Tear in His Eye, Tear in Our Hearts

Christmas is coming. This would be the time to get out the old wooden stepladder to trim the upper branches of our tall, tall tree. This would be the time for our aging but still agile Somali cat, our Dudley, to climb the ladder and poke at some tantalizing high ornament. For 16 Christmases now he’s liked to lend a paw at anything, everything we’re doing.

One of us with some artistic talent once made a clay plaque that’s been decorating our foyer for years, showing Dudley’s smiling face (yes, a kitty mouth with upturned corners that sure looks like a smile) and that helpful paw of his reaching into a Christmas tree.

Good thing we have that plaque to share with holiday guests because Dudley’s gone. But hang on a minute: This isn’t meant to kill the holiday joy, rather to celebrate our friend Dudley. Though winter days grow darker, we’re reaching toward the light…and the love.

No doubt all cat owners think their pet is pretty special. Dudley was – beautiful markings, lush fur, thick tail. Highly intelligent, he invented games for us to play, and taught us his rules. Warmly sociable, he sought out guests (well, not little kids) on their own level…or got you down to his. Deep and direct in his gaze, he seemed to us, anthropomorphic us, to communicate eye to eye as a friend – wordless but evocative in his mewing, nudging, head-butting, early-morning kneading, and his famous flying Dudley flop – hurling himself sideways right through the air to land smack up against you. Plus those wet side-of-the-face swipes that kiss you with the scent of the cat, whose own scent to us was always sweet Dudley fur. And if purring were in the Guinness Book of Records, Dudley would surely have won for loudness, duration and endearment.

His happy face and good nature endured through half a year of nursing for chronic renal failure. As his kidneys and appetite gave out, we tempted him with turkey baby food that in other years came in his little Christmas stocking like cat-candy to evoke a long-ago kittenhood. With Thanksgiving’s fresh turkey, he didn’t need tempting – just a second helping, please. It was a joy to see him really craving food after months of weight loss despite squirting medicines into his mouth and sticking a needle just below his skin to trickle in fluids to counteract the dehydration that comes when the kidneys go. He didn’t seem to mind though, resting his head on our forearms while the hydration seemed to help him feel better…but not for long enough.

He didn’t even seem to mind when, a few days ago, the vet shaved a bit off the inside of one leg to expose a vein to inject the final relief from Dudley’s steepening decline. In an instant the light went out. We could still hold the paw, cradle the head, pet the fur as soft and silky as ever. But Dudley’s essence was gone.

Gone where? If he’s not here, then cool logic argues (against hot tears) that he must be there…but where? You don’t have to believe your four-legged friend has a soul to wish that those pearly gates might open a pet door for the likes of our Dudley. But we, alas, don’t find comfort in the hope that there is some there there…that there is someplace for the life force, the personality, the essence to go when death comes to those we love.

Yet there is some comfort one last time from Dudley himself, or so one imagines, from a dream to a teardrop.

In the nights before his death, as we knew he was slipping away, I dreamt of Dudley. Once, when it was time for us to depart from somewhere in a dream, I couldn’t find him. Once, in a dream of all of us at home, Dudley got outside somehow and was lost. And once when I dreamt of holding him, a single tear slid from his eye, and I kissed it away… but from his other eye a stream of tears moistened his cheek, and I couldn’t dry them all, and I awoke with my own tears…and the taste of that single salty Dudley tear.

A few days later, taking Dudley to his final vet appointment, I thought of all the years we had looked into his eyes and he into ours with such a steady gaze. It seemed to me utterly important that at the moment of his death we should lock eyes, hold his gaze so that the last thing he would see before death would be the caring faces of those who loved him so in his life. It didn’t work out that way. The vet and his assistant needed to be on the side of the table facing Dudley, so we stood behind our friend, petting his head, stroking his body but in the wrong position to look into his eyes. Then he was gone, and all of the helplessness of being unable to save him, all of the self-doubt collapsed on me: Had we done enough…was this moment too soon, depriving him of a few days more life…too late, so that he might have suffered unnecessarily…? In grief, I felt I had failed in his final moment, failed him in my hope for his last glimpse of life and love, failed my own heart.

Our tears fell on him as we held his limp paw, stroked his lustrous fur, rubbed his fuzzy belly, bent to kiss his head one last time. As we wept and tried to tear ourselves away, Dudley’s own eyes, vacant and unblinking, began to dry out with no moisture of life to refresh them. And on his right eye, from which tears had flowed in my dream, evaporating moisture left one tiny dry patch – in the shape of a single teardrop I couldn’t kiss away.

Well, that was just some random postmortem event, an accident of surface chemistry, not a forgiving farewell from a life departed – right? Indeed this family, not believing in heaven or souls, celebrates life rather than life everlasting. For us, wonder glows in the gaze of a friend, the gurgle of an infant, the garden of colors and scents, the glory of life before the longest night ahead. A cat in the lap would be a comfort, but love in our lives is enough.

Still Dudley lingers. Though “everywhere is the emptiness of their absence,” as one dear friend said of the loss of pets, still in our minds reside the memories of the light in Dudley’s golden eyes, the spark of his personality, the warmth of his tail draped possessively over a leg, the love (we allow ourselves to think) glowing in his valiantly struggling heart.

A teardrop seems the perfect farewell, from us to him, from him to us, the give-and-take of old, old friends. Now friendship remains though our friend is gone. For love lasts.