Wild Willa

I have a wild kitty named Willa. Wild Willa. She's small and a little skittish and she's got a major attitude on her, has had since she was a tiny kitten. I am her preferred person, and I'm majorly flattered by that. In the little apartment where I live, when the weather is warm, I leave open a window for her, and she comes and goes as she pleases, sometimes bringing me 'gifts' in the form of dead mice or (the greatest sorrow) half-live song birds. I can't get mad at her, though I am mad; she thinks she's showing me her affection, her appreciation, her little black kitty love. 

This has been a shadowed month, because the little black kitty who prefers me has gone missing. She's plum run away, gone adrift, disappeared into the growing cold and falling leaves of Autumn. It's been about a month now, since I saw her last. I'm not quite sure how to react to this kind of loss; I've done some of the necessary things--walked the neighborhood calling until I'm hoarse; sent pictures and warnings to the animal shelters; prayed a good deal--to God, to the gods, to the universe, to the animal kingdom (whoever or whatever controls the impulses of wild things, of tame things). There is more I could do, I know, and I'll do it. I'll cover all ground. But there's something I've got to admit: I'm not sure how much good any of it will do. 

I'm not a callous person (though my callousness has certainly grown a bit, this year, for a variety of reasons). I watch the weather getting colder, I hear reports of snow, I pass Willa's waiting food dish and little blue blanket tucked in the corner of my bedroom a hundred times every day, and there is an ache in the deepest part of me. What's ironic is that that deep part--the place where the sorrow lives--is also where the toughness that carries me through resides. I have, in this single part of my soul, the capacity to disintegrate into a thousand pieces and the capacity to staunchly hold myself upright, to power through and continue on. Two forces. Totally different yet equally powerful. Contained in one corner of my being. 

I'm of the opinion that this is true for many of us. That the things we feel most earnestly--our grief, our determination--often dwell in the same part of us. Just as purely, as urgently as we can feel our despair, we can feel our doggedness, and the fortitude that is an absolute necessity in this world. It's a nice thing to think, really: our light living right alongside our dark. It can also be a damned confusing thing; a guilt-inducing struggle for power--who'll win out? The sadness that honors the loss? The toughness that moves beyond it?

A few people know about this missing cat. Not many. All who do are truly kind. Yet many more might hear the news and be practical about it, sorry, but pragmatic. It's just a cat. Cats run away all the time. They also come back all the time. They have second families, other food sources. They find holes where they curl up to heal. They have holes where they curl up to die. They're a fickle animal, of independent mind. All of this is true. I've accepted all of it. I can go entire days not thinking about Willa. I will be honest: she was such a wild thing, sometimes I hardly notice her absence.

But I am not a callous person. I'm just living out, right now, from those twin forces that take up the same corner: I go about my work and I enjoy it. I do the things that need to be done. I do things that make me laugh, things that make me happy. I do generous things, and selfish things. Most of the time, I am cheerful, and why not? I have a beautiful life. A blessed one. And then I pass the waiting food dish, and the blue blanket in the corner, and I'm full of the knowledge of the small, wild thing I've lost.

We can never control the lives of the creatures we tame, not truly; they're given to their own secret impulses, their own half-feral ways. And this is okay. We can love them fiercely, with a kind of toughness, because we must. Because they will undoubtedly leave us before we leave them. And this is okay. We can forget about their leave taking, and move on to new things; this is okay. And then we can remember them in a swift instant as we unlock the door at the end of the day, or latch the window at the first cold wind, or walk down the street where we live, watchful for familiar movement, for the sudden return--all dark days forgotten--of the wild things we've loved.



Thanks for reading. 


Beth