Come Back To Us!

I have tried to adopt the attitude that death is part of life…  When our animal companions leave us—always too soon—their spirits are being released to go on to the next adventure the Creator has in mind for them.  I want to believe the same about the eventual end of my own life, and those of the other human people I love.  I feel as if mourning and sadness over death shouldn’t be given the preponderance of attention our society bestows upon them.  We have forgotten that death is part of life.  We are born.  We die.  We go…where?  I don’t know, exactly, but I feel sure it is somewhere.  That the energy of the spirit is eternal and returns to this earthly plain…or perhaps the plain of another earth…as many times as the Creator bids it.

Still…

My sadness at the loss of my beloved Mo-Mo keeps…hanging on.

And I think I have a glimmer of understanding of why.

As I was collecting my series of old posts to meld into Mo’s story just after he died, I was struck as never before how hard he worked to be with us.  How insistent he was that he should be a member of our family.  How patient and persistent he was…for over two years.  Until we finally made the connection and brought him “home.”

And I realized…we have had one other feline spirit who was equally insistent he should live with us.  That was our Spritie—our Hairy Butt.  He originally “belonged” to our across-the-street neighbors.  But the minute he was old enough to be out the door of that house across the street, he was at our house.  All the time.  In our yard.  On the front porch.  From the time he was a small kitten.  We would pick him up, trek across the street with him, drop him on the other side of “his” fence, and by the time we could cross the street and walk up our sidewalk, he’d be sitting on our front porch.  Waiting.  He wanted US.  There was no way he was going to take “no” for an answer.  As hard as we tried to give him “back” to the neighbors, he tried harder to be with us. 

Finally, on Christmas Day of 1991, as we sat in our living room enjoying music and drinks, Spritie came over and literally threw himself against the front window.  Multiple times.

 “Let me in. I belong HERE.”

We brought him in.  And that was that.

Spritie lived with us in four different homes.  He indoctrinated a succession of younger felines…shared laps and beds and couches with a multitude of other cats over the sixteen years he was with us.  He was the head of the clan…the good-natured ruler of the roost.  But he was always more than “just” a cat (if there is such a thing.)  He was one of the peeps.  He looked you in the eye when he talked to you, for all the world as if he was a tiny human in a four-legged fur suit. 

Our Hairy Butt walked on in January of 2007. Seven months into our nightmarish term of indenture to that infernal restaurant.  I always felt that all he ever wanted was to be with us, and the restaurant took us away from home, from HIM, for more hours than his spirit could bear.  So he left us. 

We were heartbroken.  More so than we had been, guiltily, over the loss of any of our other animal companions to date.

Eight months later, Mo-mo arrived in our back yard.  And his journey into our house and hearts began.

I have said I don’t believe in that “rainbow bridge” stuff.  I don’t believe there are spirits eternally assigned to be the “pets” of human spirits.  I do believe there are spirits that are eternally connected, and who meet over and over again on their journeys through the universe.  And they don’t necessarily meet as “master” and “pet.”  That kind of relationship doesn’t have the chops to be written into the eternal order of things.

That said…   

I’ve come to believe it’s possible Sprite and Mo might just be the same spirit.  A spirit so connected to us—me or the husband, or both of us—that it is bound to return to us in some form as long as we all exist.  Our lives just won’t be…right…whenever that spirit is not with us.  We're desperate for the sweetness, the love, the devotion, that steadfast declaration of “I belong with YOU!”

When that spirit isn’t with us, we’re a little lost…a little empty…a little incomplete.

I’ve started leaving a dish of food out on the shed deck…a morsel to fuel the hearts of the many cats who wander through my yard.  I’ve taken to calling it “The Mo Memorial Food Dish.”  In his memory, yes. But also, as an offering.

To that sweet spirit that we are now without. 

Sometimes, I breathe a little prayer when I drop a handful of food into the dish.

“Come back to us, Mo-mo (Spritie.).  We miss you.”

I hope he hears.