Yesterday, took my cat in for her annual exam. She was due for "blood work"--such a strange way to describe it, both ghoulish and sanitized at the same time. Her panicked cries of pain when they were drawing blood, and when they were giving her a feline leukemia shot--I don't know what to say about it except that it was grim. I sat with my arms wrapped around my middle, as if they were doing it to me. She has been subdued for the last day or so, but she's also followed me around most of the time, rubbed against me for treats, played "catch the belt of the robe" from under the bed--in other words, her affection and joie de vivre seem not the least diminished by the cruel ordeal she has been through, which makes me feel even more culpable.
What do cats give us? My cat has never been all that demonstrative; but in her subtle way, she lets me know that I'm important to her. And she has become an indispensable part of my life, and my son's. It's not so much what she does as what she is.
Her two modes of being: watchful stillness, and play. If we could, as adults, try to function in those two modes a bit more often...the world would be a more interesting place, let's put it that way.
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