On Love, and Heartbreak, and Pets
A dear friend of mine lost her cat of 18 years last week. She wrote me asking, essentially, whether she will ever love again. I thought about what we’ve been experiencing here, these last six months, and I told her this.
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I cried for a solid two months, I think, after we put Sully to sleep — every night I’d crawl into bed and just weep. It was truly awful. And then I started to feel obsessive, like I had to have another pet as soon as possible. We got Captain Catty four months after Sully died, and even as I was arranging to go get him I worried I was making a mistake, because the cat was never going to fill the hole Sully left — and why was I even trying to fill it? I almost felt like I was betraying Sully.
But after a few weeks I realized I was falling in love with Smokey — and yet at the same time I was still in love with Sully. Smokey is so different that it no longer felt like I was cheating on Sully, just finding another outlet for all my furry love to go. We talk about Sullivan all the time. Sometimes we even compare Smokey to Sully, which is patently unfair, even though Smokey is frankly a lot easier than Sully was (cats are easier than dogs, there’s no denying it). Does this make any sense?
I’m still not really over Sullivan’s death and I don’t know that one really DOES get over it, I think one just gets used to it. I am still sad that she’s not here — in addition to Smokey (not that they’d get along). But I’m not sad that Smokey isn’t Sully — I honestly love this cat, and I think it’s been really healing to have him here. Life without a pet just seems wrong in every way, to me.
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Having a pet? There is always an end. We know it. And yet we sign ourselves up for this certain pain. Are we masochists? Just plain fools? Makes me think of that famous line from Annie Hall — we know we’re insane, but we need those eggs.
