An infinitely wide open field

It was as if we had crossed a border and entered a strange, still world. The morning was crisp shadows, bright blue sky, sharp yellow light, and suddenly everything turned soft, milky, and uncertain. We could only see half the bridge, half the hill ahead of us, half the trees lining the road. The river turned into a lake and the only thing that was alive were the birds on the weathered wooden poles in the water. But they too stood there quiet and still. The fields covered with puddles also disolved into a fog like the rest of the landscape. Had we entered a photograph?

We stopped short of our destination in front of a locked gate. This was the place. Beyond a bend in the road an infinetly wide field opened up. There, beside the blackberry bushes we decided to burry her.

I was afraid she would have to suffer, but perhaps even more so, I was terrified of seeing her dead. I had lost a white mouse and several fish as a little girl, but never a cat.

Since the previous night she had been throwing up dark brown liquid. She was no longer eating or walking much. Her time had come, it seemed. She moved from one of her favorite spots in the bedroom into the center of the living room. I put her blanket next to her and she laid down on it. She no longer purred when I petted her neck. But she did bend her head down ever so slightly. This is how I'd been telling her I loved her for years. Her favorite had been being scratched with a bare foot and it pleased her to hear her name said out loud. She would let you know by snapping her tail, twitching her back, and squinting. Her purr was the loudest and deepest purr of all the cats I had known. Her love bites hurt like no other. She would often guard the food bowl as if scared of running out of food. She'd sit in the center of the house and growl at us as we paced. She was fierce and often misunderstood by those that didn't know her gentle heart. This was Cici (Chichi). She died this morning at the age of fourteen.

I watched her die and said my goodbye to her before she breathed her last breath. My mom, her original cat mom, was there too, and so was Tim. Jonah was there, but I held him facing away and he seemed not to notice. She died quickly and when her heart stopped, she looked like she fell asleep, her face tucked behind her front paws. She looked beautiful, in fact, and seemed still to be listening to us.

The blackberry bushes is where my mom first heard her little voice and from where she rescued her. And now her final resting place is beside a patch of blackberry bushes on the edge of a wide field with little birds chirping and circling overhead.

Where do animal souls go after it's all over? If Cici had her way, perhaps tuna would grow on trees, the roads would be paved with garlic and yeast pills, and bare toes would scratch her behind the ears whenever she desired in her little cat heaven.