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 ache for your on-your-own-terms sherbet-orange-and-cream, constant presence.
We first met after a veterinarian friend called to say she had treated a young male Maine Coon who had been injured while taking food from a Doberman Pinzer. She wanted to find the right home for this assertive cat and thought us a perfect match. I met her in the kennel area of the P.V. pet clinic, where she pointed you out. You were calmly grooming your barely mature, burly, bobcat-like self while establishing your dominion over the clinic from your position atop the dog cages. You looked so regal in your serene indifference to the raucous displays of canine displeasure swirling inches beneath you. I instantly bonded with you and your panache.
For two decades afterward, you constantly awed me by engaging life with inspiring curiosity, drive, and courage. Even total blindness during the latter half of your life caused by ocular melanoma did not diminish your character, vitality, or bold bearing. After they removed your wizardly golden eyes, you developed a mysterious form of vision that gave you the sight of a Greek seer.
Every day, I celebrate the love and comfort we gave each other as we shared our lives during our all-too-brief time together.
I long ago began expecting you always to 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. 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 honor that vow until after I have taken my last breath.
If the magical thinkers have it right, and 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 accept life as conditional and temporary, subject to the 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 bonfire spark soaring high into the night sky—to vanish into the starry black nothingness. I drew strength from your example of living with energy 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 skimming over 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 unfulfilled—should I never again get to see or touch YOU—I doubt I will ever re-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, where you are basking in the warm radiance of a nearby star, free from pain, hunger, and thirst, vigilantly guarding the cosmos, and catching an occasional nap in endless comfort, security, and peace.
But my deepest longing is that you somehow know how much I love and miss you, and, that as long as I have will and agency, I will never, ever, stop looking for you.
I love YOU Bertie — forever… however long that may be.