On the Way

This weekend, I had an interesting experience of compassion. After finding out that a co-worker could not care for her cat any longer and was thinking of sending the gato to a shelter, my partner and I decided to adopt the cat . Much strategizing and many unforeseen hurdles followed, but I finally met up with the co-worker this weekend and met the little cat in person. Her owner thanked me so many times for taking the cat. She and her two young boys were going to miss their furry friend, but she was most relieved that the cat was going on to a loving home.

I took the cage from the co-worker, young kitty inside. As I looked at her through the bars, I was struck by her singular face–a dividing line of light and dark tabby right down the center of her nose. She peered back at me gently yet inquisitively. She kept that simple, calm enthusiasm throughout the ride home–not meowing or mewling about the cage, the car, or being alone with a stranger. I spoke to her as I drove, telling her it would be OK and that we would love her and care for her.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I realized that these words were mostly comforting me. I flashed on the sadness of the two boys who had given up this sweet animal, and I felt my heart break a little at the painful changes of loss and death that arrive from time to time in life. It overwhelmed me; I felt as though I were kidnapping their loved one, and I could only imagine the change for this little cat who had known no other home.

Then, I looked at her again and saw her curious eyes with that line down her face right between them. I realized in that moment that relationships of all kinds come and go in our lives. We’re always in flux. The only proper way to be in them is to sit calmly in them and compassionately care for the other person/animal/plant/thing–all sentient beings, all of creation. In other words, you have to relate outward. It’s not about you and what you get from the relationship. It’s about your energy moving outward to compassionately embrace your partner.

I realized then that all I can do is show up and love this kleine Katze. That’s what she needs, and I can sit with that for as long as she’s in my life and I’m in hers. That’s what relationship is, and that’s what makes the change of loss and death a new beginning with new possibilities.