We often overdo this for entertainment. There are decades of moving images of animals doing things in ways that make us laugh, cry, and lift us up somehow.
I was guilty of it with the cat I had put down a day ago. He had what I saw as a personal coolness, a style. And intelligence. I could, in the three months and eleven days I had him, see him think things through. The best way to drink from the toilet, how to use the footstool I put next to the bed to jump up on it. Which windows had the best views, where best to sleep at different times of the day.
This may make our time with the animals we take into our homes more valuable to us, but it also makes their deaths harder to bear. They have a kind of innocence to them that makes dying a cruel thing, a removal of life they don't deserve and don't see coming.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
My deepest condolences on the passing of Raymond, who did indeed seem like a very cool cat.
ReplyDeleteIf you reconsider and rescue another kitty, I hope he or she will have more time with you.
I thought of this, one of my favorite cat poems, after reading the sad news of Raymond's passing. Maybe I like it so much because it seems to say that animals are only with us for a short time and then they move on and we need to accept that's how things are. My condolences on the loss of your furry friend.
ReplyDeleteFog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
I've always like that poem, too. Wonderfully open to interpretation, and I like yours. If I'd read it when I was twelve, I'd have said it was a good description of how fog moves and can seems to have consciousness. Now I see it as a description of the transience of life.
DeleteThank you for sharing it with me and your kind words.