Lucas, our old cat, died. I buried him in the woodlot, a place he loved.
When the Wise Woman adopted him from the animal shelter, the veterinarian told us he was about 3 years old and had a heart problem. The vet predicted Lucas wouldn’t last long.
Lucas was almost 20 when his heart finally failed.
The Wise Woman has always had cats. When she talks to cats, they listen.
I was raised among dogs by dog people. Cats have always been foreign to me.
I crossed some kind of bridge with Lucas.
When he came to live with us, Lucas insisted on sleeping either on me or next to me. When he got hungry, he told me, as if he were afraid to bother the Wise Woman. When service by the waitstaff was slow, he complained to me. If I slept past his breakfast time, he swatted me in the head, not the Wise Woman.
He sat on the seat beside me when I drove the truck as we moved from Galveston to San Antonio. He sat beside me when I drove the truck when we moved to Georgia.
Just about every word of this online collection of notes was written with Lucas curled up nearby. He found my writing to be a dull activity, which pleased him. He saw opportunities for undisturbed naps.
Psychologists say that grief disorients you — if you feel a loss as a great loss, a fundamental loss, you begin to question all your assumptions. You wonder what else you’ve taken for granted and what else could be taken away. You blunder around, confused and lost, for a while.
I buried Lucas almost two weeks ago. I’m just now able to post a note about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment