Vincent the cat, my friend for 18+ years, left us this morning. I and his buddy of 8 years, Noah the cat, are gonna miss him very much.
With the loss of a long-time animal companion, it's natural to reflect on the role such beings play in our lives. I suspect that "pets" serve many functions for people. I often joke, being a man living solo in sometimes hermitage conditions with cats, that my cats are my social life. Vincent the cat was with me during the second half of my marriage, and as my children grew through their pre-teens and teenage years. And he was with me after that for almost 10 years. For about a year, he was The Cat, before I met Noah, whom I adopted to give Vincent a playmate.
As I think of my relationship with Vincent, beside the fact that he was a comforting presence every single night and morning as he slept at the foot of my bed, he was also someone i simply turned to pet, to hang with for a few moments, randomly during the day, because of his beauty and sweet disposition. I was grateful to have him as my friend for those reasons. And even as he aged, and mostly slept, ate, and purred when petted, he was still a benign presence in my life. I would stop by him randomly during the day to pet him and check in. He was always glad to stretch out and show me his belly to rub. Nothing dramatic or big, but important, along with his very different friend, Noah, who is always getting into mischief, always wants to be the Alpha, and continues to be quite assertive in his social engagement, purring, biting my nose affectionately when he jumps up on the bed, etc. In many ways, with Vincent, it was simply his sweet, gentle presence in my life that I valued and for which I was grateful.
Reflecting on how I and others relate to their various animal friends, I think it's obvious that each one is different, and that as with our human friends, they play unique roles in our lives. I would go so far in the case of cats, and I am sure this is true with dogs and horses and other animals, that – despite some arguments by philosophers to the contrary – they have "personhood." They each have unique personalities, patterns of behavior, and roles they play in our lives based on who they ARE, which of course is the result of their genetic endowment and environmental history (as my teacher, Fred Skinner would have said).
So, missing Vincent is not missing some generic "pet," but rather is missing a particular personality, an individual with whom I had a special relationship, and with whom I lived for a longer period than with anyone else in my life except my wife of 20 years.