra after Philip Pullman’s young heroine in Northern Lights who has a daemon called Pan, a spirit animal that is a physical manifestation of Lyra’s inner self. The kitten spent that first Christmas with her head peeping out dubiously from the front pocket of his pinny as he cooked the turkey. But she wasn’t a cutesy cat. She was a Bengal, a living-room leopard, stunning even by the standards of her breed. Ancient Egyptians would have worshipped Lyra and she expected no less from us.

While she allowed him to carry her over his shoulder and kiss her head, she regarded me, at a distance, with imperious amusement. Basically, my role in her life was Daisy in Downton Abbey bobbing attendance on Lady Grantham. Like her jungle forebears, Lyra would drink only running water. There was a very specific meow of command when her maid was required to turn on the tap. I jumped to it.

Early on, I made the mistake of giving her a Duchy Originals turkey slice. Ever after, she would only eat white meat made personally by the Prince of Wales. Fastidiously she sniffed the affordable stuff that the rest of the family ate before stalking away. “Seriously, you expect me to eat that?” I eventually found a cat food she would agree to eat; it was called Intense Beauty.

Once, she went missing for several weeks. I put up tearful posters on fences and lampposts. “She’ll be back,” he shrugged. I was upset, mistaking his cat knowledge for indifference. She came back. We found her squirming languorously in the dust in the middle of the road, skinnier from being locked in a shed somewhere (as he had predicted) but otherwise unchanged.

In the spring, she was still leaping with that astonishing sprung energy onto the kitchen counter. Then, she started being sick. The vet rang to say he had found an inoperable tumour in her stomach; he could put her to sleep there and then on the operating table. But he, who never has an opinion, was quite firm. Lyra shouldn’t die alone among strangers; he wanted her to come home to be with her family.

He was right. The steroids bought her one glorious last summer. Watching her dwindle was hard, but if she could bear it so must we. Instinctively, we all – the children who held that silver kitten are adults now – lifted her onto the counter to spare her the indignity of knowing she could no longer make the leap. “She will tell us when it’s time,” he said. “She’ll go into herself.” And that’s exactly how it was.

Cats are so mysterious that, even after death, she still seems to be here. I woke up the other morning and I was sure I heard her turn-the-tap-on cry. Strange thing to say, but it was a privilege to share this life with that remarkable creature. I don’t think we’ve fully grasped what animals mean to human beings. She wasn’t a pet; the silver shadow of a shade, intense beauty, our family’s beloved spirit animal. 

Oh, look what you did, dear Lyra! You made me a cat person.

Do you have any treasured memories of pets that have passed on? Share them in the comments section below

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