The World Wide Wail

(If you're just checking in, I'm in process of moving I Call It My Art to http://theh2obaby.wordpress.com/  For a bit, I will continue to post in both places.  Wordpress isn't all brownies and hot fudge either, but they're both free, so I'll settle down again with whichever is less crazy-making.)

Is it a wonder we aren't all of us head-in-the-oven, falling apart, heart-broken zombies?  As if into each of our own lives enough sorrow does not fall, there is hardly a tragedy in the world to which we might not be privy.  The most recent globally mourned devastation, the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, is certainly a catastrophe and it is right to reach out from our wealth to their poverty.  The web and other modern technology make it not just possible, but easy and immediate.  Any one of us can spare what it takes to save a life there right now.  Hundreds of thousands have died, uncounted more are without a roof, food, water.

Sure, I've sent money to the Salvation Army (who are doing great work there in Christ's name), but I've shed no tears for those pitiful people who have just lost everything when they had nothing before.  Do you know what pulls at my heartstrings this week?  A cat.  A cat I don't know who belongs to someone I've never met.  I follow the owner's Twitter feed because it's interesting to window-shop the life of a successful author, whose work I generally enjoy.  So I, a complete stranger, am watching Neil Gaiman lose the sweetest cat ever.  Her name is Zoe.  She is fourteen years old, blind, was given a hip replacement because of her arthritis, and now is being taken by an inoperable tumor.  She will cross the Rainbow Bridge tomorrow.  But not before her human soul-mate, a girl called Olga, took a red-eye from the west coast to Minnesota to say goodbye.

Is it the details, the cat, or the scale of the drama which jerks tear?  The population of a sizable city is crushed beneath its own dwellings, but that is so far removed from one's own experience that the news reels look like just another movie.  But a sweet little old cat walking feebly out of this world?  I've been in that movie.  I empathize.

empathy |ˈempəθē|
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Empathy has been a buzzword in recent years for the media and others.  They insist we empathize with all the victims in the world.  Who can understand what it feels like have loved ones flattened under cinder block?  Let alone share that feeling.

sympathy |ˈsimpəθē|
noun ( pl. -thies)
1 feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune

Sympathy is the word they're looking for.  I would never presume to share the grief and horror of people who are injured, dying of thirst, and mourning the sudden deaths of so many.

So, while I sympathize with those Haitians, I empathize with Neil and Olga.  And still I miss desperately a little old frail cat called Wordsworth-Fireproof-Chutney-BulletTrain-SignorBisogno-InternationalIncident.

Senior Moments

My sweet little baby boy cat is 16. That makes him an approximately ninety year old man. So, for that, he's been remarkably well. Three years ago he was diagnosed with chronic renal failure, a slow but incurable degeneration of the kidneys. It seemed like the beginning of the end. But minding his diet has kept his blood values reasonably stable. We lost Mango so unexpectedly to cancer before his condition began to change at all. The equivalent of fifteen years has passed for him since then and now is taking a little bit more of him away from me every day.

But life with a senior cat is quiet and gentle. He doesn't break things anymore. I do worry about him breaking a hip. He doesn't chew things up, but I wouldn't mind if he ate more. He sleeps even longer than young cats do, waking up to adjust his old bones or to go out and inspect the balcony, to sit in the sun. His little walnut brain is getting tired, too. He stops between rooms as though he's forgotten where he was going. He wants to be near me more than he used to. When he wakes up and I'm in another room, he calls out and comes looking for me. Any tender touch moves him to purring. He used to be more reserved. The aging process and a low protein diet are causing the flesh to melt from his frame. He's just a fur bag of bones and "Meh!" now. Until a few weeks ago, his movement and activity were unaffected. But his footing is less sure today ~the marble floors are a toss-up between becoming more difficult for him to get about on and a breeze for me to clean up the increasingly frequent urp~ and his jumps are more often a close call than an over-shoot anymore.

I am accustomed to my little old man, his occasional play, his serenity. Young cats look fat and crazy in their antics. I can't imagine a kitten in the house. They require so much supervision, so much guidance, so much vigilance. Exhausting. Sure, we get up in the middle of the night if he's hungry for meaty food and have a drowsy few minutes in the dim kitchen light, but then we're both back to sleep. No nocturnal rampages, bouncing off walls and tearing around. Maybe my sleep is lighter for keeping one ear open for the tell-tale sounds that I should immediately set him to the floor, but I remember the years of sleeping with that same ear open for little chewing sounds at the computer wires. It's very satisfying to provide a warm, safe place for a once-homeless cat to spend his retirement.

Right, everyone loves kittens, but providing love and comfort for a creature's declining years is that much the greater kindness. I've considered, for that time in the future when my life again has a cat-shaped hole in it, adoption of a senior citizen. To take someone out of a shelter and provide a real home at last, what a benevolence. But now that I am once more watching a loved one walking toward the Rainbow Bridge, I don't know how I'll get through it, let alone ask to fall in love again, knowing it won't be for long. Even now it doesn't seem so long ago when he was new and we had his whole life together in front of us. It's been a good life, more interesting than I ever expected it would be. But that has brought us so far from everything I know about veterinary medicine and I fear taking him in that he might catch something worse in the office. Yet, in two months, I will have to leave him for six weeks. Taking him with us on Home Leave is out of the question. It would do him in for certain. But how do I ask someone to take care of a cat near the end of his 9th life? Every time I leave, I promise him that I always come back. How can I risk breaking that promise, to not come back soon enough?