Posted by
John David Powell on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 10:02:00 AM
We said
goodbye to
Sheba this week. It was a fast, slow
ending to a long, good life.
In these
days of
terrorism and wars, of heated and shallow debates at the margins of
political ideologies,
maybe it’s good to stop and consider Sheba’s remarkable life.
She was a
stalker when
we met in New Mexico. I don’t know how,
but she would sneak into a slightly opened rear window of my minivan
secured
inside the garage and bolt out before I drove to work in the morning. She would return at night, when the family
gathered for dinner, to press pathetically against the patio door, face turned
away in feigned disinterest.
As her
visits became
more frequent, my wife and daughters took more interest in her. My daughters sat on the patio after school
and allowed her to jump into their laps as they napped in the afternoon
sun. My wife encouraged me to think
about leaving some food by the door.
We learned
more about
her life after she moved in. She ran
away from a neighborhood family, figuring her survival chances were
better in
the wild than as the tormented prisoner of a cruel child. A pellet in her leg came from the gun of our
neighbor’s boy who tried to keep her from feasting on the birds in his
father
aviary.
She was a
quiet
shadow, preferring solitude while she healed her wounds.
Sheba was
part of our
family for so long that we really can’t remember the exact day she moved
in. Was it 15 years ago? Maybe 16. How old was she when we met? Her small
size from her life on the streets
made determining her age difficult. We
settled on 17, maybe 18. That’s around
90 in human years.
She learned
to
talk. She could say “lasagna”, one of
her favorite dishes. She could not say “chicken”,
though, which she got every night for the past year or so. And, she liked to play Marco-Polo. Ask
visitors, if you don’t believe me.
Sheba and I
formed a
stronger bond during the two years of The Separation, the time my wife
moved to
Utah and my daughters were out of the house. She greeted me at the door each evening, and we sat together,
alone, in
my chair until overriding fatigue forced me to bed, where she slept by
my side
until morning.
She
returned to being
her mother’s cat when my wife moved back to the ranch with two more
black
cats. It’s a witch thing, being
surrounded by ebon familiars. She
reached an uneasy acceptance of the two usurpers, but demanded to be the
first
to sit in her mother’s lap in the mornings.
Sheba’s
kidneys failed
her in the end. Her eating dropped off
dramatically. We took her to the vet on
Thursday. She stopped drinking on Friday. She had a couple of tablespoons of cantaloupe
Saturday morning,
the last thing she would eat or drink. On Sunday, we cried and
told her it was time.
Monday morning, after
a long and sleepless night, we carried her to the hospital where we met
our daughters
and our new grandson. We stood by her
and stroked her and whispered to her our love as the drug quickly, too
quickly,
let her pass from us in peace.
It was a
good
day. No rain, no clouds. Sunlight
through the window of the hospital
created an inviting spot on the floor, and a bird on the roof peeked
inside.
So, why it
is so hard
to lose a pet? I believe some people
should not be allowed to have pets, just as some people should not be
allowed
to have children. Pets and children
should be only for people who love them and appreciate them, in happy
times and
in bad. When the bonding is true and
good, we project upon them our love and not a small amount of our
personality. We look at them and see a
little bit of ourselves. We see facial
expressions and expressions
of love others will not see. And the love
we take is equal to the love we
give.
Our
children move on
and create lives of their own. Our pets,
however, stay with us and become a greater part of our lives, so that
when the
time comes to say goodbye, the ache we feel is truly heartfelt because
we lose
a part of ourselves, the good and loving part.
I don’t
know, but I believe
God has a place for animals, just as he has a place for us. The God who created all things in heaven and
on earth, who knows and sees all, even unto the falling of a single
sparrow,
surely must have created a Paradise for pets. And it is there, I am sure, that Sheba sleeps in the sun, upon
her own
princess perch, and dines on fresh chicken and tuna. And
it is there she visits with our first
cat, Mrs. Chinchilla,
who will learn from Sheba all about our family, our
sorrows and our joys, and about our love for them.
(Video
commentary
version at www.youtube.com/jdp1953#p/a/u/0/_s2imoxIcXs)