Farewell to Basho
Saturday, April 7th, 2007This is a hard day. I took Basho to his new home. It’s a necessary step toward my new way of life, but Basho has been my familiar for the past five years: we’ve meditated together every morning and slept together every night; we’ve watched the dawn rise on whatever balcony I had at the time. We breathe in the same rhythm and are perfectly at peace with each other. We have a completely harmonious connection. When I left home in the morning, he would walk me to the door and mew goodbye. When I came home at the end of the day, he would run to the door when he heard the key in the lock and be there when the door opened. He was eight months old when he came to me, and we bonded as I hadn’t bonded with another animal since I was a child. For five years he has sat in my lap as I graded papers, read, worked at the computer, watched movies, or talked on the phone. The contours of his body are more familiar to me than my own. I’ve slept beside him longer than I’ve ever slept with anyone else, lived with him longer than I’ve lived with anyone but my children. He has a wonderful new home with another cat, a dog, and a woman who loves to read with a cat in her lap. It’ll be a great set-up when he gets used to it, but it’s unfamiliar now. I sat with him for an hour in his new home, and although the trip had unnerved him, he settled into my lap in a house full of new smells and gradually became more at ease and finally started to purr. But when I stood up to leave, he followed me. His brow wrinkled, and his eyes looked confused and fearful. I had to push him away from the door to get out. His new home is an hour and a half north of where I live, and as I drove home in the rain, sobbing, I listened to Andrea Chenier at the Met, and cried some more. I have four sets of papers to grade, and I can’t even bear to look at them. My body feels like wood. I think I’ll go to bed and pull the covers over my head. I feel the absence of his warm soft body like a great howl of emptiness.
Kendall