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animalswithattitude

Celebrating Creatures Great and Small

The Little Warrior

Man. Cat. Life. Death.

Trying to decide what to wear

Sometimes beauty is just a blur

Her Regalness

... Continued from Page 2

I don’t want to have her cremated; I’m going to bury her in the backyard. Shopping for caskets is depressing, but I want to be prepared. I pay too much for a cheap bit of plastic, but it’s the best I can find. Now I have to dig a hole in the back yard. The ground is hard. Nothing is easy.

How do people deal with the death of a child? I couldn’t do that. I have a hard enough time dealing with the death of my cat. In the scope of the pain in the world, it’s a minor thing. But not so minor to me. You read about people that lose their spouses and children to violence or a car accident. How do they keep moving? One thing for certain; there’s plenty of pain to go around in the world.

I once negotiated a hard business deal with a woman; the matriarch of a black family. She was a hard core Christian fundamentalist. The negotiations were grueling, and stretched out over a long time. But one time she told me a joke, that wasn’t really a joke, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Q: “How do you make God laugh?”

A: “Tell him your plans.”

My plan was for Sammy and me to live together in harmony for a long time to come.

I have a fantasy; I’m at a cafe, near the water. It’s a sunny day; I’m drinking a glass of wine by myself. Where am I? Maybe Old Town Alexandria, in Virginia. Maybe someplace in Europe. Maybe the Caribbean. It doesn’t really matter; what matters is that I’m carefree. No worries; no one is dying; I have enough money and no debts. The sun is shining.

Or maybe I’m on a yacht; diving into a sunny clear ocean.

Or maybe anywhere but here and now.

Is my cat really that different from millions of others? No, not really. I think she’s a little prettier than most, a little more affectionate. She likes people (I don’t). But she’s mine. Somewhere, a child dies every minute of every day; that child’s parents are devastated because it’s their child; the rest of the world is completely unaffected.

The cycle of life and death. A tiger kills a baby gazelle in Africa. A shark eats a fish near a reef. A baby is born. An old lady dies. Flowers in a garden bloom and wilt. Corn grows in a field in Nebraska and is harvested.

Does any of it matter? I think it all matters. Especially if you’ve watched the gazelle or swam with the shark; if the old lady is your mother or the baby your daughter; or if you grew the garden or ate the corn.

An insect may live a couple days; a tree a hundred years; my cat, not long enough.

There is no lesson to this story. My grief feels big to me; it might seem silly to you. Perhaps a cat is just a cat. Perhaps not.

On Sunday, Samantha is still alive as I write this; she’s under 7 pounds now; she used to be over 11. But she’s still warm, and her fur is still very soft, although not quite as clean as it used to be. She can still hop up in a chair or on my bed, and she still likes take a stroll on the patio. She watches the birds as an innocent spectator, not a predator.

She’s an invalid now; I carry her around in my arms; we walk on the patio, and I put her in a chair so she can sit in the sun, like a retiree in Miami. We listen to the birds together. Man, those birds can sing!

A man doesn’t cry over money; or failure. But when the weak, and the gentle, and the loving, finally succumb; well, no shame in that.

It’s now Sunday; Sammy is still alive, with the help of pain medication and anti-inflammation medication, so she can eat. We used to be a little disciplined with her (not much), but even that small amount of restraint, now that her days are numbered, is no more. We found her sitting in a wing chair in a formerly forbidden area of the houses; no problem. She drinks out of the toilet; no problem! She’s now fed whenever she feels like eating. If she transfers money from my online bank account to ASPCA; no problem! One thing about cancer and dying; it makes the victim the boss.

With people and pets who are dying, you’re supposed to focus on appreciating the time they have left. Okay, sounds good. Hard to do.

I saw a program last night on TV about a man who had been abused by his father as a child; then his brother had murdered his mother; this man’s wife had recently died. How do people get by? I guess stories like this should help me keep the loss of (just) a cat in perspective, and, to some small degree, they do.

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The Little Warrior

– Looking At Me?



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