The Mourning Hut

In early March, a friend did a reading for me using the I Ching. "You are in the mourning hut," she read. Spending time withdrawn from the world can bring illumination and restoration. After all, the Oracle pointed out, King Wen wrote the I Ching while spending thirty years in prison.

I am advised to "turn conflict into creative tension" and to "clarify and renew connection to the source." It said I will flourish if I let myself be led.

I find myself curiously reluctant to leave my house. Yesterday, I kept going back to bed to sleep, or lying on the floor to move the body about lazily, or resting in the sensation of energy. Outside were wild March winds and the hope of badly needed rain. The air was fresh and moist, the sort of weather that usually tempts me to a long walk. But I kept letting myself be led to just resting, as if in following the body's wisdom I will renew and clarify.

Because my understanding of grieving loss has been transformed through my experience with Louie-Louie, I feel uncertain what the mourning hut provides for me now. All my ideas about mourning, retreat, and grief have been loosened. There has been most of my life a romantic notion about grief, as if it were a special emotion much like falling in love. And always a story to go with it.

Eckhart Tolle writes, "Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is, rather than making up stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness."

I see that part of my story about grief has been that it is unhappy and that the story has led me away from the experience of the present moment. If I let myself rest in mourning the loss of Louie-Louie, of Bonsai, of relationships that have come to a close, of wanting something to be different, the story recedes.

I don't think the mourning hut is an unhappy place. It seems instead a place to rest, regroup, renew, and see where life wants to lead next. A place to celebrate Louie-Louie's form and formlessness and his contribution to well-being. I thought I would miss Louie's presence at the door to the kitchen in the mornings, but I have noticed instead a deep feeling of peace that he has gone free of form and that he is "all and everything" as Puff communicated through Sharon.

The door to the hut is open. Or, there is no hut. It's simple--just another experience that deepens Presence.

Joy

I find myself reluctant to put into words the experience I've had with Louie's passage. At the same time, it is a celebration I want to express in language.

When Louie's body ceased breathing, the other cats who were in for the night continued their sleeping. When I began to lay his body out on a red quilt and place objects to help with the crossing, they suddenly got active. In fact, they went into party mode. Felicity found a ball and brought it to Lou; TangaRoo batted another ball about the studio; Monkey Gurl and Oh-Oh went outside and tore up and down the large elm next to the studio door.

As it happened, when Louie's breath stopped, I was on the phone with a friend who has been an intimate part of this process. "This is different," I said. We were wondering if morphine was now what was wanted. His body had gone into contortions, his breath ragged, and there were some long cries.

On reflection, it was clearly a birthing out of form.

After death, the body continued its movements for a minute or so. We are so conditioned to see breathing that I kept waiting for the side of his body to rise again. I remember this with Bonsai and Little Little Spot. Is he gone? Something is. But the joy that had accompanied his leaving was even more apparent, more expanded, more palpable. I suspect it is this the others set out to celebrate with such exuberance.

In a short while, I will wrap his body for the next part of its journey--to take it to the vets' office for its waiting to be taken for cremation.

When I return, I predict the studio will feel like my heart does, both full and empty. Someone once said, "The absence of the dead is their way of appearing," but Louie has taught me something else--The presence of the departed is their way of appearing.

If I could purr for joy, I would.

Louie-Louie, March 3, 2005 - March 13, 2006

Living on Love

My friends and I in the last few days have felt perplexed at Louie-Louie's hanging around in the body. Surely, we have thought, he must be tired and wanting to go home. Or, perhaps he's changed his mind and wants to come back fully into the body. But when I give him offerings of his heavenly yogurt, he wants none of it. Nor water or any other liquid.

Sometimes he gives little mew-mews, as if he is in distress. I turn his limp body, I put my hand lightly next to his spine. I hold the jin shin jyutsu points of transition, the 4s, that are situated under the occiput. All that doing doesn't satisfy. Singing softly a rendition of a friend's song, "I Will Sing You All Home," and just being present seem to be the most welcomed strategies.

Louie's siblings and cousins continue their celebrations of life, as if nothing special is happening. They come in and out the door, chase balls and spirals and toss the catnip mouse, and test Puffer's resolve to keep them out of her part of the house. They curl in deep sleep, stare out the window, and rub against my legs. Each day, they give one look in on Louie tucked into his house for a few seconds as if to say, "Still here? Love you, bye."

When I was a young girl I aspired to be a missionary. I wanted to "save the world". That aspiration has shown itself through my entire life. For many years it was channeled into social activism of the progressive bent. It requires a lot of "doing" love, the sort you do for someone's good. The mind then logically insists that without constant vigilance to actively loving, the world will suffer. Exhausting for me and exhausting for others coming into contact with the energy of fixing.

My missionary zeal has greatly diminished in recent years. The remnants of it has popped up in the face of being with the cats who died in recent months. It's the habit of doing something to make it better, which is just another way of expressing feeling guilty. Jorge pointed out in a conversation that guilt is a distortion of compassion. How weird, he said, that we think if we love everyone we'll all be okay, but if we don't, we won't, as if Love is untrustworthy.

When Louie mews, I can create a story he is suffering and I must, at all cost, do something to remove his suffering. Or I can instead forgive the guilt that arises and sink back into the spaciousness of Love/Awareness/Consciousness/All/God/Life. I try turning, touching, sitting near, or not. In some way it is all the same if done with Presence.

When I asked Sharon what her impression is of Louie continuing to hang around, she wrote, "Lou is completely prepared to leave and unafraid. He just wants to get every last moment of love he can from you and everyone who love him and from the environment itself......" Once again, I am reminded of Pamela saying Love is enough. For these past few days, it seems all he needs is love to live on.

When I sat to write this a few days ago, I was going to title it, "One Less Bowl", but I saw immediately it was going to turn into a sad story. Louie's life is in no way a sad story. He is the sweetest being I've ever known. His life may seem brief to us but I suspect if he could say in words what this time has been like, he would say it's perfect.

Bliss

I don't know much about bliss. It hasn't been in my experience often. In the years I was sitting in Buddhist retreats, I recall only one retreat in which I experienced an ease that I guessed was close to bliss.

Some of my friends and acquaintances report being immersed in bliss at different times. And then, for many, immersed in the opposite. And the natural longing for getting back to bliss.

Louie is giving me a taste of something akin to bliss. Sharon senses he is quite blissful. It hadn't occurred to me that a body might really enjoy this transitioning out of itself. He has lost the ability to move except for an occasional shift of his head and a little pushing of the forelegs to adjust his position. There is a lot of eye movement, with his eyes half-open, as if in a dream state. His breathing is faster, his extremities noticeably colder. His little pink nose has gone white. His ears twitch now and then. If I stroke him lightly, he responds with a ragged purr.

As I write, the sun is shifting to the western horizon, five other cats are inside resting, and I have the Lou-Lou playlist going through my computer's speakers. Lama Gyurme is singing: "Calling the Lama from Afar". I sense Louie is calling bliss from near and afar for us all. The studio feels full of something almost tangible. I am willing to name it love.

Eckhart Tolle writes about "the love that has no opposite." I suspect this is the bliss that has no opposite, something soft and smooth that is Nothing, that is That which we all are.

Several people have remarked to me that these cats are lucky that I have become their human caretaker, but I see it quite differently, that I am the lucky one. Or, more accurately, that we are lucky together, serving one another equally.

Louie's house

As I write this, Lou-Lou is tucked into the little house a friend made to shelter him from the activities in my studio. All day he has alternated between the warmer under the rug and his house. This morning, he made an extraordinary effort to get outside and spend some time in one of the cat condos.

His hind legs have nearly lost their function. It was the first morning he didn't greet me at the door to the kitchen. For the past month, I've been feeding Puffer and Louie first. I moved Puff's dish to my sitting room and Louie took over the mat in the kitchen. He was very polite but certain about his separate feeding place and Puff gave way with grace.

He eventually wobbled into the kitchen, but nothing but a few sips of water tempted the body that is in its final shut-down.

Many animals, especially cats, choose to go off into hiding outside when it is close to their passage. The last two, Bonsai and Little Little Spot, have died indoors in the presence of humans. I think Lou is comfortable inside. He may, however, slip away when I am not there. This is so far a very quiet passage.

I wish I knew what I know to be true--we are everywhere, so there is no place to go or leave when the form dissolves through death. I wish I knew it in my bones. I think it would help the grief that comes over me in agonizing waves. The grief very well might still come, but perhaps it wouldn't leave me feeling so terribly bereft or lonely.

I long for the understanding of loneliness that Hafiz expresses: "...what is more alone than God?" It is, he says, "the quintessence of Loneliness."

Louie appears to me to have no longing, no resistance, no holding back. When I asked Sharon if his meows were asking for something I didn't know to give, she replied, "His small sweet meows are tender and loving....this is the gift of his process...."

Before Bonsai died, she asked through Sharon for a list of tasks I would like her to do on the other side. She said it was her way of packing her bag to go. Today, I offered some tasks to Louie. His ears perked up when I went through the list. I included a request for help to see through this cloud that keeps me from knowing non-separateness fully.

Soon, Louie will need neither the house of his body nor the constructions we have made for him to crawl into. I will keep his little indoor house for the others who also like resting in it and for a reminder of Louie's sweet countenance and how he graced my life for nearly a year. I will miss his small undemanding meow and his willingness to have his silky coat petted. I will for some time look for him at the kitchen door in the morning and grieve that he is not there and celebrate that he once was. I trust his wisdom in ease of coming and going is a transmission that will eventually come clear for me.

Fly away, dear boy, over the rainbow bridge and have a grand time.

Penelope's gift

A year ago, Penelope gave birth to a litter that has become known as The Gang of Four--Monkey Gurl, TangaRoo, Oh-Oh, and Louie-Louie. It was her first litter. I think it was starting to get a little crowded at my neighbor's, so when they were about six weeks old, she began bringing them around my house.

There's a cat path along fences and behind walls through the back yard of the house in between. Penelope was small enough to squeeze through the small opening between board fence and stone wall and her kittens were smaller still. The fence is opposite my studio door so I could easily catch sight of her and her brood. Soon, I was putting a small bit of food out near the fence. Soon they were feeling comfortable to stay in sight when I went outside.

My intention was to supplement their food a wee bit and to enjoy the antics of kittens. That was my plan. Penelope had another plan in mind, I think.

The first hook was acting on what I had been thinking about for some months--TNR. Trap Neuter Release. I did some research on line and came across two helpful websites at Alley Cats and Neighborhood Cats. I liked their approach to taking care of feral cat colonies without taking out the feral. It stabilizes the colony, prevents other cats from moving in to the neighborhood, and keeps them in their familiar extended family.

I approached my neighbors who I knew were feeding them and asked if they would like the support of TNR. They were enthusiastic and agreed to cooperate.

So it was that I began with the Gang of Four. Unfortunately, it took me some time to find the veterinarians I liked working with. Monkey Gurl and Louie-Louie especially suffered from rough handling. But they all survived the emotional and physical trauma, hung out on my patio even more, and eventually came inside for much of their days and nights.

Penelope was a gifted mom. I watched her confidence in her children's abilities. She demonstrated climbing up and coming down trees and dropping on the roof to run around and exploring the neighborhood with encouragement but no anxiety. It was if she was saying, "You can do this. I'm here, but really, you can do this on your own."

My own mother exhibited similar confidence, tinged naturally with some anxiety, in the children that came into her life. I marvel to think now how she, who never learned to ride a horse, would pack me a lunch and give me a send off on Blackie or Nellie when I was not more than eight. I spent whole days riding the ranch not seeing another human until I returned home.

Watching Penelope raise her children to confident, independent adolescents reminded me of the gift my parents gave me in setting me free from parental hovering. When I set sail for Japan at age 18 it was with excitement and inner certainty that I had what I needed to navigate life with curiosity and openness.

Soon after Penelope weaned her young cats and began spending more time back at my neighbor's house, she and a cousin were hit and killed by a car. Every now and then I catch a sense of her spirit, as if she comes back to check on the Gang. She will be waiting, I am sure, to help Louie-Louie over the rainbow bridge and then they will do whatever "cats" reunited do on the other side.

No doubt she knew all along how I would eventually surrender to her wise plan.

gender

A half dozen of the cats we were certain were girls have turned out to be boys. Of the Golden Girls, Blanche became Blake, Rose became Ross. The last of Mamacita's children turn out to be two boys and a girl instead of all girls.

A friend tells me it is common to have a higher percentage of males than females. This is good news for my pocket book. The boys, because of the simplicity of anatomy, are cheaper to do. They recover faster,too.

But there is a surprising adjustment on my part and others who know these cats. When Zorra turned into Zorro, I switched to calling him Zo-Zo. His name comes from the Spanish for "fox", but because we have an association with high masculine adventure and the name Zorro, the fit seemed less accurate. He's just too sweet to envision carrying a sword and dashing about on horseback. He is the one most likely to be found snuggled up to our sickly Louie-Louie in the morning. He walks closely to the others and seems not at all disturbed by TangaRoo's bossing him.

Yesterday, I took his sister Felicity to the vet's. Felicity, in a conversation through Sharon last week, said she would be ready on Tuesday. My friends and I imagined her checking her kitty calendar to be sure the day was clear for her rite-of-passage surgery.

I reminded her the evening before that it was Tuesday the next morning and I would be setting the trap. I see no need to hide the preparations, so I brought out the carrying trap, and the covers, and set the string that pulls the nail from under the door. In the morning, I set the door and put a little food inside the trap. Everyone knows what I am up to, so it is really up to whoever is willing to come forward to do so. Some mornings no one has been willing and ready.

After some hesitation, and a sense on my part that Felicity was considering waiting until the NEXT Tuesday, she entered and let herself be contained in trap, carrying trap, and car.

A few hours later our vet called to say Felicity is a boy.

I considered changing names to Felix, but Sharon said Felicity wants to keep his name. A friend suggested using Felicitito as an endearment.

It is only perception that has been jolted. I came of age in a time of a wave of feminism. We advocated for genderless baby clothes and activities with the belief it would lead to more equality and more freedom of expression. It interests me that I need to make an internal adjustment to the identity we name gender. Boy cat, girl cat, what does it matter?

Felicity is home now, greeted with affection by his siblings Zo-Zo and Rimpoche who see no difference in who he is. He was the last of the group I take care of who needed vet attentions. I'll move the trap to my neighbors with the hopes in the next weeks the last half dozen will come forward. I think they take courage to do so for the good of the colony. And I don't think they care in the least, once they are neutered and the hormones have calmed, if they are boy or girl.