The Pope

By Ina Roy-Faderman

They have taken my cat and made him Pope.

In they came, seven in state, with scarlet robes and pointed, elfish, outlandish hats. “But Cardinal,” I cried to one at random, “he has no theological leanings!”

“Tut,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. “A mere technicality.”

They placed my cat–his name is Gerald–on a cushion, and I must say that he looked rather regal, dark against the purple velvet. Gerald’s eyes were wide, but not in a frightened way, but in the way they grew round when he heard the pop-top of a can of Fancy Feast that I gave him as a special treat. Now, he looked equally anticipatory, his head cocked to some heavenly host playing “Pomp and Circumstance” as they lifted him on the cushioned litter and carried him off.

After Gerald was borne away, the apartment felt quiescent, in waiting. They’d taken him away on a Friday; on Saturday and Sunday, my ear created Gerald’s soft pad-pad, filling in the sound I knew should be there though it wasn’t anymore. I tried to imagine him being ordained; would he need to wear watered-silk robes or could he just don little, red booties?

I, myself, felt untethered. I thought about putting away the ceramic bowl Gerald drank from and giving his plastic container of kibble to a city cat shelter, but what if Gerald came home? 

I thought about calling my new friends—three women I’d met at a history talk at the local public library—to see if they wanted to have coffee. But I couldn’t formulate the words to describe what had happened. Besides, what advice could anyone possibly give? I needed to stay home in case Gerald returned. I wouldn’t want him to come back to an empty apartment and think I had transported myself into anno Domini Geraldus. Sitting at home in my nubby pajamas after work, I felt like the living marker left of our time together.

The workweek started, and like every Monday, the fact-check room was quiet. Between searching for maps of the contested borders of the Western Sahara, I looked for other answers. Fortunately, in the research department, no one asks questions about searches on one’s browser. “What to do if your cat is elected pope” turned up several cat-group discussions about whether cats could be elected to the Senate, but nothing about positions of more eminence. 

I learned my city has several pet loss support groups, but I felt it wouldn’t be right to join. Gerald hadn’t gone over the “rainbow bridge”; he had gone to a different, possibly better, place. Others couldn’t be expected to sympathize with my particular situation. 

A cursory YouTube search led me to a video of the white smoke pouring from the Sistine Chapel chimney which indicates the choosing of the new pope. I pictured the moment before they lit the fire, cardinals gathering in ecstatic rings, shouting “Eccoci! Gerald!” arms raised in gratitude that the new Pope had been revealed. I found this cheering, that others were as grateful to have found him as I had been when I first saw the kitten who would become Gerald in the local shelter. As I moved through the week, the assuredly divine wisdom of an ecumenical college made me worry less about how often they would feed him and whether they’d know to provide him a ceramic water bowl rather than one of plastic, so that he wouldn’t get chin acne. Before Gerald, I hadn’t known that cats could get acne. 

The following Sunday was the day of Gerald’s papal inauguration. I turned on the TV, my feet on the coffee table in their toasty socks and a bag of Doritos in my lap. I had pictured him purring to the crowd below the balcony, but it was startling to actually see Gerald on the screen, elegant in his cream robes and red accoutrements. There he was, reborn, the pearly silk contrasting nicely with his black fur and highlighting the single white mitt on his right forepaw. This, on the cat who would struggle out of any clothing, including the red and green striped “My Christmas present was this stupid t-shirt” outfit I had picked out at Pet Food Express. Now I understood that it would have been beneath his dignity, and I was glad that I had bought him Science Diet instead of those ashy, grocery-store kibbles–he looked sleek and glossy on camera. 

I munched another Dorito as they panned over the flock of people gathering in the Vatican courtyard, waiting to glimpse their new Pope, to be blessed by his singular, slit, green gaze. Only now could I recognize the weight his calm, velvety presence had in my life. I could finally see clearly the nobility in his face, the reverent lineaments of his glossy cheekbones, his supernaturally symmetric whiskers.

As Gerald raised his paw to greet his flock, I rested my palm in the indentation where he’d once slept next to me and imagined he had absolved me for shooing him away from scratching the arms of the couch. I remembered how the gentle hollow held his warmth, even after he would wander away to nap elsewhere. Watching him on the television, I began to believe I could adjust to this change in our relationship. Surprises are, after all, a part of daily life. All along, Gerald was a Catholic! I had thought of him as mine from the time he was a small and spiky kitten; he had grown to a calm and satiny adulthood, had moved uncomplaining to a new city and new apartment, and yet had been more than mine all along. If I had known how to look, I could have seen what he would become, but I could, at least, see it now. And recognize how often I had been blessed, unknowing, by that very face–favored, however briefly, with the eyes of a god. 

Published November 24th, 2019