Cat Heaven

It's been 2 1/2 weeks now since I lost Madi. She was my cat. My pint size kitten like cat. And just as anyone who has experienced loss, grief, losing a pet, will tell you, it gets easier. On day zero I laid horizontal on my couch and silently sobbed until I was dry. By the next day I had to return to work and on brief occasions, I had to sneak away to be sorrowful. Day two was better, and then came the weekend, where a passion for life and the warm nature of spring all but settled my woes and brought some joy, and distractions to my everyday. Come day seven and eight, eleven and twelve, the reminders faded away, and the flowers were cleaned from the coffee table. I was back in a routine, safely insulated in an almost cocoon like feeling of being able to remember her without being sorrowful. The cat that remained would search the house, and on one occasion I am sure I caught her crying. I tended more to her, and to other love in my life, and it did, as I started this paragraph describing, become easier.

I am not a things person. With $200 in my pocket I'd rather have a memory than a thing. A trip tubing down a river outside Austin, Texas than a plasma television. My apartment smells lovely, but it's simple, filled with a lot more remembrances of things I've done, and people I love, than it is expensive things. But I am a girl, in more ways than an affinity for lip gloss and couture footwear, and on everyday, and twice on Tuesdays, I round the stairs of my second story apartment and hope, hope to dear God there is a present waiting for me in front of my doorstep. It is a ridiculous wish. Why who am I to deserve a gift, on any given day, and more importantly more so on Tuesdays. But I do, and it is, and so it will.

So perhaps it was a will to the universe to send me a gift. Perhaps it was a God knowing I was moving on, afraid to do so for fear of forgetting her - when I arrived home Sunday, after a weekend away, with a box for me.

I was holding an overnight bag, and my purse, two days of mail, and it was awfully warm and stuffy, but I was bound and determined to open the box before I walked inside.

A book, from my friend Lisa, "Cat Heaven," with a card "a bedtime story for you and Sophie."

I think she'd probably be very upset to know it made me cry, but it did, so don't tell her. Ok? But it also was just what I needed. Two and a half weeks out, moving on, needing to know that she's alright, and remembering her is a sweet memory.