I’ve long felt that those who love and care for their feline companions also treat human beings kindly. And I suspect those who mistreat animals do the same to humans.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “There is little that separates humans from other sentient beings. We all feel joy, we all crave to be alive and to live freely and we all share this planet together.”
I think that if someone believes in respecting life that belief includes animals. Albert Schweitzer once said the best refuge from the misery of life were music and cats, and “compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
In literature cats are often seen as curious, mysterious, but most of all independent. Whether in “Alice in Wonderland” to T.S. Eliot’s poetry about cats, they are creatures that keep our interest, whether they are purring or playing with string. Sometimes they seem indifferent to us, as if they could not be bothered with our antics.
I realize I am more sensitive these days about appreciating my animal companions, one dog and three cats — one of them a cat dying from cancer. I even wrote a book about him, “Mr Tux Finds a Home.”
Tux is teaching me how to live. He’s not going gentle into the good night as the poet Dylan Thomas advised but wrestling to make every day count, purring his way through the time remaining.
These days he is losing weight but still sitting looking out the window, watching the world go by like some cat-like monk unperturbed by what others think or say. I wish I could be like him.
There are three subjects we try not to talk about over the dinner table: politics, taxes and death.
Politics is a no-no because we fear conflict. Taxes because no one wants to reveal their income. And death? Even though some 109 billion people are estimated to have died since the first of our species appeared on Earth, we think it’s not an appropriate topic for everyday conversations.
But not talking about or denying death does not get rid of its presence in our lives, reminding us that with all our attempts to hide from it, it will not leave us alone. The most important thing death teaches us is how best to live in the present. After all, it’s not death we really fear, but rather a difficult dying. Even here, there are ways to lessen pain.
I like to think that Tux and all the other animal companions I have known over the years will go on in some form, but I really don’t know for certain whether I will meet them again.
When I think about death, I recall one of the world’s great stories — about the death of Socrates, a story told by the philosopher Plato. Charged with disturbing the state with his philosophical teachings, Socrates was required to drink poison hemlock and die. When he was asked by his disciples if he feared death, he responded calmly that he did not. He reasoned that if death was simply a long sleep or a reunion with family and friends in the next life, he was not afraid.
I hope when it comes to living, I can be like Tux, curious. Or, as Scottish poet Alastair Reid wrote about a cat as a minority of one who tells the truth: Cats “distrust what is always said, ask odd questions, interfere in dreams, leave home, smell rats, have hunches.”
When Tux leaves this world, I will honor him by remembering the lessons he taught me about how best to live.
First lesson is to cherish life since it can be so short.
Second, just be there.
Third, hold unto those you love.
Fourth, stay curious.
Last, when it comes time to die, leave with courage and hope with the inner realization you have lived fully.
John C. Morgan is an author and teacher whose weekly columns appear at readingeagle.com He and his brother are co-authors of “Psychology of Death and Dying”, available on Amazon.
