It is always a sad time when we lose a cat. It’s even worse when we lose a cat we have a very close relationship with.
It’s true that we mourn a bond which is now gone. But that does not mean we can never find Special again.
If we forge on, we discover there are different, new, and wonderful Specials.
This is a concept difficult to understand. The first time we find True Love with a cat, it is so unexpected and so wondrous it feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. An unrepeatable event.
Yes, sadly, it is true. But also, gladly, it is also untrue.
It doesn’t feel like it, especially in the throes of mourning, but we can have this feeling again. It will simply take a different form.
In a scene by the writer Booth Tarkington, a young child loses their partially-eaten piece of candy. He cannot be consoled by offers of more candy, because “that one had convinced him of its sweetness.”
It can feel like that with our special cat. It always makes me extra sad when I meet someone who shares their sadness over such a loss, and then closes with, “So I’ll never have another cat. Just can’t duplicate that experience.”
I respect the desire to commemorate a wonderful cat. But is this really the proper way to do so?
The way to respect life is to behave in a life-enhancing manner.
We are devastated by loss. In the throes of mourning it seems like we will never be happy again. So much so, that it can feel like a “betrayal” to feel happy again.
But we can be. We should be.
This is the Cycle of Life.
We are born, we grown, and we die… so we can start again. It is one of the ways we, and our cats, are not so very different.We can choose to respect our “gone cats” by never loving another cat… or by loving another cat, and adding to the sum total of the love in the Universe.
Grieve not,but laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you…
I loved you so…
twas heaven here with you.
~Ilsa Paschal Richardson
There’s nothing wrong with generating more love in the world. And finding another source of Special in the Universe.
This is the path I have been following for many years. Loving another cat.