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One day recently, after coming home from work, I let my cats outside for the evening, as is my usual habit; and assumed, as I always do, that they would be fine.  Although I live at the center of town and worry about the dangers traffic poses, my house is located in an alleyway; the number of cars passing by here, particularly when the workday's done, is pretty low.  And since both my cats, having come to me as full-grown strays, were used to being outside, I assumed the potential dangers were well known to them.  At any rate, they refused to be kept in.

Several hours passed.  Then – again according to habit – I went back out to check on them, to see whether they were ready yet to come inside and have a bite to eat.  I stood out on the porch and whistled, a signal they have come to recognize well.

One cat came home; the other did not.

I didn't worry about this too much at first, as it's not entirely uncommon for one or the other of the cats to be out of hearing range the first time I call.  After letting the one cat in and feeding him, however, I did take a quick walk around the neighborhood to see if I could discover where the other cat had got to.  He was not to be found.

An hour or so later I again went outside and whistled; still the missing cat did not appear.  Again I set off to make a search of the neighborhood, this time going in a different direction, out towards one of the main streets.  Though it was not his usual habit to go that way, I decided I had better check to make sure he wasn't there.

I found him soon enough.  He was lying on the narrow strip of grass that runs between the sidewalk and the curb.  Stretched out on his belly, head turned to one side, one of his paws was curled up around his nose and mouth.  He was dead.

I remember kneeling down before him and swearing softly.  I remember a young, thickly built woman coming out of a nearby house:  I stared at her, and she gave me a long, dark, guarded look – why exactly I do not know – then got into a car parked along the street and drove away.  I picked my cat up – his neck and legs had already stiffened, though his belly still felt warm – and carried him home.

I set him down first in the bit of yard at the side of my house, then crouched down beside him.  For a long time I sat there staring at this incredible, impossible thing, trying to understand it:  my cat was dead.  My cat was dead.

My cat was dead.

At last I picked him up again and took him inside my apartment, and there lay him down on the kitchen floor.  Again I knelt and stared, dumbstruck; and then I did all those curious and seemingly absurd things that people do when still in the first shock of grief:  I stroked him; I petted him; I tickled and scratched him up around his ears.  I commanded him, softly but urgently, to "Wake up now!  Wake up!" and gave his body several insistent little shakes.  "Come on, now," I said, "you can do it.  Wake up now!  Wake up!"  I pressed my ear against his body and listened for a heartbeat.  I did all these things knowing perfectly well that he was dead.  I examined his body:  it was quite unmarked except for a bit of blood about his nose and mouth.  It seemed he must have been hit by a car and died of internal injuries.  I hoped fervently that he had not suffered long, and was grateful that someone – the person who had hit him perhaps, or some passerby who'd witnessed the accident – cared enough to place him on the grass beside the street.  Again I listened for a heartbeat.  Again I petted him, tickled him about his ears; I even got out a brush and brushed his fur; and again could not help but feel that really, he was just sleeping.  I bent down close and nuzzled his neck, and was certain that I heard – several times I swear I heard – faintly, faintly, the sound of purring.

My first thought – when at last I could think clearly again – was that there is nothing, absolutely nothing more important in this world than kindness and compassion.  The second thought I had was that the reason for this lay in the knowledge that, at bottom, cruelty and suffering are the mainsprings of life, its fundamental condition.

Later that night, as I tossed and turned in bed, trying to sleep, other thoughts came to me.  Simple, obvious thoughts, like:  "Why him?"  Of all the cats I have ever known, he was the most personable – the most friendly, the most intelligent.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew him, liked him.  So, why him?  And why me?  Why is that I, who have struggled so hard my entire life to make the right decision, the honorable decision, the ethical choice; I, who have sought to see life clearly, truly; I, who have struggled to bring into being a greater vision of the possibilities that life may hold; why is that I must continuously struggle against problem after problem, trouble after trouble?  My path is strewn with obstacles, and they never seem to cease.

Eventually, of course, the obvious answer came.  Why not me?  What makes me think that I'm so special, so different, that I should not be subject to all the trials and tribulations that plague everyone else?  And yet, this is precisely what I have thought:  that I was special; that I was different; that I was, somehow, protected.  And because I thought this, I thought that my cats too would be protected, and that it was okay if, with caution, I allowed them to play outside where the traffic roared.

I was wrong.

The days following have been marked by what are, I suppose, the usual symptoms of grief:  the visceral pain, felt deep in the gut, that cuts sharp as a knife; the anger which boils up at unexpected moments; the expectation, born of long habit, that the one who has passed out of existence will be seen again where he is no more; the sense of guilty betrayal; the feeling of having been abandoned, left behind, bereft; the certain and intolerable knowledge that soon all memory of he who once was will grow increasingly shadowy and indistinct.  And then there are those moments of stunned realization, when what used to be and what now still is seem doomed to be forever beyond reconciliation:  the world keeps going on, even though he who has passed away is no longer here to see it.  This seems to me somehow to not make sense:  it is simply too impossible to believe.

DEATH IS A SORROWFUL LOVER