Luís Costa published his first volume of poetry, Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat, in November. “It is not about cats,” he said. “It’s about two lovers who cease to be lovers. There’s just a lot of symbolism about cats.” The next month, his cat, Pierogi (“dumpling” in Polish), fell ill. “He had his own Advent calendar. That’s when I noticed he’d lost his appetite,” says Costa. Pierogi had cancer, which had spread to his bowels and his liver. He died just before Christmas. “A couple of weeks ago, while I was hoovering the house, I pushed the table aside and there was a whisker. He was a tuxedo cat, so he had white whiskers. The contrast with the floor was quite striking. That was very hard.”
Everyone who has lost a pet will have a friend or acquaintance who said the wrong thing. When my puppy died of canine parvovirus, my friend kept referring to her as “it”. I’m not saying I have never forgiven her, but that was in 2003 and I don’t seem to have forgotten it. Other greatest hits include: “You still on about that?” and: “When are you getting another one?”
