November 10, 2010
Dear Neil Patrick Harris (the cat),
Tonight the moon looked like the Cheshire Cat’s smile and it made me think of you. Through it all, the entire time I knew you, you had this quiet and persistent smile – even when you were otherwise just blending into the background.
I’m writing you this letter because my friend Linda (who also loved you very much) told me it might make me feel better. Losing you has been agonizing, but the thought of my memories of you fading away is just unbearable. I love you and I need you to be a part of me forever. Perhaps writing this letter will give me some comfort that you are gone but won’t be forgotten.
So where do I start? The beginning? Or the end?
When you were dying I only remember the feel of your fur, the warmth of your body and the relaxation I had always wanted your broken body to have in life. But I didn’t feel you die. I felt nothing and you were just gone. There was a flash of anger directed at your shell – a body that I think betrayed your spirit. I hoped you felt set free, but I didn’t feel anything. And then I was swallowed up in loss, and emptiness.
The pain feels like a high-speed train. It moves so fast, like a blur, so I cannot really see it. It is smooth and slippery with no edges that I can hold onto, and it seems to have no end. But it plunges through me with such force that it nearly knocks me over with its intensity. There is no doubt it is there, even though it isn’t tangible. The pain is inexplicable, it is excruciating, and it is in surround-sound.
There is more comfort for me in the beginning…
You first came into my life through a phone call. Jillian and Minnow found you in the gutter – you have literally buried yourself in a pile of leaves on a cold November night, and Minnow sniffed you out while they were walking home. When she called me to ask if you could stay at the store she said you looked like an Oreo cookie! I’ll admit, I didn’t see it at first. To me, you looked tiny, dirty and sick. The vet checked you out that day. You were very thin (under 5 lbs!), infested with fleas (after we gave you a flea treatment they were jumping off you in every direction. It was gross!), old and ridden with severe arthritis (bad enough that it made your tail curl in an adorable way!). I feel certain that had Jillian not found you that night, you would have died. You were in very bad shape.
You were sick. You were crippled, you were old, but you were so darn sweet! And soon enough I saw that you did look delicious enough to eat up like an Oreo cookie! My love, and the love of everyone else at Doggy Style came on fiercely. We willed you to life, and you responded. We named you Neil Patrick Harris because from the very beginning we knew you were awesome. We fed you so much to try to fatten you up. And you slept – a lot! It seemed like you needed to catch up on about 2 years of missed sleep! You slept all the time! At first you liked sleeping in the cat bed right behind the counter in the front of the store. (People constantly thought you were a fake cat. Ha!) Then you wanted to sleep on the bed in the Pirate’s Cove in the back of the store. Then, you didn’t want to sleep in the bed at all – just inside of cardboard boxes. So we’d give you a box, then a bigger box, then James started cutting and taping boxes together into these Japanese hotels! You’d crawl up onto the second floor, while the whole structure swayed and bulged. And you loved us for all of our efforts! We tried to give you other/different beds to sleep in – some very expensive beds! We even bought you a big cat tree to sleep on. That was okay for a few days, but you always preferred your cardboard boxes. It just goes to show, you can take the cat out of the alley, but you can’t take the hobo out of the alley cat!
I miss you so much little man. I miss peeking into a cardboard box and finding you there...
Mornings are the hardest for me now, because I so looked forward to getting to the store, opening the door, and seeing your tiny head poke up from the stool in front or out of a box in back. And it swelled my heart to come into the store and find you somewhere new. The joy came partly from your cuteness, but mostly from knowing that you were alive – that your tiny, crippled body wasn’t stopping you from being alive. One of my favorite days was this past summer coming in to find you sleeping in the front window. We’d decorated the window like a beach scene and you were stretched out on the beach right next to this stuffed dog in a bikini. Your tiny paw-claws were gripping the ocean like you were desperate to not fall off the earth! It was so cute that it makes me cry just thinking about it. Your tiny, clenched paw. Your face all squeezed shut in sleep.
You were amazing. My love for you can only be described as fierce.
We don’t know where you came from or what happened to you before you came into our lives. Most of your life was spent with others. I like to believe that you were well-loved and well-cared for wherever you were, and there is evidence of this in the way you were. You welcomed every human hand that reached out to you. Even when it was a somewhat aggressive child’s hand, nearly knocking you off your unstable feet! I’d watch you re-set your stance and then lean towards the hand again for another rough petting. You loved everyone as fiercely as we love you. I really do hope you saw only a short time where your life was difficult. And I really do hope our love was enough to make up for that.
This letter reminds me of the section of “The Little Prince”, where he meets a wild fox who asks to be tamed. The exchange goes like this:
Said the fox, “…’if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure grew near –
‘Ah,’ said the fox, ‘I shall cry.’
‘It is your own fault,’ said the little prince. ‘I never wished you any sort of harm, but you wanted me to tame you…’
‘Yes, that is so,’ said the fox.
‘But now you are going to cry!’ said the little prince.
‘Yes, that is so,’ said the fox.
‘Then it has done you no good at all!’
‘It has done me good,’ said the fox, ‘because of the wheat fields.’
Neil Patrick, you tamed me. And I am crying now because you have gone and I am shattered without you. But I know in my heart that when the pain starts to fade, for the sweet hereafter I will have the cardboard boxes, and the oreo cookies, and the Cheshire Cat moons…
All my love to you, Neil Patrick Harris. All my love to you.
Paige
