For My Future Self: Sanmu’s Memoir 009

Continuing to write about Sanmu today, I suddenly found myself short of words.

Eating, sleeping, staying beside the drawing board, coming over for a rub when I get home: I seem to have said quite a lot about all that already. What else is there to tell? A cat’s days do not contain that many new events. I do not want to force drama into his life just to fill an article.

As I talked it through, I returned to the original question: why do I want to write Sanmu’s Memoir?

I think the answer begins with those paintings.

Over the years, I have painted quite a few portraits of Sanmu. Some have already been given away. There are more photographs than paintings, though looking back, not as many as I imagined. What actually remains is, in the end, only a tiny part of all the days we have spent together.

Interestingly, seeing paintings from different periods often brings back fragments and little incidents from those years. They are not necessarily important events worth recording separately. Sometimes I cannot even give the full story of what happened before or afterward. I simply see the painting and remember a little more.

With the painting still before me, memory has somewhere to settle too.

To other people, Sanmu may be quite an ordinary cat. Standard American Shorthair tabby markings, nothing especially rare. Looking at his portrait, someone might notice his coat or expression and think the cat is cute, or the painting fairly good.

I see a little more.

I know that when he was young, the movement of a watercolor brush interested him, and he would reach out a paw to tap it. As he grew older, he more often simply lay beside me. After painting for a while, I would reach over to stroke him, feel the warmth beneath my fingertips, and say a few words to him. At the time, I did not think I was experiencing anything special. I was just painting, with a cat beside me.

Only when I tell it afterward do I realize that this is already a very particular kind of life.

Giving Sanmu a new look, painting him among flowers, or draping him in clothing is part of the fun of creating. I can put plenty of imagination onto paper. Yet however he changes in a painting, the Sanmu I know is always still there. Following that thread, I can also remember who I was then, what I liked, and what I wanted to try.

So painting so many Sanmus has also preserved some of my interests and feelings over the years.

From 2013 to now, we have reached our fourteenth year together.

Saying that length of time aloud feels different from leaving it unspoken. At two or three years, or three or four, I did not feel it so strongly. Now, adding it up, I am a little surprised: this cat has been beside me for so long.

Other than my parents, I find it hard to think of anyone who has participated so consistently in my everyday life. He does not need to know what keeps me busy each day, and he does not discuss life with me. But when I paint, he is beside me. When I return from going out, I sometimes first hear a “thump” from the inner room. A few seconds later, he ambles over. I stroke him, say a couple of things, and that little moment of the day passes just like that.

What seemed entirely ordinary then has accumulated into all these years.

I do not want to make keeping a cat sound noble. When I go out, I am still busy with my own things and do not think of him every moment. But coming home to a warm, responsive living creature who comes over to be close to you really does feel good. I want to preserve that little bit of good, along with who I actually was at the time.

Making these records lately, whether slowly writing myself or using AI to organize fragments of spoken recollection, feels a little like building a database for myself.

“Database” sounds rather rigid, but it is quite apt. Paintings, photographs, and writing each store a little something. Looking only at a photograph, I sometimes no longer remember why I took it. Adding a few sentences may help me recall more when I come across it later. I do not have to account for every day. I can preserve what I can for now.

I do not know how much of the present I will remember in another thirty or forty years. I cannot count entirely on thinking it through then. Some past events are hazy already. I can still write them down while I remember.

In our time in this world, we meet many people and some lovely living creatures. As connections form, our days gain more things that belong to us. Sanmu is one cat who has accompanied me for a long time. Writing about him also lets me look again at how I have actually lived these years.

Today I began feeling there was nothing to write. By the end of the conversation, I felt a reason to continue again.

When I come across these paintings and words in the future, I hope I can still remember: this was how Sanmu and I lived then.