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(3)
One day recently, after coming home from work, I let my cats outside
for the evening, as is their usual habit; and assumed, as I always
do, that they would be fine. Although I live at the center of
town and worry constantly about the dangers of traffic, 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 the opposite 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. He lay
stretched out on his belly, head turned to one side, one paw 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, and
knelt down myself 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!" and gave his body several insistent little shakes.
"Come on, now," I said, "you can do it. Wake
up! 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 and off the street. Again I listened
for a heartbeat. Again I petted him, tickled him about his
ears, 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 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 end.
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, sharp as a knife; the anger that 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
guilt; 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 to somehow not make sense:
it is simply too impossible to believe. DEATH IS A SORROWFUL LOVER
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