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Who can you talk to about a dead cat?
HEART Soul
By Karen Frank
Seventeen years ago I stopped at Sequim Bay State Park to have lunch. I watched three kittens vying for table scraps under a nearby picnic table. I asked the people camped up the hill if those were their cats. No, they said, they were just kittens who had been abandoned and were trying to survive on leftovers. Over the period of a week, I returned several times to the park to catch the kittens and bring them home with me. They lived in a burrow in the ground at the top of the bluff. The first two weren’t hard to catch — tuna was a great incentive — but the third one eluded me, even though she was the tiniest, until I borrowed a large humane trap and put smelly salmon inside. Those feral kittens were wild things. Untouchable. One time I went into the garage to feed them and they were gone. Except they weren’t. They had burrowed under the floor of one of the cabinets and curled up together in that space. Finally, Kokomo let me pet her, then Eleanor, but Thunderfoot was aloof. Every time I looked under the bed for him, he’d hiss and leap out at me. Then one day I heard a deep rumble while I petted Eleanor and discovered it came from him, from his hiding place under the bed. Not long after that day, he crawled up into my lap, wanting love. Kokomo had brief psychotic episodes in which she warred with the toilet brush. Eleanor tossed her head from side to side as she played with her scratching post. And Thunderfoot — well, the name fit. He was a wild man, but also my sensitive boy cat. T’foot died two weeks ago, the last of that generation of beloved cats. He was a tuxedo cat, black with a white shirtfront. He seemed to be OK, although old and tired, and then he got sick and then he was dead. Dana and I tried every medication the vets suggested and gave him fluids, but none of it did any good. He had just reached the great struggle of his dying. Working at home as I do, cats are my everyday companions. They go to the slider to have it opened, and left open, even during the winter. They follow me into the bathroom, then decide they want to leave again once the door is closed. The warm physicality of them comforts me. But they don’t live long enough and when each one dies, I grieve. They leave a hole in the house, an absence of being. I see them out of the corner of my eye. I expect them to come when I put out the food bowls. I miss them. Yet when there are always wars and murders and fires and fathers and children dying and starving people, I feel sheepish about talking to anyone about my sadness at Thunderfoot’s passing. There is usually someone with a greater reason for tears than us. And if they are being stoic, not visibly suffering, how can we talk about our smaller sorrows or joys? One of my friends always seems to have a more obscure and dangerous disease than me, or know someone who
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does. If I had shingles on my arm, she would talk about someone who had shingles covering their whole body inside and out, but laid in their hospital bed singing. If I had a neurological disorder, she would have a tumor growing slowly into her brain. This effectively shuts me up. Maybe that’s the purpose. Equally effective in silencing me is the dagger of “still” which many people wield. “Are you still missing your father?” “Are you still in bed with that flu?” “Are you still unemployed?” “Are you still …? What a list of rules we have about what we are supposed to feel and think and how long we are supposed to feel and think it! Yet we were created with the capacity for all of life’s emotions and the feeling of them and their expression is our wholeness. It undergirds our art and literature and music. Our sighs, our tears, our laughter, are our prayers. A friend said that she had an ongoing prayerful conversation with the universe and I think that this is what it consists of. Those of us lucky enough to have spouses who share life’s nitty-grittiness with us have a leg up. But one person is not enough. Spouses have to go off to work or to Arizona to visit sick relatives or they have their own fears and griefs. We can feel disappointed and aggrieved or we can make more friends. As we get older our losses accumulate. We may watch a parent die or see one of them descend into a chronic and debilitating illness. I’ve watched a friend move across the country to be with a long-lost love, another disappear into a nunnery and, later, an older friend cross that bridge between life and death. I hold them in my heart. I smile about their quirkiness. I remember times of deep sharing. But, as with Thunderfoot, I no longer can touch them or hug them. I may hope to reconnect with them in the realm of pure spirit, but this human, embodied existence retains only their imprint on my heart. We may be heav yhearted, but ultimately we create new families of relatives and friends as we go along. I like warm, huggy friends. Playful companions
who don’t judge me or analyze me. Friends with openhearted, infectious laughs like my grandmother’s. Individuals capable of radical hospitality, as our ministerial intern put it. So, who did I talk to about Thunderfoot? I talked to my brother who, as a child, chattered without ceasing. As an adult, he gradually became a good listener, particularly after I stopped thinking of him simply as my little brother. I cried, mostly, and rambled incoherently to a cat-loving friend. I sat in the sun listening to the birds sing, letting the warmth start to heal my heart. I walked the cobbled beach, teetering from rock to rock, skating on seaweed. I talked to myself, to the water, to the universe. I shook my fist at the mountains and asked what was the point of all the dying. Nobody can fix it. No one can answer those questions. But people can listen. They can hug you and touch your heart. Choose carefully when you share your tender spots, but share them. Karen Frank has an M.T.S. from Seattle University in Transforming Spirituality. She is a writer, spiritual director and photographer in Port Townsend. You are welcome to contact her at karenanddana1@q.com with questions or comments.
LIVING ON THE PENINSULA | SUMMER | JUNE 2012