I thought he’d make it to Monday, but he didn’t. He wasn’t alone and he wasn’t in pain, at least.
My folks were looking after him and I visited with him Saturday afternoon, petted him, cuddled with him on the couch and played silly games (”Got your paw” and “Got your tail”). He seemed drugged, almost, but still managed to respond, looking up at me and getting his chin scritched.
Sunday at a little before 10 AM the phone rang; he was sinking fast. I couldn’t ge there in time. By 10:15 he was dead.
Having seen it coming may have helped. Having had 18 or so years with this cat surely helped. He lived a very long and full life.
And on the plus side, his page managed to get more hits — for a while anyway — than anything else here, even my posts about that show on Nickelodeon.
“STILL HERE” -Author Unknown-
I stood by your bed last night, I came to have a peep.
I could see that you were crying. You found it hard to sleep.
I whined to you softly as you brushed away a tear.
It’s me, I haven’t left you, I’m well, I’m fine, I’m here.
I gently put my paw on you. I smiled and said “it’s me.”
You looked so very tired and sank into a chair.
I tried so hard to let you know that I was standing there.
It’s possible for me to be so near you every day.
To say to you with certainty, “I never went away.”
You sat there very quietly, then smiled, I think you knew…
In the stillness of that evening, I was very close to you.
The day is over…I smile and watch you yawning.
And say “goodnight, God bless, I’ll see you in the morning.”
And when the time is right for you to cross the brief divide,
I’ll rush across to greet you and we’ll stand side by side.
I have so many things to show you, there’s so much for you to see.
Be patient, live your journey out…then come home to be with me.”
I’m so sorry Sputnik had to leave you — in typical cat fashion, he picked his own time and place not wanting you to be a witness to his defeat by death.
Oh man, you made me weep.
Someone told me once that the “reason” we outlive our pets is so to better appreciate them, or somesuch. That’s good enough for me.
Thank you.
That’s a sweet sentiment but I think it answers the wrong question. The question — implicitly — is what the purpose is of short lifespans in the pets we love. The correct response, I think, is “why seek purpose in the first place?”
There are some things which simply are. We don’t ask why 2 + 2 = 4; we just know it to be true, because it is. Some animals live x years, some y years, and asking the reason for that seems, to me, a little like asking the clouds why they rain sometimes. It’s just the nature of life.
It’s terrible to love and lose that love. It’s also inevitable. The reality of suffering and its cause is starkly limned in the Second Noble Truth of Buddhism.*
Of course, in order to be fully detached, we may have to lose one of the more poignant things that make us human. I don’t want to do that, and I don’t think most others do either.
So we weep. We love, we rail, we sorrow when we lose that to which we’re attached. The clouds gather and the rains fall, and life ends and it continues.
There isn’t a reason. Or at least I don’t see a reason. And that, hard as it may be to handle sometimes (cf. Job and the Whirlwind, wherein JHVH asks the question “Where were you when I made the earth and the heavens”) — as hard as it can sometimes be to handle the utterly inhuman, unfair nature of nature … that’s what’s good enough for me.
It has to be. There’s nothing else.
Thanks again. Really.
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* Attachment is the cause of suffering.