Prague, 5th July 1985

Cats, cats, cats of mine,

I saw you being born and I saw you dying. I saw your lives in their entirety, companions of my life. I saw your little paws learning how to walk and I saw them slowly petrifying as you were dying. I saw your beautiful and wild eyes sparkling when they opened for the first time and I saw them fading out and closed forever. I saw you healthy and joyful and young and I saw you getting old and ill, feeble and pitiful. Your eyes were shining until the last moment, sight fixed to a place somewhere beyond the life we spent together. I stroked your fur when you were little kittens and I stroked your fur before I duly buried you in the ground.

I saw your gentle sense of humor and fun-loving character and how much reserved hope you put into me. When I was too busy I chased you away when you were hungry for a touch of my hand which was always as tender as you were. You, cats of mine, have taught me many, many incommunicable things. I saw how you craved for a wild hunt, a prey to be caught, a murder as nature determined it. You did not get this chance when you lived together with me; you had no chance to live the lives for which you were born, the lives with true meaning. You were deprived of the animal beauty, of the cruelty, which was nothing other than a word, because you were born as beasts of prey ready to hunt and it was I who deprived you of this. I wish I could have offered you this opportunity! But I was not able to do so.

I left you and you suffered because you were faithful and honest like all animals, like all that beauty in the jungle of life. You gave me hope in horrible sleepless nights. Whenever you sensed with your miraculous internal devices that I was feeling deadly miserable you walked to me silently on your silken feet to ask how long this would last. You put your heads in my palms when I was sleeping and I could feel your tenderness as well as your loneliness. You lay on top of me waking me with a faint noise as if you were calling to me: get up and walk! You worried about me, my dear friends, my sweethearts. You pushed me to be more responsible and care better for my own life.

And this was our joint action, our common affair. My dear cats! You have accompanied me through all my life. Your eyes were so sparkling and questioning, they were filled with tenderness, sometimes you turned them away when I felt too unwell to be able to coexist with you and reciprocate the way you looked at me – you always understood and sustained, you cats of mine. I love you with all my heart and soul. I love you more than anybody else I have ever loved. I have always been faithful to you because I have never been, and never will be able to betray you. I imprisoned you in my flat – a prison of love. I hope you never got it that it was a prison. You were dying and until the last moment you knew you were the loved ones – or perhaps you knew that in the cat’s prison for life I was the nicest prison guard, didn’t you???

One day I’ll find out. I wish for someone to pet me when I die like I petted your bodies. Or better not. I do not wish this, I don’t need it. Nevertheless I do believe, my dear pets, that I have done all I could for the love we shared, everything my heart told me to do because it has been and always will be yearning for such a big devotion, like between you and me. Cats! Cats! You were the most faithful, shy, bashful, reserved, loving, offended, defiant, funny, sad, healthy, old, tired of life and diseases – each of you made up its own world, each of you was a remarkable character, each of you had its own way to approach me, to get closer to me, to play, to make fun and raise hope that together we would make it and survive.

You pressed against me so hard that it woke me up from my exhausting sleep in those days when I felt really down, however, I knew you felt even worse because you were passing away and only came to experience once more the moment of trust, hope, and love. My dear deceased friends, who would count your number? You are not dead, when you have gone, it’s me who has gone with you. When I saw you in my dream, little Snail, you were running to me, turning away so shyly and timidly as if you were not sure whether you wanted to be petted or not; I cried when I woke up and called at you to give my regards to Beanie who died of grief when you had died because she was unable to live without you and died one morning spread out at her favorite place. I’m sure you’ll pass my message along to her. Wait for me there when I’ll have to go too.

My dear cats! You will wait for me there, won’t you? We will play: little Snail will sit on a mighty branch of the tree of paradise and will gently swing the way he always liked to, pretending he doesn’t see me. His whole naïve face will radiate a strange inner sadness and at the same time there will be a light, shy smile. Beanie will play with her own tail getting ready for a party. Petinka will look at me with his eyes the color of frosty grapes in early autumn, shifting his weight from one leg to another while his sparkling eyes, filled with tenderness, will welcome me. Johánek will stare at me. Starlet, who died after a cruel veterinary intervention and did not bite my hand even though she felt the need to bite something because of the pain, will look at me like a lost kitten. She knows that I held her in my lap when the pain got unbearable and stayed awake with her till morning when she passed away. Uki will laugh and run back and forth, his tail coiled into a funny question mark, and he will be shy like little Snail’s true son, and he will pretend that he wants to run away but eventually he will let me stroke his tummy as he used to in the part of the hall I called the Strokers’ Corner – like the Speakers’ Corner. Mowgli, pompously walking around, will shout at all the others that she was first, as she did her whole life. Poor Misha will be shy and timid. I lost him because he was killed. Someone must have been shooting, particularly targeting cats, to keep up the world’s morale. There is no place for cats because they hunt. And the shooter ate roast goose, duck, chicken, and perhaps as he was shooting he stuffed his mouth with veal, which was also born on this earth. And then many other cats will join in, my friends whom I gave a bit of hope or found new homes for. My cats, cats, cats! The guides of my life! Because of you I never dared to leave for a long time, as it might be unjust to you – nonetheless it did happen because I was short of money. When you welcomed me after my return you were worried and nervous, even though you had been looked after by a girl who stayed over; you worried whether it was really me. And it was I who called from New Zealand where, among all the strangers, I worried about you every day I stayed there and therefore I wanted to know whether you were still alive, whether nothing had happened to you, but you, my dear cats, couldn’t have known all this. But you knew very well when I was to come back and they said you had been sitting at the door three days before my arrival patiently waiting. On the plane I recited a great prayer: Cats of mine, I’ll see you again in three days’ time. You will wait for me, won’t you? Grass will grow everywhere around and together we will have a lot of fun.

What do you think, Johánek, whom I found on the street? What do you think Starlet, Uki, Misha, and my dearest Petinka, I used to call you Van Gogh because you were so special, unique, ginger, and white that I even wrote a book about you, hopefully someone will publish it one day. And what about you, Mowgli, you will walk in pompously, wagging your broken tail like a doggie, your eyes will sparkle like ocean lagoons again, won’t they?? Death is but a thin veil. I’ll come too and I will be attractive and will happily run towards you, my cats. We will do the best bits together; I’ll be pulling the string or the Bad Toy which always gently hits your noses or ears because it’s a rubber band. Oh, I have forgotten Piggy, who disappeared when I left home long ago. When I returned home to stay for a short time, Piggy greeted me and laid down in his basket next to the bed watching me with a painful, reproachful and questioning look. After my departure he left forever. Piggy, you will be there too, won’t you? You brave lad who jumped out from upstairs straight onto the street to play with the sweeper’s broom. Piggy the prankster, the joker. You were a poor and dirty street cat, but you always behaved like an aristocratic tomcat. I picked all your fleas with my fingers – and then I had to leave, my poor little boy. I still have a bad conscience because of what I did to you, Piggy, but I had to earn money, I was a student in those days.

As you know, my cats, my inspiration, my great love and Muses, I had to leave you and your eyes from time to time. When we are together again somewhere where it will be easy to explain everything, you’ll forgive me, won’t you. Do you remember, Petinka, when you wanted a cuddle that I often used to say: Esti, your friend, must work now, Petinka, so we have something to EAT. By this I mostly meant you, Petinka, children were throwing you half-dead onto a coal heap in the yard next to the house and you, the ginger and white, skinny kitten, were close to death and needed to be fed a lot. When you sat next to me on a chair by the fridge with your little front paw lifted watching me with your questioning grey-green eyes, I couldn’t resist their beauty and took an immediate decision that you would never ever again encounter fear and misery. Then in your whole life you never wanted to go out, to the outside world, am I correct or not? When we were lying next to each other close to the electric heater and I longed so much to be a child again I told you fairy tales and you laughed until you recovered even though the vet didn’t give us much hope. I loved you so much, you were scrawny and lame and I laid you down in a little armchair and covered you with a blanket so you’d feel cozy as if you were in a bed and I fed you with egg yolks and glucose on the tip of my finger and later you became a strong and big tomcat and whenever I was working you couldn’t wait until I finished and we would be TOGETHER again. In bed we looked at each other earnestly. First I called you Petrushka and later Péti. Be there too, please, when I come to join you. And don’t be jealous of little Snail, as you know, he was a lad from the forest, the son of a semi-wild cat, and you used to bully him and Snail was such a shy boy. Mowgli loved you and after you were gone, she spent whole nights moaning at the place you used to lay down, her grief was breaking my heart. She missed you so much even though Snail fathered her kittens; well, sit down next to Mowgli as you used to in the kitchen and wait until I come. Will you?

Mowgli was survived by two offspring, the brothers Crayon and Bajaja. They love each other in the same way that you, little Snail, were loved by Beanie, your child. And there’s also Aran, an intelligent and beautiful calico cat, whom I found at the nearby cemetery, tiny and half-frozen. All of them will be gone before me, at least I hope so. I’ll be able to cope with the grief. They are old. Me too.

Cats of mine, please make a guard of honor for me when I pass away. I beg of you. I don’t have better company; there’s nobody else I would write a letter like this to, my pets, my friends, who saved me from despair in the worst times. Come meet me!

My best regards to all of you. We all discovered the incommunicable within ourselves, we found each other and we loved each other.

Yours, Ester