Lenny, of Cone of Shame Fame
A Tribute to the Badass Barn Cat From my Season in Exile
Flintstitch Beadwork, my art business, has an origin story I’m not quite ready to tell.
It features a few interesting characters, to be sure.
Today, I thought I’d tell you about Lenny.
For 3 life-altering seasons, Lenny and I kept each other company, tending to each other’s existential angst and soft tissue wounds while all hell broke loose.
Of the many unforgettable moments he and I spent together from September ‘21 to June ‘22, the one I’ll recount in today’s post is my favorite.
Lenny’s no longer with us, and I’ve been meaning to pay tribute to this absolute legend. What better way to do that than to pass some of his wisdom along?
I hereby eulogize the cat.
1
January 2022. It’s the dead of night at my family’s cottage, which was once my great-grandmother’s cabin and year-round home. I’m halfway into a 9-month riverside stay, a slice of my life I might describe as equal parts rageful post-cancellation limbo and idyllic retreat to the backwoods of my childhood.
My phone says it’s -25°C out. That’s flash-freeze-your-digits-off cold. The Ottawa River out front has fully frozen over—and at this rate, hell shouldn’t be far behind.
Dramatic? That’ll be the hypothermia talking. Fine, let’s try something else:
The Kitchissippi’s been known to talk up a storm this time of year, but tonight, it’s quietly enjoying its well-earned annual shavasana under the stars.
The moon’s full, the snow’s immaculate, and I can see the horizon line over in Ontario, which is about 2 km across the water. In this blistering, hazeless cold, you can read a book by the silver light of the landscape. (That’s not to say you should, you masochist. The air will assault your face. You’ll lose an eyeball. We’ve got lamps. Go curl up inside. GO!)
Right, so that night, I’d decided I’d keep my Lenny indoors. He was under the weather from his latest epic scrap with Frank, the long-haired neighborhood terror with a thing for Lenny’s main squeeze, Charlotte, and an axe forever in need of grinding.
Visibly tired, weak, battered and bruised, probably feverish from the horrible puncture wounds on his forelegs inflicted by Fuckface Frank, I could’ve sworn my Lenny was half his usual size. He hadn’t lost any weight, but the deflated white balloon vibes he was giving off made him seem fragile and small. Ostensibly, every last bit of energy that would’ve otherwise powered his usual goofball antics was now being commandeered by an immune system working overtime.
Healthy outdoor cats are shockingly resilient to very cold temperatures. This one, for the time being, was in no state to be spending the night outside.
2
Having taken an exquisitely restorative nap, 2 minutes was all it took for my snow-white lunatic to come down with a gnarly case of kitty FOMO. Next thing I knew, he was yowling at the door, making a loud, melodramatic case in favor of his long-overdue liberation. Now, his case was admittedly airtight—which isn’t to say I was about to exercise anything resembling good judgment. After 15 minutes of robust negotiations almost ended in deadlock (read: deadbolt), I caved, letting him convince me he only needed out to do his business and get a quick break from the tropical indoor heat. (18°C wasn’t exactly beach weather, I protested! I’m telling you, this guy had a way with words.)
Five minutes, and he’d be right back, honest!
We sealed the deal with a spit-shake.
Who could ever have imagined that a territorial tomcat hell-bent on chasing skirt would lie through his teeth just to get what he wanted?
It was still early Covid. There’s no way I could have known, or something.
So I let my Lenny go.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand, my incorrigible little hobo was off to the races, revelling in 20 glorious inches of virgin powder! Quickly, I threw on my knee-length winter coat and my knee-high winter boots. Quickly, I opted to “fuck the tuque, grab the flashlight!” Using well-proven, art-of-the-state best practices for health crisis management, I jotted my hysteria down on a dirty napkin and quickly devised a failsafe plan: I’d easily catch up with my Lenny’s sorry, feverish Buttsicle®, haul my roughed-up baby back inside, heroically help him extend life number 5.2 of 9, and nurse him back to health well ahead of his next vicious pissing contest with Frank!!
Yeah, no. Wasn’t gonna happen. He was as good as gone, and I was an idiot, full stop.
My Lenny breezily scampered off, leaving me flailing in a snowbank, icy snot-rockets dangling under my nose, my teeth chattering. All in a night’s work, eh?
“Fuck-kin’ thank-kless j-j-job,” I huffed. “Guess I’ll g-go read a b-b-book. INS-SIDE.”
You read that right, by the way: My Lenny would spend his cat lives in one-tenth increments. He’d get more bang for his buck by fudging the numbers, he said. In Spinal Tap, Nigel gets more volume out of guitar amps that go to 11, remember? Right.
3
I just finished telling the story it as it played out, but I also glossed over the best part, the plot twist, and Lenny’s Lesson. Oops… Here’s a nice Canadian apology. Sohr-ry™!
OK. Let me rewind, zoom in, and deliver the goods.
I’d let the cat out thinking he wouldn’t get very far—or even want to venture out much past the kitchen deck. My stupid bet had backfired. He was off and running, mere moments from disappearing into the icy black woods, where frostbite and Frankbite both lurked, waiting to take him down.
By the time I gave chase, he was 10-15 feet away from me, swiftly moving toward a snowed-in part of the yard. This was a small, wooded area near the beach, tucked away behind a retaining wall. As I tried to catch up with him, feathery snow spilled over the top of my boots, its cold wet torture melting down my shins before pooling around my ankles. In my hurry, I’d skipped the hat, mitts, bells and whistles and had neglected to zip up my coat, too—so, although this giant, shivering dork was now almost waist-deep in snow, getting to the cat was going to require jumping through extra, ever-multiplying hoops. I was going to have to go through a snowbank and around the roll-in dock parked on the slope between the cottage and shore. Simultaneously.
Stubborn as hell, toting one mighty flashlight, I trudged through a dozen freak accidents begging to happen. Fuck-kin’ thank-kless j-j-job.
“C’mon, buddy… If you know what’s good for you, help me out here!”
I’d been moving 5 times faster than he was, and he was still getting away. No rush, no shirt, no shoes, no problem. Seriously… what kind of devilry was this?! ‘EYYY!!
I’ll never catch him, I thought. Forget it!
I GIVE UP.
My despondency waved its own little white flag shortly after I did.
I stood still. I watched and waited.
So quiet. There was cold dead silence where chirping crickets might’ve gone.
Sssssccccrrape.
Ssssssssssscrrrrrrrrrape.
By now, my blissed-out goofball was rubbing his twinkly white cheeks on nearby branches. He looked like he’d done one big balloonful of helium and 7 bumps of catnip while waiting around for the rapture. From what I could tell, he’d expanded to twice his usual volume—*ffffoop!*—in the time it had taken him to escape the kitchen.
Good God… He was absolutely fucking majestic.
Sovereign, self-possessed, he was just full of it: life, liberty, indomitable wildcat swagger.
Sssssssssssssscccrrrrrrrrrape.
On the other side of surrender, there we were—Lenny, me, the silver-blue expanse, and all navy silhouettes in their right place.
An epiphany had also just come home to roost:
My Lenny had never been mine.
4
It’s often said that cats adopt people. Though I’d never had a reason to doubt this particular truism, it registered on a whole new level that night, as I witnessed Lenny get totally smashed on Life using the simple, plentiful pleasures right under his nose. His Royal Eternity gave precisely zero fucks about my well-intentioned, harebrained scheme to extend his lifespan. Sanding down his adorable battle-scarred face on trunks and twigs and extra-tall grasses, he’d have given the World’s Happiest Clam a serious run for its money.
In roaring back to life like it was no big deal, he’d gone from being his owner’s pitiful, ragged, sickly ward to being the uncontested master of both our domains, all in the 12 seconds it had taken him to exit the kitchen into his treacherous glacial playground.
He never gave me a choice; the tricksy little bastard did, however, gift me a jarring reminder of his blessed place in all that is, which—inconvenient though it may seem to some—prominently features food chains, turf wars, and Mother Nature’s age-old Realpolitik.
Though I was still welcome to hang out with him in my funny little boots and coat, we were both very much in his element now—on equal footing, or something.
Here, he was no one’s pet, least of all mine.
Here, remembering there was nothing to be done about his primal drives and easy old friendship with the reaper, I started to wonder why saving my cat from himself had ever seemed like a good idea.
Here, I also started to suspect that animals may well exist in full awareness of their own mortality—and that people’s common assumption that they lack such awareness may well be a classic case of projection.
Once I finally came around, Lenny let me go, casually announcing he was off to enjoy Wim Hof’s latest new challenge, find his beloved Charlotte across the way, and ring in 2022 in style by watching his own iconic balls drop on life number 5.3 of 9.
REST IN POWER, YOU FORMIDABLE BEAST.
5 – ADDENDUM
a brief timeline; more cat pics!
To my family’s knowledge, Lenny was raised as a kitten by humans who later abandoned him. By the time I got to the cottage for my 9-month stay in September ‘21, he’d been around for a while; he was known to and liked by nearby cottage-dwellers, some of whom had fed him over the summer. When these folks left at the end of August, he ended up having to rough it on a bird-and-rodent diet.
By the time I showed up, he was emaciated, hypervigilant and slightly unpredictable; understandably, his adorable personality was having a hard time shining through his woods-weary bag of bones.
I started feeding him 2 squares a day. He mellowed out and became a real keeper.
Adopting a barn cat as a pet comes with tricky practical and ethical challenges.
Lenny was prone to getting into trouble…
…but, seeing as he was a nominal house cat having tasted real freedom, fully keeping him out of trouble would have had cruel and unintended consequences. We opted instead to make him part of the family while also honoring his feral tendencies.
I moved back to Montreal in July ‘22.
Weeks later, I was told that Lenny hadn’t been seen in some time.
Rest in peace, little buddy.
As I read before reaching the part of your epiphany, it was obvious to me Lenny belonged out there. Like a prize fighter getting up for the next round despite being battered and maybe even beaten. Brawlers do what that they do. And so it is with cats. Cats are simply elegant and delicate, and brutal and vicious at the same time. They're the epitome of liberty. A metaphor for freedom. Sovereign power personified. It's what makes them enchanting - and so fucking bad ass.
I loved this story.
Having grown up with cats, and now with birds, I can say that we do not have pets, we do not own other species. We have companions; we can help them out, we can care for them, when needed.
Lenny was your companion, which meant that he had the freedom to come and go as he desired. Your story confirmed what we humans ought to understand. Cooperation and compassion is better than competition and domination.