My baby cat died today around 5 AM. I knew it was coming. Acute renal failure. It was fast and it was fatal. She had disappeared for about 3 days last week and showed back up on Sunday afternoon. Most likely she got ahold of something toxic somewhere (could have been an ibuprofen somebody dropped) could have been anything. She was my buddy for over 11 years, coming to us in the middle of a righteous thunderstorm one night, huddled up against the front door crying to be let in, a wee babe, lost and scared. OR-- looking for me, which is what I prefer to think. She fit right in to our family, and a kitten she would come in here when I was on the computer and climb up my leg and across my shoulders and on top of my head. I was talking to my friend Beto one night and he asked what I had named her. I said I hadn't yet, I was waiting for her name to show itself. I started laughing because she climbing in my lap and I said to him "She climbs me like I'm Mt Everest." He paused and then said-- her name is Junko Tabei. The first woman to climb Mt Everest. And that was that. A striking cat, she looked like a Picasso...her face coloring in angles and 3 colors. She had a stripe of tawny and white on her all grey tail, about 2 inches down from the tip. She was magnificent.
I have been sick with a cold/flu thingy since Sunday night, and between coughing so hard my ribs hurt and nearly snotting myself to death, I am exhausted. And emotionally exhausted on top of it. I stayed home today to rest a couple of more days, and am doing a series of small chores around the house. A load of laundry including everything the kitty came in contact with. Honey wheat bread in the bread machine. Some breakfast and lunch dishes cleaned up. Jarred up the 4 pounds of pecan halves my brother sent me, and got them in the pantry. Had a little lunch and a very little nap and might get the birdcage cleaned, although it may wait for tomorrow. It's been beautiful outside-- nearly 60 degrees today. Coming home last night after 9 PM it was 55. At the end of November. Crazy.
The older I get, the more emotional I become over the loss of these pets. Is this colored by my own imminent mortality ? I will be 65 after the first of the year. Not particularly old these days, but no spring chicken either. Age gives a certain patina to memories and losses and love, I'm finding. I watch the world with different eyes. I experience things with a different heart. And for the first time in my life, I am sensing that there isn't enough time (or money, lol) to do all the things I want to do, to meet all the people I have yet to meet, or have all the adventures that are still out there waiting. Aging is a bittersweet blessing... beating the alternative, but still making you look at life so differently. My body is breaking down ever so slowly. My mind not as sharp as it once was. My peers are succumbing to the ravages of time too-- dying, losing their grown children, suffering with cancers of a million varieties. It's all around, this face slapping bite of reality. But when I look at the big picture, I can be grateful that I have had a full life. As full as it gets with love and family and friends, certainly. I have traveled some. More than some and not as much as others. I have seen almost every state in this country, Mexico, Hawaii, Canada, South America. I got to see Macchu Picchu. Diamond Head. Pike's Peak. The Grand Canyon. Yosemite. The Giant Redwoods. I have stood in places of power in the Blue Ridge Mountains, visited the battlegrounds of Gettysburg. I have driven north to Washington State up the Coastal Highway and stood at the edge of the grand Pacific Ocean, marveling at my own insignificance. It's been a full life. Much good, some not so good, some boringly ordinary. Maybe it doesn't get any better than that.
And so...on a sunny Saturday afternoon... I can smell the almost done honey wheat bread I'm making and thinking about what to cook that man for supper. That man who has loved me through thick and thin these last 25 years. That man who buried my baby cat this afternoon by himself, because I just couldn't do it. That man who holds me when I cry, no matter how snotty and coughy I am. That man who loves me when I can barely love myself... and then I know that this life of mine is precious. A gift from my Creator that I shall hold dearly and tight, until the very end.
