My Cat Jane

We had to put Jane to sleep today. Nineteen years ago I adopted her from a vet in Iowa City who had a collection of homeless critters. When I saw her she saw me and we both smiled. It was February, the snow 9" deep and coming down. I brought her home. Oh, happy day! Safe day. I now look back through the actuality of the days between. The scenes of my life pop out at me as jewels in the mist and always Jane was in those scenes. A cat to come home to, she waited on the 3rd step up as I opened the door. There are details, lots of details in the scenes of memory but tonight all I can do is slide along the outline of those stories. Jane, I want you back. My young spry cat who skipped down the stairs to catch a catnip mouse I threw from the top and bring it back up to me for another go. I want you the old lady cat I had just this morning.  But, finally, it became too painful for me to watch you try to move across the room. I love you Jane and wish you well. Thanks for the memories, "Meow".

May he rest in peace

We buried Jack's ashes in the marigold garden and used the glass flower from Eureka Springs as his marker. I burned a tea-light candle  on the flower and the space was sacred to me because of memory -- Jack.  We share this, this living and dying. The term "share" is becoming the word of the decade where everything you experience has the option to "share" with others. We are all in the universal mix of something bigger then ourselves and it is here that we live and move and have our being. We may try for solitude but cannot hide from community. We are rarely just me. It took loosing Jack to show me the connection of all more closely.

My Mother's Day present was a real surprise -- a huge stone Buddha -- now sitting by the tiny pergola pond. It is quite fabulous -- adding the remembrance of peace to our lives. Jack and Buddha share our backyard place -- both communicating with a part of us beyond the 5 senses. This place beyond wafts in the light of Jack's candle. This place immediate is the image of meditation that sits in our hearts -- a depth of understanding we cannot put into words, cannot say --

Jack the Cat

I write and Jack watches over me.

How beautiful life is that someone in the world could miss the presence and mourn the absence of one scrawny small black and white cat. Life is indeed precious. I cry into the sky and something good hears me and knows that even here on Walnut Street a cat is missed mightily. Love goes deep whenever it is realized and always imbeds the assurance of hurt. Even so the love remains as the object of that love melts away. I miss Jack.

Cat Eyes

I walk through you in the air today . . . We had to put Jack the Cat to sleep on Friday and I feel him so close today. A cat like Jack was always there. When we brought home sacks of food from the grocery store he would be in the first empty sack; when I got home from work and changed my clothes he'd be in the shoebox before the shoes; when I cleaned the litter box Jack would jump in just before the litter was poured. He was the everywhere cat. And now he is gone. I miss him terribly because he was always in on the action of my at home life. . .I see him at the end of the yoga mat, on the afghan at nap time, on the kitchen counter when I opened the can of tuna for his dinner. He jumped over the dog and walked under the dog and cuddled with our older and less than joyful cat, Jane. This morning I remembered a poem I wrote which wasn't about him but, of course, he found his way into the heart of it.