There’s a new girl in my life.
Her name is Daphne. She may be three years old, she may be younger. We don’t know, because she was a stray. She was picked up from the streets of another city not far from mine, went through the lost and found process without being found, and eventually made her way to the SPCA branch only a half-hour’s walk from where I work.
I haven’t written much in the last month, being paralyzed as I was with grief and uncertainty over what I should do with myself, now that Jazz is gone. For a few weeks I didn’t do much of anything but struggle through the day and cry through the night. By April 7th I was starting to retch whenever I got too anxious; by April 10th I was ready to die. I couldn’t see five minutes into my own future. I couldn’t get my head clear.
So on April 10th, in an effort to save my own life, I walked the thirty minutes to the SPCA when I got off work. I didn’t know what to say when I got there, but I thought maybe they could help me. Maybe they had some kind of grief counselling? Maybe they could tell me how to move through this moment?
“I just lost my cat,” I said. “She was twenty-two.” I could feel the sadness pooling in my throat, ready to explode if I opened my mouth again. The woman behind the desk was sympathetic, and listened while I told her about some of Jazz’s greatest hits. When I asked her how other people get through this she said, “Would you like to see the cats?”
That’s when I met Daphne. I spent about forty-five minutes with her, talking to her, stroking her soft fur, playing with her. The mind that had been in such turmoil when I walked into that room suddenly felt a peace that I had thought to be extinct. I could easily imagine myself holding her and talking to her for the next fifteen years. I could imagine her circling my ankles in the kitchen. Any desire I may have had to travel suddenly evaporated.
The next day I took some time off work and went back to the SPCA with a cat carrier. I had called first thing that morning and told them I was coming. I was coming to rescue her from this life of uncertainty, of being shuttled from one strange place to the next, of being a problem that needed solving.
The sadness of losing Jazz is still there. I still miss her, just as I still miss Domino. But it seems bearable now. Daphne does not replace Jazz; in fact, living with her is an entirely different experience from living with my first cats. She uses the house differently: different hiding places, different perches, different running routes. She chases catnip mice and brings them to me as gifts. She is fearless when she runs or jumps or asks for attention. She is whole-heartedly alive, and is doing her best to teach me how to live the same way.
As I write this, Daphne is curled up in a quilt on the armchair beside me, quietly lending me her strength. Later she will be running down the hall, leaping through the air, and reminding me how to laugh.
She was a rescue cat, a problem to be solved. But I have to ask, who rescued who?
Dedicated to Cali, Hoss, Ziggy and Meeks, all of whom have left us in the last few weeks. The world seems a little less bright without you in it.
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