by Michael
The love that I have for my cats is a very pure love. It is unencumbered by human silliness. It is unconditional. Do you have the same sort of love for your cat?
You can find out how much you love your cat by the impact she has on you when she dies.
There is a beauty in loving your cat that you don’t get when loving a person.
Perhaps it is because of the simplicity of it. Loving a person can be agony. Loving a cat is ecstasy. It is a smooth journey, untroubled by extraneous complexities that shouldn’t interfere.
Of course one wonders if people use cats as a receptacle for love that cannot be directed at a person. That may be the case sometimes. But for me, it isn’t.
We should not fool ourselves, though. There are moments when it can be frustrating living with a cat. They have their ways. If we respect those ways and adjust around them they no longer become irritants.
We don’t know if cats reciprocate our love. It actually doesn’t matter. That is what unconditional love is all about.
To give one’s love without expecting anything back is a true love. It is far better than the conditional, mixed up version that often troubles people.
I have always thought that our love for our cat is heightened by a small amount when the beginning of the relationship is the rescue of the cat by the person.
That first moment of rescue is an instantaneous expression of unconditional love that is burnished over the life of the relationship.
Our love for a cat will usually end in tears for us as the cat’s lifespan is much shorter than ours. Is this sadness the other side of the scale to all the happiness that the relationship brought to us?
Michael
Beautifully written. When our beloved cat died a few months ago, there is no other word to describe our feelings other than devastated. We loved him so purely and he us. We have since got two kittens, who are pure joy to have around, but there will forever be the hole in my heart left by our lost cat. I like to imagine that when I die, he’ll be there.
This is why it hurts so much. I pray there is a rainbow bridge that I can cross.