I love wide by design. My adventures with feral cats are part of that. One learns a great deal by loving wild creatures we do not control, and truly that is all love if we are honest.
cAtticus was not part of our plan. He was an oops! Some of you were there and egged it on. Know I blame you for this sad I am having now, and I am equally––possibly more–– grateful as well.
cAtticus started hanging around Boutros and Maisey early in 2015. He was unpleasant and snarly. His growling and spitting disrupted morning feedings. But the price of a meal at Casa GiLi is to get fixed, so we caught him and did that thing. He would pop up intermittently and we were never all that happy to see him. He was mean.
He did save Boutros and Maisey last March when they were trapped in the board up. That is a fine tale for another day but he very determinedly guided us to find our missing beloved cats and in the time between our opening that building up and their eventual return to us he started camping out on our porch. By camping I mean laying in front of our door so constantly that that Sookie had to walk over him to go outside.
Do you remember those pictures of him staring inside at Marshall Matt Dillon? cAtticus the outside kitty pondering what was up with the inside life. I remember all of you saying he was on his way inside. I DENIED IT FOR A SECOND.
And that snarly, growly, unpleasant cat worked his way into our home and became a cuddle bug happiest when nestled on one of our chests, or laying on my clothes or layin’ with his bro.
And that was when cAtticus illustrated his first lesson to me. The worst of us can become the best of us with a little change of circumstance.
Sometimes he was still a pill. But the bromance was real, and his meow-wow became a welcome fixture, and it was so hard to let him go.
But grieving is part of loving. To love means there will be loss, and loss is never easy. The older I get the more I realize how one cannot separate loss from love and still I choose love. Now I consciously accept the pain, I love freely knowing what will follow. There may have been a time I was more in denial. All these cats put an end to that.
All our grief is mixed together. We do not keep our sadness separate, all loss blends into itself. With loss we dip into a wide reservoir we carry with us, always. It becomes increasingly important to me to feel all losses fully which takes a steady mind and heart and an abundance of skill. It has taken every loss to get me where I am now, and I am still learning.
All my losses, of people, of furry, feathered and scaly creatures, of family, friends, opportunities, of selves, of love itself, all of those in the past and those in the future are blended. To feel them, and honor them with heart and presence and all my skill takes the very best of me.
There have been times in my life when I looked away or made choices I perhaps wouldn’t now. When I was unable to feel the pain of loss, to bear it fully. Opportunities to bear witness and provide comfort were beyond me.
And so, every opportunity to be present with the pain of losses now is a gentleness to that self of my past. A kindness to a younger, more fragile, me. An honoring, also, of losses I didn't bear as skillfully. That is a lot to get from a cat, but he was that kind of cat.
Another lesson. To be present. To honor the losing that is part of loving because I do not think we can taste one without the other. To stay open and not to close, to feel what comes.
And so we sat with him and loved him on out.
The vet was kind. He didn’t suffer and it was clear that suffering would be on any other path and it would have been unkind to prolong his pain when the end was fixed. Cancer, an unwelcome guest, always.
I am grateful for a feral cat we called cAtticus. These cats remain my best and unexpected teachers