A Lesson from the Cat

My cat died the other day and it was sad. She had been with us for 17 years. Old for a cat. Their average lifespan is 14 years. And it was sad. But I said that twice. Why was it sad? I mean, it wasn't sad like the death of a family member would be ... not for me. She was a cat. And no matter what you might hear from PETA or the like, cats are not people, too. She never said a kind word to me, never thanked me for the special food, never gave me a hug. She was a cat. So why was it sad?

I started to think about that. Our cat was ... eccentric. In her lifetime she probably went outside of her own volition a dozen times. She was scared of the outdoors. Once she stalked a lizard on the back patio through the window. She lost sight of it as it went under the window and she was all a-quiver, ready to pounce. Suddenly the lizard poked its face in the window and my cat was gone. All legs and tail and skittering across the floor she vanished because the lizard, a tenth her size, had looked at her. I'm pretty sure that if you looked in the dictionary under "scaredy cat", you'd find her picture. That terror had its plus side. For instance, we knew in advance when a storm was coming because she would slink away into a back room somewhere before we actually heard any rain or thunder. She knew it was coming and she would hide. She was our early alert system. The same was true when someone came to the door. Before the knock or doorbell she'd be running for the closet. "Oh," we'd say, "we must have visitors."

We didn't love that cat because she was perfect. It wasn't her excellence that endeared her to us. Frankly, life will likely be a little easier without her around. No special travel arrangements. No care and feeding. No cleaning of cat litter. You know, all those things have gone away. No, it wasn't that she was a breeze to care for or a delight to have in the house, although we didn't mind caring for her and we were happy to have her with us. No, what really made her special was her differences, her idiosyncrasies. It was her imperfections that made her special.

I'm not actually writing this about my cat. I'm writing this about you. We tend to think that the nearer we get to perfection, the better we are. That may be in appearance or in abilities or in hobbies or in all sorts of other parts of life. It's not true. It is, in more cases than you can imagine, our differences and idiosyncrasies that make us special. It's not when we're most alike that makes us special. It's the differences. That, I suppose, is what made it sad to lose that cat. She was very special because she was very different. You, too, are special in those little differences you have. Those imperfections make you someone unique. It would be sad to lose you.