1989 —- Jan. 19 1998
Cat
Three years ago just over that now actually
everything started going wrong.
I was in 11th grade and although I was doing well I hated school.
But it was nothing compared to how I’d come to hate it.
With in 6 months I lost 5 animals 5 of my best friends.
School became a place of pure torture — my pain was intense and
I could only hold it in all day long. Summer came and another friend left me.
These were my childhood pets.
I felt like everything I had known for my whole life was collapsing
around me – some of them almost literally had been there my whole life
at least since I was 5 and 6.
When I thought things couldn’t possibly be worse one of my
cats disappeared – Ginger. Ginger was a new arrival in comparison
to the ones I had lost in the previous months. The shy orange cat had been
with us 3 years but the two of us had only been close for 3 months.
When my childhood cat Sticky (an orange cat who I had since I was 5)
disappeared and presumed dead Ginger moved in to take over my life.
I didn’t realize this then but I was devastated and terrified by her
disappearance nonetheless. Mom convinced me to try adopting a kitten,
one of a litter of strays that had come in to the vet I work at.
I told her I didn’t want to give up on Ginger but she told me it was perfectly
fine to have TWO cats. So we went up and I came home with
a 7 week old calico kitten and called her Jenny.
Jenny was the start of a new life for me. Together we did the
things that I used to talk about doing when Sticky was gone
and I would be old enough to teach a kitten in my own way.
I taught Jenny to wear a harness and to enjoy car rides — and she
showed me that I still had love to give in me.
Better still while Jenny and I began to teach each other,
Ginger returned home – just 5 days after I adopted Jenny.
I didn’t know then that it was not to be for long.
Ginger tolerated the kitten and I think even learned to like her.
But within 5 months she was dead chased across the road by
a raccoon and hit by a car. By this time I was a high school senior;
school had still been torturous when I got back from summer vacation
but worsened significantly after Ginger’s death.
I still passed my classes but most of the importance of them was gone
and some of the grades were lower than normal.
So much for the senior year being the best.
But then 2 things happened several months apart that have
changed my life forever.
I wrote a church whose teachings I liked in the spring asking for help
in receiving comfort and peace for all that had happened in
the last year and a half. A week after I wrote that letter I was sitting in band class
one morning and suddenly felt the most incredible joy I had felt
in a long time if ever. It was so overwhelming I could barely keep myself from
jumping and yelling and crying and laughing all at the same time.
It was the Joy of the Lord – it was so powerful that it could have been nothing else.
For that whole school day I felt as if nothing could go wrong.
After awhile it begin to leave but it did not leave me where I was before.
I guess the way to describe it is that it left me with hope.
I was able to enjoy my remaining band trips and even graduation
something I didn’t think possible before.
After graduation and just about halfway through summer I adopted
another kitten another stray from the clinic.
He was a little orange kitten I named Mango.
Since I was 5 there had been an orange cat in my life —
Sticky had started it and Ginger glued it in place.
After Ginger died I became quite jealous of anyone who had orange cats.
And then I found Mango. I again had my orange cat.
To me there were 2 miracles in this story.
The first was that joyous day in the spring after Ginger’s death.
The second was Ginger herself. Her life with me was short – but she
changed my life forever. I say that she was the bridge between my
childhood (my old life) and my adulthood (my new life).
She gave herself to me suddenly losing her long-lasting shyness
when my childhood friends died. And she brought with her 2 new friends
to be the friends of my new life — Jenny through her disappearance
and Mango through her death.
I didn’t think it would be possible to love them as much as I had loved Sticky
(since he was my first and we grew up together). But I was wrong — I do.
And Ginger I didn’t know how much I loved her when she was alive
but I know now.
God gave her a job to do and she did it.
Losing a furbaby is always hard — in my short life it has been the worst
thing I have ever experienced.
It never gets easier. But good things can come out of it.
They can teach us things even in their deaths — and sometimes we can
even come to appreciate them even more.
They are surely a gift from God.
It will be a great reunion when we meet again!
Shannon
| Ginger |