Grief,
upon grief, upon grief.
Paka
April 1, 2007 – March 1, 2024
I
adopted Paka from the Thunder Bay District Humane Society the summer after
moving back to Canada from Tanzania. Lily (8 years old at the time) did better
with another cat around, and since Ambrose had died while I was overseas, Paka
joined our household once Lily had had a chance to make it her own.
Paka
was the little grey kitten in a cage full of grey kittens who wouldn’t let me put
her back into the cage.
She
is probably the smartest cat I’ve ever been owned by. She taught me how to play
fetch with her pompoms, but she never fell for the red dot of the laser pointer
as she figured out right away that it was coming from the thing in my hand. She
could open closet doors from the inside or the outside. Treats are reserved for an after-claw-trimming reward - usually by the time I finished trimming Nuru's claws, Paka would be sitting by the treat cupboard and I would trim her claws right there. In the pandemic, she discovered the joy of Zoom calls and livestreaming - I swear that she could hear when I pressed "go live" or "join call" on my phone or computer, and people on the other end learned to recognize her tail sticking straight up in the air as she jumped up on my lap.
She
wasn’t a lap cat for the first half of her life, but sometime around her 8th
birthday she figured out that laps were a good place to be, and then she would
jump up on my lap as soon as I sat down. In the last year, she has moved
further up my body, and her favourite place became tucked right under my chin.
My
cats generally don’t eat people-food, but I occasionally snuck her bits of
salmon which she enjoyed. Nuru also taught her, in the past couple of years,
that yoghurt is a good thing. Her bizarre human food preferences were for
unsweetened grapefruit and porridge. It’s going to be hard to make myself my
usual Sunday morning porridge tomorrow without her by my chair begging to lick
out the bowl.
Paka
lived in more provinces than most Canadians. She was born in Thunder Bay (ON),
moved with me to Kenora (ON) for 8 months when I relocated temporarily for
work. She moved half-way across the country with me to Dartmouth (NS) when I
went back to school in 2014. She moved all the way across the country with me
to Chetwynd (BC) for my internship, and then she moved all the way back across
the country with me when I accepted my call here in Nerepis (NB).
She
had been failing over the past year and a half or so, and her vet and I were on
the same page with respect to no invasive tests or interventions for my
old-lady cat.
Right
from when she was a kitten, Paka liked to sleep under the covers with me,
curled up behind my knees. On the hottest nights of summer, she still needed to
be on the bed with me, but fortunately not under the covers – just reaching out
to make sure she was touching me with one paw. As she got more frail, she found
it harder to move around under the covers, but she still wanted to be near me
(and unfortunately gave me some bad scratches in the past few months, crawling
over my head in the middle of the night, which usually resulted in her being
banished from the bedroom for the remainder of the night). In the past couple
of months, she would only try to get up on the bed once a week or so.
Last
week, the night before I flew to Ontario for the week, was one of those nights.
She crawled up on the bed in the middle of the night, and eventually settled
down in front of the other pillow, and we had a good cuddle even though I had
to get up early the next morning to catch my flight.
When
I got home late Thursday night, she was clearly telling me that it was time,
and so Friday morning I called the vet’s office. They had an appointment at 11:30
(with my favourite vet in the practice, no less), and the vet affirmed what I
already knew. Shortly before noon, with assistance from the vet, Paka fell
asleep in my arms, tucked into her favourite spot under my chin.
When
I was making my sabbatical goals, I didn’t predict that so much of my time
would be spent processing grief.
I
went home from the vet’s on Friday, had lunch, and changed my clothes to go to Catria’s
funeral (my next door neighbour who died a couple of weeks ago). I sat in the
back row of the local Catholic church and let myself cry.
I
cried for Catria. I cried for Paka. I cried for Alison (a friend and colleague
who died on Ash Wednesday). I cried for all of the people whose funerals I have
conducted in the past 5 ½ years (most of them people I cared very deeply for).
It
was strange but good to be at a funeral with no responsibilities other than to
grieve. It was good to have permission to let my sadness out. And there was so
much comfort in the funeral liturgy, even though it was from a tradition not my
own. The reassurance of resurrection. The call of “come to me, all you who are
weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Fr. David spoke
words that my heart needed to hear on Friday afternoon, even though I was a
snotty mess through all of it.
Nuru
knows that something isn’t right. She sometimes wanders through the house meowing,
as if she is looking for Paka. But we are both going to be OK. (And when the
time is right, there will likely be another feline joining our household.)
Grief,
upon grief, upon grief. And yet there is a time for everything (one of the
other readings from Friday afternoon), and so I know that this season won’t last
forever. Lent will continue to unfold into Good Friday, and suffering
will be replaced by resurrection. But for now, this season seems to be a season of moving through grief.