Grief

We lost our cat today.  Raymond T, aka Ray, aka, Raymond Tom Cat, aka Ray Ray.  I loved my cat.  We got him out of a barn.  There was a sign on the side of the road that read “FREE KITTENS.”  We stopped and looked inside.  It was the week before Easter.  Mark and I had been together for a year and had decided it was time to have a pet together.  The little barn had a card board box filled with tiny, nearly new born, kittens.   Then there was one slightly larger kitten filled with rambunctious energy.  An orange ball of fluff bouncing over and around his brothers and sisters.  Only he wasn’t from this litter.  As it turned out they had given away the last litter of kittens and someone brought this little one back.  That was all I had to hear.  This little orange tiger was mine.  Mark tried to talk me out of it, but by the next morning he was in love with Ray as much as I was.  He hopped wildly all over my bed that night, like some kind of half cat half rabbit hybrid.  But when he got tired out I gathered him close to my heart.  He fell asleep and rested his cold little heart shaped nose on my chest.  From that moment I was Raymond’s mommy.  I guess that’s why twelve years later it feels like I’ve lost a child.  Tomorrow is Easter and I feel like a circle or a cycle has been completed.  I wonder if I’ll always think about my sweet cat at this time of year.  For now I imagine him in heaven running through fields chasing mice, but never harming them.  I see my dad reaching down to scratch his ears and introducing him to his new friend Kitty, my childhood pet.  I imagine that he remembers me and my love and that somehow he knows that he’ll see me again one day.  I believe this, controversial or not, and it gives me peace in the midst of my grief.

(image found at: www.catclipart.net/cat_clipart_images/sleepy_orange_cartoon_kitty_with_a_drop_shadow_0515-1004-0101-1243_SMU.jpg )