Looked him in the eye as the sedative took effect. Kept repeating “Good kitty. You’re such a good kitty”.
We lose stuff - people, youth, friends, pets, careers, identities - all the time
I always promise at these moments that I will never take anything that I love for granted again. Never lie to myself that pets won’t get kidney disease, parents won’t have sudden heart attacks and prostate cancer. Never think that I can treat the thoughts and needs of my friends with indifference forever.
Never think that not saying what you feel is an acceptable way to live.
His eyes looked directly into mine, the way he always did when I left for work each day, looking with a cat’s certainty that I would return because “how could he not return to such a wonderful animal as me?”
I made that promise at the moments when I lost Eckart, after my mother, after leaving Litchfield after being, in effect, fired for incompetence as a teacher - promised each time, as if self-delusion was inoculation against the guilt of a job of loving badly done, inoculation against the guilt of shortcuts in action, passion, of care.
The supervising vet, at other times a very gruff, demanding person, was surprisingly kind. Perhaps my being wracked by loss and guilt made him seem gentler by comparison.
“Once he’s out the actual drug will work very fast. He won’t be suffering much longer.”
When I was a child my science teacher - the amazing Mrs. Heilmann - said that “when she was a girl” the worst thing you could say about someone was “he thinks the world owes him a living”. As if paychecks grew on trees and someone was supposed to pick them for him.
Not a great support of the Great Society, Mrs. Heilmann.Over and over again - “you’re a good kitty. Such a good cat. I love you. I love you. Good kitty. Good kitty.” His eyes never wavered - or closed.
I stack my hope against my self-knowledge.
I hope I never think the world owes me love. I know that sometimes I take the people and things I love for granted, as if it’s something due to me just because I’m using the available oxygen.
It’s not guaranteed that we will be loved. It’s something we all need - to receive and to give. But it is not guaranteed.
Plants leave the seed knowing they must have rain, not knowing they will get it. But still they leave the seed.
So I looked into his eyes as they went dark, truly dark.
Finally now I hope that in that cat’s mind, that cat’s heart, inside that miserably sick, pain-wracked cat’s body he felt a cat’s certainty that of course he was loved because I had come home for him.
And that now I could be certain that I was loved in a cat’s own way ....
...even if he was the one who was now leaving.
Thank you to Sebastian P. Goodkitty - the late Lord High Kitty of Congress Street.
