The myth of keeping a distance

When Ginger first showed up in the field behind the Post Office, a scrawny and beat-up geriatric tortoiseshell, I could tell she was sick. I was still in the throes of seeing Big Mike through his grueling skin grafting surgeries, so I was not excited about adding a patient to the hospital. But she looked so pathetic, oozing crud out of her nose and eyes, and it was such a cold December. I could not turn away.

Two weeks later she was in a crate in my garage, getting used to her first human relationship at the age of 13-14, awaiting her first encounter with a veterinarian. She was too sick to be feisty with me (she is a tortie after all) but she absolutely destroyed the veterinarian’s office when they let her out of the carrier too quickly for an exam. She had to be corralled and sedated, and the sleeping exam turned up very bad news: Ginger was dying of mouth cancer. It was determined that there was no need to spay her, and she was returned to me in the carrier, with the vet soberly prognosticating that she had only “a few weeks to a few months” to live.

I took her home, set her up in the downstairs bathroom with luxurious bedding, all the tuna she could eat, and told her I’d be her friend, and make her life wonderful, until she passed. Having just lost my beloved tortie Mocha a year before, I girded my heart, telling myself that “a few weeks to a few months” was not long enough to develop a deep love – the kind that would result in more heartache and tears. In that amount of time, I could show her the kindness she’d never had: a compassion that stopped short of love.

That was 16 months ago. This was Ginger today. How am I doing on keeping a distance?  😉

The truth is, when you love animals, sometimes a split second is all it takes for your defenses to crash to the ground. I did my best to keep Ginger at arm’s length; keeping her in the downstairs bathroom, where there’s no room to stretch out and cuddle up, helped. But when I realized she was NOT going to die imminently, and let her out to become a free-range cat, it was all over. She has become a major cuddle-bug in the upstairs bedroom she claimed as her own. Her hilarious bow-legged trot fractures me, as do her clumsy (and futile) attempts to integrate herself into the downstairs clan. She is finally learning that crouching at the bottom of the stairs and yowling angrily at the others is not a good way to make friends. But it all endears her to me, gets her further ensconced in my heart.

Yes, it will now hurt like hell when she does pass, but it really could not have gone any other way. As for why she’s living so long, who knows? I don’t think love can cause cancer to go into remission, but it certainly helps give one reason to live.

St. Francis, thanks for the graphic reminder that we can neither hurry nor deny love in any of its forms. And guide my sweet girl toward her life’s conclusion with love and strength from her adopted mom.