A friend remarked to me today as Ossie played with great vigour, roaring up and down the passage and terrorising the other cats that of course she doesn't know that she is deathly ill. I know, and I am devastated but she doesn't and so life goes on for her. She is fully engaged in the present, playing and eating and sleeping and doing what just grown cats do.
It is me who is peering uncertainly into the future, who knows what must come and that she will reach a point where she will have more bad days than good.
It is me who knows that cancer is a painful killer.
It is me who grieves and is angry and is disbeleiving for something that will happen in some as yet uncertain tomorrow.
But she doesn't know.....and so she is just present to today's joys and pleasure.
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Monday, 24 September 2012
Ossie
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| My dear little black cat Ossie in her favourite sleeping place |
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| Ossie and Bubble sharing - a rare moment |
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Still
It is early summer, well before the rains. Today the wind has dropped and it is hot and still and humid.
Despite the heat my precious little black cat is stretched across my lap, her breathy purr faint in the silence. I reflect how much I have come to love this fluffy little cat. She was a gift just under a year ago from Small. His way of easing me into his last year at high school and preparation for his departure to University in January next year. He said that he had read in the internet that a new pet could help ease a mothers feeling of "empty nest" and is typical of his thoughtfulness.
My iPad wobbles and typing one handed is frustratingly slow, yet I am disinclined to move her, and she purrs on, content. Memory and love swirl. Her insistence on climbing on to my shoulder to be fed when she was small and had not been properly weaned. A persistence that continued so that she snuggles there each morning as I say my prayers. Her love of food and crafty raiding of the other cats food and milk. Her dislike of the cold, resulting in her curling into the crook of my legs on a cold winters night. Her lightening fast race up the passage to bounce whoever she found in the kitchen, - cat, dog or human, guest or visitor. Only for her to leap away laughing.
On Wednesday the vet told me the the lumps I felt under her skin were a malignant lymphoma.
And disbelief wars with anger.
I choose stillness and quiet to let the violent emotions bleed out into.
And I ask myself........
How will I pray without her?
Despite the heat my precious little black cat is stretched across my lap, her breathy purr faint in the silence. I reflect how much I have come to love this fluffy little cat. She was a gift just under a year ago from Small. His way of easing me into his last year at high school and preparation for his departure to University in January next year. He said that he had read in the internet that a new pet could help ease a mothers feeling of "empty nest" and is typical of his thoughtfulness.
My iPad wobbles and typing one handed is frustratingly slow, yet I am disinclined to move her, and she purrs on, content. Memory and love swirl. Her insistence on climbing on to my shoulder to be fed when she was small and had not been properly weaned. A persistence that continued so that she snuggles there each morning as I say my prayers. Her love of food and crafty raiding of the other cats food and milk. Her dislike of the cold, resulting in her curling into the crook of my legs on a cold winters night. Her lightening fast race up the passage to bounce whoever she found in the kitchen, - cat, dog or human, guest or visitor. Only for her to leap away laughing.
On Wednesday the vet told me the the lumps I felt under her skin were a malignant lymphoma.
And disbelief wars with anger.
I choose stillness and quiet to let the violent emotions bleed out into.
And I ask myself........
How will I pray without her?
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