My friend George the Cat, aka George Vork, passed from this mortal coil a couple weeks back. George was a few months shy of 14 years. He came to live with my family 10 years ago and since then has been my close personal buddy in the workshop and home office each and every day.
I have been told, by those who know me well, that I prefer the company of cats, dogs and critters to people.
Well, yes.
In a world sullied beyond redemption by the ceaseless bullshit of human touchholes, blockheads, zealots, grifters and psychopaths, George was always there to provide relentless affection, love and conversation without reservation or judgment (as far as I could tell…). Boy did he talk. He never shut up.
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass was the last thing I recorded with George lurking in the background. He is off camera to my left. Marcy briefly wanders at my feet but she finds my music tedious and eventually went to her little bed and dozed. This is the one and only recording I have made with George in the room where he said absolutely nothing for the duration.
George was a super genius as cats and dogs go (I have seen many) and he was exceptionally gregarious, greeting anyone, people or animule, who came to the barn with his ebullient George je ne sais quoi. My little world has been sorely diminished by his exit.
G.V. sat in on endless consulting and data science zoom calls. When George was overcome with ennui at my corporate grind, he either closed his eyes and purred quietly or walked purposefully across the laptop keyboard hoping to shut down multiple apps, launch emails or –jackpot – power the machine down, before hopping off the desk to pursued his own chaotic agenda just out of my reach. This typically involved creating maximal disruption by crashing around in the lower level workshop on top of aquariums or the workbench, or better yet, cheerfully tormenting Marcy the little gray cat, with whom he shared the barn.
George Vork
little song, George Vork, is a sketch I recorded on a first take, it’s a little rough around the edges as befits a big orange barn cat like George. The video has a nice slide show of George being George.
George maintained cordial relations with Dog World. He and my cairn terrier Lucy (who is also 14 this year) were pals and they brizzhled together whenever Lucy visited my office. She was clearly crestfallen at his passing and stopped eating for the week after George went to the Emerald Beyond.
With war in Ukraine, climate change induced weather catastrophe, a knucklehead meltdown in Washington and the Detroit Tigers working up to another 100 loss season, an obituary for a cat actually seems uplifting.
Epilogue
My understanding is that Beethoven wrote the Bagatelles Op 126 for his cat George Fredrich. This performance of the first one of the set by Sviatoslav Richter is a revelation of kindness and is something I like to share. If you like more of this sort of thing, Arthur Schnabel has a wonderful version:
Enjoy…