In my top pocket I am carrying a small note book.
I take it around with me so that I can record little instances that may occur to me throughout the day. Hardly ever use it, but it’s there if I ever need it. Our lives are like little notebooks, and we have these stories that we carry around with us as long as we are alive. These stories shape, form and inform us.
When I was 14 or 15 I had a kitten that I called ‘Poo-Poo’. The others called him ‘Dippy’. I came home one day to find him spread out on front lawn after he was attacked by the Akita across the road. His fur was wet, his breathing faint. A couple of his claws were missing, showing that maybe he fought back. He had somehow managed to drag his little broken body over the road, under the gate and into our yard where we found him on the grass.
I was struck by the idea that he was coming home. He had to come home. I could see his desperation – “I want to go home. I don’t feel well, I just want to go home.” I recognize that feeling, or at least, I put my feelings onto my cat.
He came home to where it was safe, where nothing could hurt him. He needed to come home so that we could find him and take care of him.
So when we found him, we wrapped him in a towel. I could feel his little broken ribs. He cried out, but he didn’t fight me. As he lay on my lap, heaving and trying to breathe, I prayed. I also cried. I was old enough that I can’t excuse this as just being childish. It really hurt me. I loved this cat, and I hated that Akita. This was now the second of my pets the Akita had taken, as if that dog had it out for me.
I sat there silent in the back seat of the car on the way to the vet. I softly patted my cat, trying to comfort him. I prayed that God would heal his broken bones. Instead of spending what would be these last moments comforting him, or taking in the last of his living presence, I was not present. My mind was elsewhere. Did I have enough faith to heal his bones. Does God answer prayers. Is this such a selfish and stupid request. Does God care about boys and their hurt kittens.
By the time we got to the vet, he was dead. God had not healed his broken bones.
I'm ashamed to say that I cried like a child, as I handed the limp body of my favourite animal friend to the vet to be disposed of. When I got back home, I wrote a short poem about this tragedy. It’s long gone by now but the gist of it stays with me. I asked you to heal and you didn’t. I was hurting, and you were not there. I needed to come home, and there was nobody there.
Back at home I put out his food for the last time in his little cat dish and called him, the way I’d done night after night — a toothy whistle and a couple clangs of the metal dish against the tile.
I sat on the floor.
He was just a cat. He died. Cats die all the time. As stupid as it sounds, it really affected me. I don’t think any other pet’s death has affected me the same way. His death is symbolic for me.
Life is full of little tragedies that we carry around in our top pockets.
You may also like my previous work
On Impermanence, Writing Letters, and Film Photography
Thoughts On Death and Time Travel