Saving Lives

Years ago, someone saved my life. No he didn't push me out of the way of a careening bus or anything. But I was a sucker for him straight away. He had this lovely long strawberry blond hair that would make Robert Redford jealous. And green eyes that were the most amazing color, like new aspen leaves in spring. That's how he got to me, with the strawberry blond hair and the big eyes. I fell for him not long after I met him.

He claimed he was lost. Somehow he'd lost his way, his family had disappeared, he was all alone in the world. I believed him of course. I found out years later from his former family that in reality he was a habitual liar when it suited him, but I never held that against him. He did what he had to do. Ultimately he did what he was supposed to do in this world; he saved my life. I think he was born to be at the right place at the right time and it was all somehow planned. Whether he knew that or not I was never able to get out of him, but I'm convinced of it.

See, a lot of our conversations were one sided. I talked and he either listened contentedly or ignored me, depending. I never took it personally when he ignored me. He was attuned to a higher calling, he was listening for more important things than the sound of my voice most days. He was closer to God or the Gods or the universal spirit than I. He had a wisdom about him that was both ethereal and ageless and at the same time very down to earth and to the point. I never knew which point of view I was going to get from him on a given day. He could be brutally frank in his assesments sometimes. Many is the day I wanted to kick his butt across the room because he was being a stubborn SOB, but I never did. In the end I'd just take several deep breaths, curse the Gods and then trusted that he knew what he was doing. How someone could be both of the Gods and a royal fucking pain in the ass at the same time is one of the mysteries of the boy. He was unique.

Those of you who've met him probably know who I'm talking about by now. Cinny showed up at a time and place in my life where I needed to move on, literally, but I didn't know how. He was the most unaffected, happy go lucky, sweethearted individual I'd ever met. How anyone could dislike him I will never understand. He was ten pounds of pure personality with the sunniest disposition of any cat I've ever known. But my oldest sister took an immediate disliking to him. This is not surprising given her sour personality. I guess it was like nails on a blackboard to her to see a creature so happy and positive bounding around the place.

I was living with both my sisters when he showed up. When I was young I used to wonder if I'd ever be free of my family. I was afraid I'd die in that house I'd grown up in, that I'd never find the strength to leave or never be allowed to leave. After my mother and then my father died still I couldn't leave; I was too afraid I think, too convinced that I couldn't survive on my own. Growing up in an abusive family like mine you come to believe you're somehow fatalty flawed, fated to live and die in a cage. I didn't think I'd ever escape that house. I wasn't welcome or wanted there, but I didn't know how to survive out there either. I grew up in some inbetween place, some no man's land where there was just me, unwanted and unconnected to the family that brought me into this world and ill equiped to live in the real world that I didn't understand and that didn't understand me.

So along came this cat. I'm a sucker for soft and cute I will admit, but more than that he was so determinedly happy. He had done nothing to anyone and shown nothing but love to total strangers without qualification. My oldest sister didn't want to keep him. We argued about it, it was two against one but that didn't much matter. One day while I was at work she took him to the pound. When I came home that day and he didn't come running up to me I instantly knew why. I sprang him the next day and took him to live with a friend while I started looking for an apartment that took cats. He spent a month living with a friend who had just had knee surgery and couldn't walk. He spent most of that month camped out in her lap purring. Once again he was where he was supposed to be. The kid had a knack for being at the right place at the right time.

I moved out and took him with me. He was my best friend for a lot of years. I will never forget the time he decided to play in the christmas tree with his housemate and got caught up in the bead garland. He paniced and ran down the hall with garland wound around his neck. When I came out of the bedroom to see what all the noise was about he tried his best to look nonchalant with bead garland wrapped around his neck and trailing out behind him, the other end still attached to the tree. "Do, what do you mean what did I do?" I still laugh when I think about that look on his face. Like I said before, the boy was a habitual liar, no doubt.

He saved me and gave me my life. Without him the last 12 years would have been very different, if I even would have survived it all. I owed him big time.

I let him go today. He was unhappy and in pain with a half dozen physical problems. He told me last night, in his own way, that he'd had enough so I set him free this morning. He saved my life and the best I could do for him was set him free. It somehow doesn't seem like it's enough for someone who gave me so much.