2005-01-25 - 4:30 p.m.
A beautiful letter of love, written by my favourite gay boyfriend, to commemorate the passing of a great and beautiful soul, as Mel journeys from this plane of existence to the next. It was sent to the Feline Rescue Foundation of Alberta, whose nameless and generic reply did nothing to address their own complicity in the universe's cruelty: . . . . . hello,
just this morning i retrieved Mel the Cat, my 11-year-old part-siamese, from the Killarney Cat Hospital and brought him home for the last time. we've spent the day saying goodbye to one another in our unique, but clearly understood ways, and will no doubt continue to do so until the Dr. visits us at home tomorrow. we're both at peace after a long friendship, really far more than a friendship, that has bookended the best and the worst decade of my life. Mel was there as the performer, the tease, the muse, the healer, the student, the teacher, sometimes even a glimpse of the Absolute.
how many times we've done this before, i can't begin to imagine, but surely it's been eons. my intuition tells me that in the next go round, one of us at least will sport wings. i rather suspect that will be Mel. evolution is so cool.
along with Mel, i brought home one of your 2005 calendars and was just reading Dakota's story with Mel (ok, Mel wasn't really paying attention to the story, but we all have little delusions that get us through). i haven't gone further yet because something troubled me about the story.
there is no question that cruelty and neglect, harm of any kind to any creature, are unacceptable and non-violent solutions to the kind of systemic violence that we face on a daily basis, between people and between people and animals, are helpful and worth promoting. compassion and love are great healers.
and so it was with some alarm that i encountered the phrase "despicable wretch", which was used to describe the person who left Dakota's mother at the Montana farm where she was then found and rescued by Jackson.
i don't know how i might have "turned out" if my history had rounded a few different corners before leaving me sitting before my computer at this moment typing this note. instead of having parents who tried, even if they failed at least as often as they succeeded, to love and nourish me, i might have had parents who completely neglected me. instead of having parents with only moderate addictions to socially acceptable drugs (alcohol, cigarettes, sleeping pills, gambling), they might have chosen a life of complete inebriation, or crack. instead of my mother becoming only somewhat dopey after she had either her couple of rye and cokes or, eventually, her little blue pill before bedtime, she might have smacked herself up instead every night that she was separated from my father. instead of them reuniting 5 years later and remaining best friends until their respective deaths in 1992 and 1999, they might have been embittered enemies, continually fuelling a distorted view of each other in my developing sense of self. i might never have encountered unconditional love.
i could have become someone that might not have had enough love and compassion in his life that he would choose to leave a pregnant cat on a farm in Montana.
and so if i had thought to read Dakota's story before donating to FRFA, i might have hesitated to do so when i encountered the judgment and anger and violence bound up in the words "despicable wretch".
i applaud your efforts to reduce the risk of harm to our feline travelling companions on our often bewildering and sometimes lonely journeys. i hope that you can find as much compassion for those who harm as you do for the harmed. they are no less worthy.
much metta. XXXXX
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