Magic

I’ve never been one for joining clubs. I have never been more proud and less excited to become a member of the Bereaving Pet Owners Club.

Admission is steep. It requires you love an animal beyond reason or capacity to describe.

In 12 or so hours a veterinarian from an organization called Lap of Love will come over to my house and take my pet over the so-called Rainbow Bridge.

Her name is Magic.

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I just fed Magic for the fifth time today, her favorite treat, sardines, into which I place a little bit of pain medication for the cancer spreading throughout her body.

Every time I approach with more food she looks at me as if Ive lost my mind. I’m hoping this, her second to last day, is the greatest day of her life — five meals with many more to come. Magic was weaned too early and thus has always been food insecure, loudly whining and nipping at my calf whenever meals were late, which in her world they always were.

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I’ve prepared for the end. I’ve dug a hole in which to bury her, under a small Japanese Maple in the backyard, and planted around where she’ll lay a field of wild flowers.

What I won’t have after tomorrow are small daily encounters. Scratches at a closed door wanting in …. Head bumping her little noggin into whatever hand was in range .. those indignant bites reminding me meal time was five minutes ago …. settling in for a movie on my chest, where her purring always became more interesting than what was on the screen.

And a million other things that endow the life of a pet owner.

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I’ve also created a playlist, shared here. As every member of the club I’m about to join knows words can’t describe the love that exists between pet and human but music at least can provide an intimate soundtrack for the photos.

And yes, I’m sharing photos. And a few videos. What did you expect?

Magic is a cat, after all.

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I know that as prepared as I am I will not be prepared when the morning comes.

You’d think I would be. I’ve been around the spiritual block for 35 years. I’m a card-carrying member of the Impermanence Union.

It’s actually my job to know that shapes come and go, and forms don’t last.

My daily grind is to remember that essence beneath all display is the only reality.

People rely on me to tell them again and again that a relationship that bases its depth, rhythm and love on forms NOT changing is a recipe for suffering.

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Visitors to my home and to my studio, Yoga Soup, will immediately notice photographs of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian saint.

On his deathbed Ramana famously told his devotees: �

“They take this body for Bhagavan … what a pity. They are despondent that Bhagavan is going to leave them and go away. Where can Bhagavan go, and how?”

Despite all this wise wisdom I know there’s a tsunami of grief waiting patiently beyond the spiritual bypass.

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Magic came from a litter of four. A dear friend, Analiese, was in Peru and managed to smuggle a jungle cat she named Munayki back to the States.

Munayki hooked up with the male cat belonging to friends Patra and Ishmael, and a four-kitten litter was produced.

I had never had a pet of my own and wasn’t asking the universe for one. A childhood dog died while I was in college. A girlfriend’s cat left when the girlfriend did.

Analeise didn’t really ask me; when Magic was born she said, she’s yours, end of discussion. I just didn’t say no.

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For a time, I had to house three of the kittens because the fourth one, a little white one, didn’t survive.

So, in my house for about three months, I had three kittens and their Mama. And while I hadn’t been immune to the charms of cat videos, I was ABSOLUTELY IN NO WAY prepared for the reality of what three kittens were capable of.

That just being themselves could provide such relentless entertainment and continuous moments of impossible and improbable delight.

After a few days, the idea that anybody would want to do anything other than sit around and watch kittens exist was beyond me. What could possibly be a better use of one’s time?

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I eventually (and begrudgingly) had to return one of the kittens to Patra and Ishmael, and I had to fight hard to keep Magic’s brother Inti, who had been promised to someone else.

And though I love Inti with all my heart, it was clear from the jump that Magic belonged to me …. until it became even clearer that I belonged to her.

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1. As mentioned, Magic wasn’t properly weaned and so became tragically and hilariously food insecure. Whenever I opened a can of food she’d race over to the dish and push her bigger brother aside. No sooner did she finish eating than she’d start meowing/campaigning for more.

It happened throughout the day, all the time. Whining, whining, more food, more food. I JUST fed you. I mean, literally, I just fed you, 15 seconds ago.

And then one day it became different.

There was something in the sound of Magic’s persistence that I heard behind the whine.

The sound of fear. The fear of: I’m not going to get what I need to survive. The fear that there’s no one here to take care of me.

Doesn’t matter that I was just fed. Doesn’t matter that I’m not hungry. I need more.

A fear that creates and colors a world. As Magic and I groundhogday’d ourselves through that familiar food scene I finally understood:

What I was hearing from her was actually alive inside me and had been my whole life.

Not being safe.

Not even close.

It’s not what you have on the outside; it’s what you think you lack on the inside.

Magic never stopped whining for her food and her whining never bothered me again.

Me to Her: You can whine all you want. I will show you that you can trust me.

Her to Me: This isn’t about me, it’s about you learning to trust life.

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2. Magic wasn’t born food insecure. She became food insecure because her mother stopped feeding her. And then her mother disappeared.

My recently departed and forever life-insecure mother, Cheryl, met my father, Joe, in New York City. They were 19. They got pregnant. They got married. After four months Joe had enough. They divorced. Joe returned to Chicago. A new man, also 19, Carl, stepped in as my father. Carl and Cheryl married. I am born.

Six months later, Cheryl walks out of their apartment in Brooklyn, leaving me in my crib. Carl returns from work. There’s no Cheryl. There’s just me in a crib where I’ve been for hours.

Carl takes me to my mother’s parents and leaves me with them.

My mother returned six months later, but I never lived with her.

Every week for first ten years of my life she’d visit, tell me how much she loved me, more than anyone, and how soon we’d be together. And then she would disappear again.

Thus into the human race tumbles another baby weaned on the sour mother’s milk of chaos and lies, confusion and fear.

What I’ve learned over the decades of trying to make sense of life is the medicine required to heal from such a fundamental breach of reality will come from unexpected sources.

A medicine that won’t be found where we look for it.

Someone’s touch may initiate it.

The kindness of a stranger may conjure it.

And sometimes it takes a non-human being to restore your humanity.

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My house is a revolving door of people and gatherings.

There wasn’t a lap that Magic didn’t feel comfortable gracing with her purrs and presence. She would plant herself on someone’s body and stay there, and when she felt that they had received what was required, she’d move on to someone else.

At the end of the night, after everyone had left, Magic would give me the same love she gave everybody because in her world — the world of the Cat Guru — there is only one kind of love to give, the kind that doesn’t play favorites, doesn’t rise and fall or come and go on a whim and a new passing fancy.

In Magic’s world, Love isn’t a word that is given or withdrawn or used as a promise or a threat.

Love is who she is and what she does.

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Her legacy was pointing to a love that existed all along, a love that had been buried beneath a rubble of events and stories.

This is what a pet does because this is what a pet is.

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Tonight will be my last night with Magic. Easy to write, impossible to fathom. For the past two weeks our routine has been: she comes in for her evening meal with her brother, Inti. I break open the same small can of food that they’ve been sharing on the same plate for nine years. And then Magic will curl into bed with me, where I feed her an unexpected and always welcome snack into which I’ve mixed more pain medication.

But soon she’ll start scratching.

She’ll scratch the tumor her eye had become and it will start bleeding.

It’s a big, open wound. At first it was impossible to look at. Now I see a dazzling display of orange yellow pus and indigo blood, I see it like something Van Gogh would have dreamed on to a canvas.

As our night deepens I feel her scratching the wound which stains her paws bloody which she then can’t stop licking in an attempt to clean them.

In the morning, the comforter, which tomorrow will become her burial shroud, is covered in blood. We’ve been sleeping under it for the last few weeks.

In spite of the appearance, she seems ok, but I’ve been educated by people wise enough not to be fooled by how well cats hide their pain.

It’s time for us to take the final journey.

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But wait. I have a thought. A brilliant thought! Why hadn’t I thought of this thought before?

I’ve been going about this all wrong. I’ve been in the healing arts racket for 30 years. I’ve learned a thing or three.

I’ve met healers who attract big crowds and command rich prices. They snap their fingers and poof! kidney cancer and manic depression vanish. I have friends who sold their homes to live with John of God in Brazil who swear they saw him regenerate amputated limbs and revitalize missing organs, before he ended up in jail.

I thought, “I could do that.” I could summon all the healing yogic powers I’ve accrued in the last 30 years and dissolve Magic’s tumor.

I just have to focus properly. If I focus properly and petition the appropriate angels, if my prayers hit the right notes I could summon the healing power of the cosmic collective I’ve seen on late night Evangelical TV and in the chambers of plant medicine ceremonies run by people formerly named Irwin.

I can do this.

So I slip my left hand beneath Magic’s body and she immediately releases her weight around it. Joined we are in yoga, in union, in trust, in love.

I extended my right arm out into the dark bedroom and imagined my left hand siphoning out all infection, every metastasized and necrotic cell out from her system into my left hand and releasing it into the ethers through my right.

I’m well aware of what I’m doing, a witness to my own monomaniacal madness.

Never having parents who cared or my own children to care for, one of the aspects of life I’m most in awe of are the long, endless sleepless nights/years that parents have with their children into which they’re transformed without prior training into shamans capable of meeting the demands of whatever is demanded of them.

So I stayed with Magic. For hours and hours, as midnight turned to sunrise. This is my chance. This is my chance to become a parent, a healer, a shaman; a person capable of taking care of another.

For hours and hours and hours I focused hard, visualized the cancer cells leaving Magic, entering me, exiting me, be gone goodbye good riddance.

And after I don’t know how many hours, I dozed off. When I awoke Magic was gone.

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I knew that when I saw Magic again nothing about her appearance would be different. The cancer would still be burning through her without pause or mercy.

I wanted a miracle. I wanted a miracle in visible form, something I could see as evidence, outside of myself …. of the wine into water and Red Sox winning the Worlds’ Series variety.

I forgot the miracle already happened the day Magic and I met.

Invisible miracle, occurring inside.

Magic rescued me from the absolute certainty I had that I was unloveable. A belief that had painted and haunted my life from its beginning.

She did this by showing me we were the same. Not owner and pet. Not cat and human. Not even friends.

One, not two.

Believing I’‘m separate from the source of creation. That was my only illness. It’s everyone’s only illness.

Magic cured me. A miracle.

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Forms change. Love doesn’t.

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Tomorrow —- I can’t think about it. I dread it with all my heart.

But to know that beneath the temporary forms and roles we play, we are One.

Wisdom won’t halt the tears or prevent the heartache — feelings after all are what the Gods most envy about humans and cats.

But Wisdom heals.

The yogic definition of Magic is …. Reality revealed.

Roger that.

The reality of Magic and me, with or without bodies, forever roommates, living rent free in Love.