Keep My Words

Years after Tuffy died, we got another cat.  Her name was Crackers, or Muffins the Attack Cat according to my brother.

My cousin had found Crackers along with another female kitten in a field in New Orleans.  He named the other cat Ritz, and she lived across the river with my Aunt Emily.

When my parents finally moved out of New Orleans in 2002, they didn’t take Crackers with them.

“What did you guys do with Crackers?” I asked my mother.

“Well, we gave her to your Aunt Emily, but not long after, she died,” my mother told me.  “We think she died of a broken heart.”

I wonder if it’s possible.

Maybe Crackers felt so discarded that her heart just couldn’t maintain.  One day, she was in a loving home that she knew so well, and the next day she was taken away from it, never to return.  Days passed with her expecting to see us, the people she believed had love for her.  (This was a reasonable faith, as we had never done anything to prove otherwise.  Quite the contrary – we showed her nothing but affection.)

After a while, Crackers realized we were never coming back.  With no phone calls attempted or letters received, she was left to wonder if she was actually alone the entire time she was with us.

Some people never experience this kind of heartbreak.  I pity them, really.  It’s very bittersweet.  The hurt is so great because it is bred from something amazing.  And the more incredible it is, the more pain it causes.

Really, it physically hurts.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.