Have I ever told you about my family dog, Jasper? We got him through a rescue agency when he was one year old. That was thirteen years ago. Now, if I’m doing the math right, that makes him fourteen, and he is losing his eyesight and is almost 100% deaf. He still gets the zoomies every once in a while, but mostly prefers lying by my side while I work on the computer and sleeping the day away. And I suppose he’s earned that right after thirteen years as a family pet.
My only selfish ask of him was that he live long enough to help launch my kids into adulthood. And with now two out of three of them having left the nest, I suppose he’s holding up his end of the deal in exchange for all the love, adoration, dog treats, and bones a dog deserves.
He’s put up with a lot over the years, including the addition of a stray kitten my son adopted, oh, about eight years ago. Now, I am not exactly a cat person; I am definitely more of a dog person. But when I saw my son taming a feral kitten day after day through winter, wooing her with bacon and cheddar cheese despite the wind, rain, and snowstorms, he won me over.
He named her Batty because he said the dark patches around her eyes made her look like Batman. We had to trap her only once to get her spayed, and I promised her I would never do anything like that again unless she came to me first for help. I told her she could live her life on her terms from then on.
It didn’t take long for her to choose the best of both worlds, half an outdoor cat and half an indoor cat once she learned the trick of jumping in and out of an open window designed just for her.
Over the years, she tamed more and more, almost preferring her indoor life over the outdoors so long as we met her one demand: cheddar cheese every morning, no joke. And the more indoors she became, the more damned cat hair we had to deal with everywhere. And as angry as I would get about the cat hair during the day, we always made up in the evenings when she’d choose my lap for her leisure and belly rubs.
Sometime late summer, just before my son moved out for his big first adult job after college, he and my youngest mentioned not seeing her for a few days. A few days turned into weeks, and now it’s been more than a month, long enough to admit that she is probably gone for good. Her free spirit and untamed self must have met her match against something less tame and much bigger than her, which isn’t hard to imagine considering my home is in a mountain wilderness.
We’ve all come to accept the reality of it, but I still leave her food bowl full in foolish hope that she will return, even though I already know the truth.
And it’s got me thinking. How many of us have lost a person or a pet that has come and gone in our lives? It isn’t easy, is it?
Even now that I think of it, I wonder if we never should have tamed that starving stray kitten and saved me and my family all of this newly formed grief and cat hair that still lingers. But then I never would have known her free spirit, or found out that I could be a cat person after all, as she slowly and gently lulled me into her world and the love she gave so freely.
I am reminded that only when one truly loves something or someone can one fully understand the pain of grief. It is the bitter that comes with the sweet. I now know that I truly did love that cat, just as certain you are of your love of a pet or those you hold dear in your life.
And so nowadays, when Jasper walks a little slower than I would like, stops more frequently for sniffs, and even asks for shorter walks, I am more obliged to his old dog whims and wishes. I now see every day as a treasure we share, and I don’t take it for granted as I once did. Perhaps it’s one last gift given by a tamed stray cat.
What we hold dear, the love we share today, is one more lesson I have learned about gratitude. And that is no small matter now, is it?
