What’s to be done with a recliner in decline?

Two cats and 35 years later, it’s lost some shine. OK, a lot of shine, our essayist writes. But it still works. 

There are three authorized mammals in this house, and only one of them wants my recliner to go away. It’s not me or my cat. My recliner is, I am told, disreputable and embarrassing. That seems harsh, considering it’s only about 35 years old. It’s arguably a little worn, but who isn’t? You don’t abandon things because they’re old. You don’t just give them the heave-ho. The chair works just fine.

I come from people who would never get rid of something that worked just fine – and who, conversely, rarely bought anything they didn’t need. I didn’t think much of this life strategy as a young person, even though it resulted in my college education being paid for me, and my parents being secure enough in their old age. I thought, as a teenager, there were plenty of things we could have acquired that would have improved our lives quite nicely. My friends had such things; I could rattle them off in a heartbeat.

But even my frugal mother might have been scandalized by this particular chair.

True, she also would have taken better care of it. It looks as though it belongs in a trailer home four feet from a TV playing a “Golden Girls” marathon, and that was 15 years ago. Now it looks as if it got punted out of that trailer onto a front deck made of pallets under an awning of corrugated plastic.

Our first cat, Larry, loved this chair to ribbons. Our current cat, Tater, figured she’d finish the job.

There is some double-sided tape that was pressed onto the fabric about 25 years ago to annoy the cat, but it’s no longer sticky on the cat side, due to the accumulation of mystery lint. It’s plenty sticky on the chair side, and I can’t peel it off. Larry preferred to love the front end, and Tater has focused her affection on the back, sides, and top. 

There’s wood poking out of the corners. The top is particularly cushy and wide, and Tater thinks she looks great draped up there.

So there is also a stratum of cat fur in all the creases and the top. It resembles felt, due to the binding effect of the millions of dead skin cells I have contributed. You lose 100,000 skin cells a day, or 8 billion trillion, depending on whether you believe the medical establishment or the mattress industry. 

Additionally, there is a sedimentary layer of crumbs and food items that bounced freely off my chest for the first 20 years or rolled straight down without impediment for the last 15.

This chair has been with me through thick and not-quite-so-thick. It would be a treasure-trove for archaeologists of the future. The actual living shape of the occupant couldn’t be clearer if she were abruptly buried in soft sand and fossilized. Details of diet and clothing will be readily discernible. 

Two extinct cats could be cloned and set up in an island park for Jeff Goldblum to admire himself next to. He’ll still be around. He’s always turning up somewhere. 

What I’m saying is, if you get rid of an item with this much legacy in it, you might just as well go tromp all over those pterodactyl eggs they found in China. Is nothing sacred?

All told, there are a lot of us who count on this particular recliner. Billions, if you include the army of dust mites living off the discarded skin cells. 

Anytime I know I am vastly outnumbered, I like to sit quietly and blend in, and this chair is the perfect place to do so. There isn’t any call for getting a new one as long as I continue to have a cat and we both continue to shed. I wouldn’t want anyone to throw me out just because I’ve lost a little shine.

It seems to me there is something to be said for not acquiring things for the sake of novelty – and for being satisfied with what you’ve got. 

Unfortunately, that is not what is being said about this chair. Do I trade it in just because it has major patina and one person is appalled by it? Assuming I love him? 

Yeah. I guess so. Nuts. Goodbye, old friend. 

The chair, not the husband.