Deborah Forster

My eldest daughter Phoebe’s house was robbed a while ago now. She came home after work and from picking up Rosie at childcare, walked into the little house and knew something was wrong. The front window was broken apart like an eggshell. All the drawers and the wardrobe in the bedroom were pulled out.
They don’t have much, they bought a house just before interest rates rose, and got caught in the endless increases. It’s been a struggle since they bought the house and the robbery was the last thing they needed. The thief had taken their wedding rings, (in the bedside drawer at night), Phoebe’s constant glucose monitor (she’s a type 1 diabetic) and weirdly, one little computer charger. Maybe that’s how the thief does the shopping; just poking around, seeing what’s there and dumping it in the trolley as if each house was a shop.
The police arrived and they did dust for fingerprints, but they were blunt. They said their valuables would not be found and that the thief probably hopped on a passing tram to make his getaway. Then they dusted everywhere, missing not a fingerprint of the thief they believed they would never catch. The thief who might have been made of smoke.
The day of the robbery was one of those thrusting days of wind and the last heat of a poor summer. It was as if you’d left the gas on the stove for too long and things were turning blue and a bit shaky. A long day circled with high cloud, but that day is gone and this one is here and there are jets passing overhead, heavy with people and luggage going on holiday. The sky doesn’t want to behave any more. Leaves are sticking to the wind and woodsmoke is back to remind us that we are on the edge of winter and that there had been another loss.

Phoebe and Leigh were robbed again when their 15-year-old cat George, passed away this week. At the vet’s, as he lay dying, Phoebe wrapped him in one of her jumpers and put some flowers from the garden under him and with both of them stroking him and talking to him, he died peacefully. He was Phoebe’s best friend and Leigh always loved him (he did the cat litter side of things). They wept for the life of George and for the years they had shared, for the houses they’d all lived in, and for the baby they had welcomed while he was there. They wept for the measure of his life within their own. He had always been an indoor cat until he got old and would sit in sunny spots on flowers in the garden. Fifteen years ago Phoebe and I drove to Melton to get him on a blistering day and there he was, a bright young George waiting for us, full of little squawks and miaows. We took him home in a picnic basket to her share house in Brunswick and he had the run of the place. He was always a charmer. Henry, my son-in-law reminded me that a while ago I wrote about the three of them: ‘Phoebe and Leigh met in a Fitzroy café about six years ago on one of those perfect nights. When Phoebe didn’t hear from him she thought, it’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know. In the end, they got together and now they make a family with George the massive cat.’ That was all a long time ago and Rosie girl is nearly two with a mop of dark curls. She called George ‘Miaow’.
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When Steve our ginger cat died, the vet called to say if we wanted to see him again, we’d better get down there. He was only seven and dying fast although he seemed just mildly unwell when we took him. The love I felt for that cat was astonishing. He just plodded around, looking for someone to sit with, someone to be with. When our son was doing his double masters, Steve stretched out on the dining room table, just helping out with his gorgeous presence. He died of kidney disease. I have his ashes and don’t want to empty them in case we move. It took me two weeks to stop crying. It was as if a thief had taken him.
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The real secret thief though is time, fully equipped with patience. In Sonnet Seven Milton writes: ‘How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!’
He was blind by his forties and died at 65 after all those poems and three marriages, the last, of 12 years, was he thought, his best. Time just rolls on, you’re bringing the babies home one by one and then the animals, to make life fuller; the dogs, Murphy, Sam and Maisy (still very much alive), stand before the world sweet-tempered and kind, sharing themselves and loving us for the longest time. The trouble is the love for them is so deep, losing them stays around you like a fog. And then Steve and Georgie, the kitten who liked to sit in the empty washing machine watching things go by and who grew to be a big affectionate lad. Time leaves but stays within.
Tonight, I hear the wail of police sirens trailing in pursuit of others, I hear drops of rain and then nothing but the sound of the air, which is empty and is not troubled.