In which Giles lives, and I am reminded, again, that I know nothing

Two weeks ago, I wrote about an ailing kitten, one of a litter I’ve fostered since they were prematurely removed from their mother at the age of four weeks.

After a robust start, Giles, whom I considered the valedictorian of the group — a quick study with the litter box, confident and affectionate  — stalled.  For more than three weeks, while his siblings grew larger and more playful,  Giles sat wearily after eating, head down, eyes tired.  He did not play.  Failure to thrive, they call it, but naming is not explaining.

Drawing blood from the jugular of a 1.5-pound kitten is a dubious and potentially dangerous undertaking. So consultations with the vet amounted to highly educated guessing and dietary experimentation, none of which seemed to work.   As the days passed with no improvement, I felt sure he would die.  Until one night a week ago, when I offered the little man a food formulated for animals recovering from illness, injury or surgery.

Midway through my work shift the next morning,  the oppressive heaviness that had weighted my heart as Giles languished suddenly lifted.  In its place, a lightness, a distinct and strange optimism.  Something had shifted — I felt it — and a small, glad chorus arose within me, urging him on:  You can do it, Giles;  I know you can.  Go, Giles!  Go!

And he has:  In the last week, Giles has gained more than half a pound and begun playing again with his siblings,  though he still tires easily.  They’re bigger and heavier, and he has some catching up to do.  But he’s back in the game:

I can’t say why he turned around.  Maybe it was the food;  maybe he simply grew out of some physiological problem in the same way he grew into it.  Maybe he was helped by the loving energy and good wishes coming his way, some from people like you, some from friends I’d spoken to.

One of them is dead — Mike, whom I wrote about a couple months ago.  Mike is buried just up the hill in the town cemetery, and my sadness — at his death, in October, at Giles’ anticipated death, at a hundred indeterminate losses  — converged 10 days ago at the foot of his grave, too new yet to have a marker.

We miss you, I said.  We’re so sorry you’re gone.  And then I told him about Giles, and asked for any clarity or strength or support he could offer, knowing Mike was a helper in life, and feeling he wouldn’t mind being asked. Knowing, anyway, that it helped me to speak through him to whatever incorporeal goodness — whatever impalpable love — he is now part of.   To invoke our connection — mine and this small kitten’s — to the eternal mystery that transcends life and death.  It can be so lonely among the living.

Ten days later,  I am readying all four little cats — not just three — for neutering and placement in permanent homes.   I feel, acutely, the truth that nothing is certain.  That now is only now — that anything might happen to any of them in the aftertime,  as they enter their lives with other people.

But I am grateful to write this post,  in which Giles lives, and I am reminded, again, that I know nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tags: animals, cats, foster parent, kittens, loss, love, pets, spirituality