Ours/theirs

"Knowing cats, a lifetime of cats, what is left is a sediment of sorrow quite different from that due to humans: compounded of pain for their helplessness, of guilt on behalf of us all," wrote Doris Lessing, author and ailurophile. But does sedimentary sorrow differ if grief bears down from suffering the loss of a human or a cat? Yet when anthropomorphic grief cuts for some humans just as deep, hopefully the human doesn’t distort or deny the nature of the beast. A happy, redemptive thought occurs to me. Through the eyes of love, whether green, gold, copper, azure, grey, brown, violet or black, the omnipotent power, knowledge, love and mercy of God breaks through. We ailurophiles intuit it, feel it. The helplessness of cats inspires our enabling; their inability to sin sometimes causes our sense of guilt. A dichotomy of levels of existence uncovers a source superior of both of us. Neither of us has nine lives; just one. How much of ours is measured by an appreciation of theirs?