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| This is RooRoo. |
This is RooRoo. He came down off my roof one Friday night, walked into my house and never left. This is the first picture I have of him, taken a few days after he came to live with me.
I did the right thing, of course. I put up posters, checked all the local notice boards, rang the Lost Dogs and the Lort Smith and the council pound in case anyone was looking for him. I even asked the neighbors. And all the time I was doing that, that whole first weekend, I kept telling myself how I wasn't letting myself bond with him because he obviously belonged to someone. He just didn't look as if he'd been living on the street; he was clean, without fleas, and not at all thin, and he showed no signs of worm infestation. Someone had clearly been taking care of him, until very recently, at least.
On the Sunday night my next door neighbours came home from a weekend away. I asked them if they had a black and white cat and if he was missing. I explained about the cat who'd been living at my house since Friday, and the man came in with me to look at him. Oh yes, that's LeStat, he confidently said. My wife's cat. I picked up RooRoo and handed him over; he didn't seem too thrilled but he didn't resist either. The man left with him. I sat down and cried bitter tears for about three quarters of an hour. Because all of that brave talk about how I wsan't letting myself bond with him had turned out to be just that. Talk.
When I finished crying, I heard a small cry at the front door. When I opened it, there was RooRoo on the doorstep. He shot inside and went to earth in the kitchen cupboards, and he didn't come out for three days. I had to give him his meals in there. God knows how he was going to the lavatory. He must have been coming out when I was at work.
Anyway, I never heard from the neighbours again, so I took RooRoo to the vet for a checkup and registered him as mine. Happy ever after. I did see a cat whom I took for RooRoo a few months later in the street, and he was like enough to fool me, same markings and everything, same unusual face shape, but when I got home there was my RooRoo fast asleep on the sofa. Just one of those resemblances that do occur in neighbourhoods because the cats are related. I think that cat must have been the neighbours' LeStat.
So there we were. Me and RooRoo. He saw me through so much. And when the day finally came that he had to leave me, I couldn't bury him. I just couldn't put him in the ground. His cremated ashes are in a pewter casket in my bedroom, and there they'll stay.
But a cat as fine as RooRoo, I felt, deserved some kind of memorial, and so I created RooRoo Day. It's not quite a charity - there's no collecting of money or blankets or anything. More of a concept, really. On that day, the 14th of May because that was the day he first came into my life and I always celebrated it as his birthday, I ask you to do one act of kindness for an animal. Any animal. Or, you know, a bird, bee, reptile or whatever. You can do more, of course. But do one, on that day, somewhere between midnight and midnight. People all around the world do this. I like to think of a wave of kindness sweeping around the globe.
There's a Facebook group you can sign up to if you want. But it's not at all necessary. If you do sign up, you will not get harvested for anything. The group is just there for people to share ideas for their RooRoo Day observance, that's all. You can find it HERE
Please do this for me. For RooRoo. And pass it on.
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