At the Moment

By Reverend Doug Kraft

When Sylvie first arrived at out home as a kitten, Damon took him into his room to play. Three hours later, Damon left Sylvie alone. Sylvie cried until someone came to be with him. I called him “aggressively affectionate” – he’d follow me around in the morning until I picked him up for a few minutes to scratch him. If anyone was talking in the house, he came to sit with them. He slept on my bed at night.

So recently when he started to crawl off and curl up under the deck alone, we took him to the vet. Cancer. I was teary-eyed on the way home knowing he wouldn’t be with us much longer.

Three years ago, when Sylvie’s companion, Bandit, was failing, she cried out in the night. But in the day, she purred, “talked” to us, sunned in the garden and seemed to want to be here. Then one day I found her paralyzed in the garden with bug crawling over her eyes. I didn’t think she wanted to be alive this way. A half hour later she relaxed in our arms as the vet injected her lethally.

But with Sylvie, it was harder to tell if he was suffering. When animals are sick or injured they often hide it and hide themselves. It’s easy to understand how this helps them survive in the wild.

But despite his hiding during the day, Sylvie came in to be around us at night. He seemed confused. He didn’t eat. But if we squirted liquefied food into his mouth, he’d lap it up like a baby. And he liked to sleep on our bed.

So we kept vigil, never completely certain whether to feed him or not, or if he still wanted to be alive or not. He had one obviously painful stretch, then settled down and died peacefully in the night.

Now, when I walk in the house at the end of the day, I still reflexively look for him to greet me and ask for a few strokes. I was one of his humans for eighteen years.

Love is a burden I would never want to live without.

Namasté,

Doug