Where are YOU, Bert? I know where I buried your body in the earth, wrapped in an Opthēan vestment, a few hours after your death around 4:30 a.m., on Wednesday, January 5th, 2022. But YOU were no longer in that body, and it is YOU I so profoundly love and miss. I deeply yearn for your constant, on-your-own-terms, orange-and-cream presence.
We first met after my friend Elaine, a veterinarian, called to say she had treated a young male Maine Coon who had been wounded while taking food from a Doberman Pinscher. She wanted to find the right home for this assertive cat and thought us the perfect match. I met her in the kennel area of her clinic, where she pointed you out on top of the dog cages calmly grooming your barely mature, but burly, bobcat-like self while establishing your dominion over the place. You looked so regal in your indifference to the raucous displays of canine displeasure swirling inches beneath you. I instantly bonded with you and your serene presence.
For two decades afterward, you kept me constantly in awe by engaging life with inspiring curiosity, drive, and courage. Even total blindness due to ocular melanoma during the latter half of your life did not diminish your character, vitality, or bearing. After your wizardly golden eyes were removed, you revealed a mysterious form of sight that gave you the vision of a Greek seer.
Every day, I celebrate the love and comfort we gave each other during our all-too-brief two decades together. I long ago began expecting you to always be somewhere nearby, monitoring Kyle and me from some cat-tactical vantage point—our trusted, vigilant, and occasionally napping guardian.
You are here with me now because I keep you and your character alive in my heart, mind, and imagination. If nowhere else, your being and existence go on, with and within me. I made it my sacred responsibility to keep YOU present in this world, and I will keep that vow until my life ends with me carrying you in my arms.
Should the magical thinkers be right that consciousness continues after death, look for me, Bertie. I will be looking for you, and we will find each other. But based on science, experience, and critical thinking, I am of the opinion that life is conditional and temporary, subject to the laws and terms of the universe. When my inevitable death comes, I intend to honor you by stepping with determination into the mystery of the entropic void into which YOU disappeared like a brilliant orange campfire spark soaring high overhead and into the deep starry night. I drew strength from your example of living with fire and persistence, and I will strive to engage death as courageously, nobly, and receptively as YOU did.
For now, I take comfort in the anamnesis of the softness of your face and chin, your chest and warm, round belly, the moist coolness of your nose, the resonant rumble of your purr, and the restrained power of your great paws, ever so softly scanning my hands and face as if you were reading braille.
For as long as I have consciousness, I will love and honor you and your Maine Coon ways with the whole of my being. I will maintain the hope that somewhere, somehow, beyond memories and dreams, I will once again hear your Murrreep, delight at the sight of YOU trotting toward me, and again know the joy of scooping you up, holding you close, and sharing a tender Eskimo kiss with YOU.
Should this hope go unrealized—should I never again get to see or touch YOU—I doubt I will ever again experience the astonishing, crackling, static-electric connection with the squirming-to-get-free wonder and mystery of life itself, as I so often did with YOU.
Wherever YOU have gone in spacetime, Buddy, I like to imagine you have finally found that perfect place you were always looking for and that you are basking there in the warm rays of the sun, free from pain, hunger, and thirst, vigilantly guarding the cosmos, and catching an occasional nap in endless comfort, security, and peace.
But I constantly suffer the desire for you to somehow know how much I love and miss you, and also the truth that I will never ever stop looking for YOU.
I love YOU, Bertie—forever… however long that may be.