Lessons from my cat: Hope.

My cat's so cool she is even teaching me things in her absence. When she'd been gone a couple of days we started putting food out for just Maverick, a day or two later we put her bowl away. There will come a point in the next couple of weeks where we claim / cancel her insurance policy. As time goes on we increasingly live in the reality of Mookey not being around.

(i want to make it clear that i know i'm talking about a cat and how ridiculous that is, i do happen to think though, that these experiences speak into more important areas of life)

I was struck by a thought when Kelly put Mookey's bowl away. It was quite simply that she didn't throw it out. We kept it because we hoped she would come back and she'd need it again. Obviously Mookey was just missing and so her return was very possible (still is so people keep telling me "My cat was gone 2 weeks... my cat was away for 3 weeks, came back fine... i had a cat gone for a month... my cat came back with a broken leg and no tail... i heard a story of a cat gone for 2 years, came back fine" etc etc) but in this moment i was reminded of how i've felt about everyone i've known who's died.

As final as death seems to be, i still have a tiny but strong piece of me that is conviced it's not over at that point, that i'll relate to them again. I'm not talking about any kind of denial part of a grieving process (i don't think), i'm talking about the way that the question of what to do with someone's clothes after they've died lives on. That question is usually dealt with in fair immediacy of the death, but it's a quandry because we know the clothes won't be needed by the owner and also, i want to suggest from my experience, because we have hope of some sort of return or continuation / completion for them. This is hope.

I still have hope of getting the 'missing part' back of my grandmother (mamo) who died when i was 10. Likewise (again, aware of the ridiculous comparison), i have hope now of getting the missing part of Mookey's story back, whether she's died or been taken in or stolen by someone else, or trapped or lost somewhere. They say cats have 9 lives, Mookey isn't even two, so i have hope for the rest of her 8.07 lives.

I guess what i'm saying is that as a Christian i will speak of belief in some kind of complete, eternal, heavenly (and earthly) redemption, but in the moment that Kelly put Mookey's bowl away i was able to recognise it in the here and now and indeed, in past experiences of grief. At the point where it's tangible it moves from belief to hope and we can let that hope inform our belief.