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It is interesting what a profound influence a non-human creature can have in our lives. Here is a kind of "eulogy" I wrote after a member of the family died. "Cute" isn't quite the right description of Roscoe, but, well....
Thoughts on Vitality and Mortality, Occasioned by a Pet’s Passing
…Then we bore our penultimate cat—Samantha remains—to his appointed hole in the warm
and receiving earth.
As our small cortege passed the driveway, en route to Roscoe’s rhododendron-shaded repose,
wheeling in the other direction was the recycling truck. It was pick-up day in our neighborhood.
Emblazoned on the truck, yellow-on-green, were the instructions, or hopes: “RECYCLE
REUSE RENEW”. Yes, I thought, that is, in some way, the fate of us all—indeed, the transititory
fate of all matter.
So, a living thing is just a collection of molecules? A collection, certainly, but “just…”? To raise
a point that Erwin Schrödinger himself, with his musings about the nature of life—not to mention
that famous cat of his own—would surely appreciate, it is all about the organization of
those molecules: Most collectives do not make life; a few, turbulent with just the right amount
and kind of energy, do, gloriously and riotously.
Roscoe, that great, riotous orange tabby and no foaming quantum brute, will purr among us
no more, nor warm our laps nor sleep at our feet nor welcome our many returns. His chemistry
is, now, forever altered, now to be part of a much greater chain, or pageant, of life.
We laid his bodily molecules, then, shrouded with his favorite wool blanket, into the shallow
yet abysmal pit. We gave him to the clay and its ecosystem, and we commended him to a profound
and very topical eternity.
Not that he, lately incarnated as a family pet, would be forgotten, of course. There are stories…:
Roscoe was the litter’s largest, gangliest, and klutziest. There was the time when he
hopped onto the toilet, not realizing that the lid was not down…and the time he attempted to
leap past a client at an open window, catching the luckless fellow’s large coffee in the
process…or the time he tried to enter though that same window as I was working late one
night, not noticing that, this time, the window was closed, and all I noticed was the thud and
the scrape of claws against glass as a wild, confused feline face disappeared toward the sidewalk
below…or the time that he attempted to leap onto the telephone stand, from where there is a
commanding view of the kitchen, but, falling short, instead landed on the water dish, sending
its contents spraying into the far reaches of the room, or the time that he, running full-tilt
toward the downward steps into the hall, was ambushed from a side door by his brother; startled,
he instead launched himself mightily, crashing like Evel Knievel, against the wall on the
far side….
Clumsy, and with a heart of gold—for his family. For catly challengers, he was, typically and
unapologetically, a beast of turf. (Francis Bacon talked of “tribal idols”, in discussing constraints
to human mental processing. Roscoe’s idols were, unquestionably and unquestioningly,
of the Tribe of Cat.) As late as May of his last full year, his eighteenth, Roscoe attempted to
deal with an interloper, driving his ancient frame from its (by that time) nearly useless hips to
galumph and shuffle purposefully, and not-quite futilely, across the back yard in emotionally
hot, though physically tepid pursuit. Roscoe’s always-imperfect symmetry may have finally
failed him though, as ever, he burned very bright. But now, if the metaphor of Cat Heaven can
be reified, he is once again the large, powerful animal of his youth, and has surely, satisfyingly,
marked his new territory. That evening, before and in the opposite direction from sunset, a
brilliant orange celestial glow came upon us, of a kind I had never before seen. It only lasted a
few minutes; yet the three of us who remained, Stephen, Eileen, and I (Amy had returned to
Olympia), marveled at it. Undoubtedly, there is a prosaic meteorological explanation. Howbeit,
it is consoling to think of it as a sign of safe arrival: Perhaps God is presently, as it were,
scratching him behind his oversized ears.
But we can, as well, note the symbolism without toting the metaphysical baggage. Recycle,
reuse, renew. For our family this has been a year of endings, of death. For me personally, this
includes the untimely demise of the main part of my career: assassinated and buried, even
though rigor mortis has not yet, and may never, set in. We, like Persephone, are creatures of
the seasons—of, that is to say, renewal: All rivers run to the sea, it is so. But the sun will again
rise, and again, and, through all its risings, upon joyous new flows from perpetual headwaters.
Life, then, not only recognizes life, but, drawing from the wellsprings of the universe, organizes
itself, and reorganizes itself, as well. It is thus beautiful, because it is, and, more, because we
make it so.
A. G. Swanson
29 July, 2006
Roscoe.jpg
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Originally Posted by me2
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