The Lesson of the Itsy-Bitsy Spider Song

For sixteen years, I have loved a cat named Perchance, but called Percie. An orange tabby with spots and stripes, eyes that began amber and turned green, a being more joyful and more stubborn than possibly any others I have known. Throughout that time, the sun was her drug of her choice. Okay, she dabbled in catnip, but her true vice was the light and heat of the sun. She never could get enough of it, even when we lived in Phoenix and for three weeks, the temperature was over 120 degrees every day, and it was miserable. Percie, though, loved it. She would have slept on sun-cooked cement for 24 hours a day if we had just stopped worrying about things like dehydration and let her do what she wanted.

For sixteen years, I knew every spot and stripe on her. I knew her moods and her personality. I could look at her and know what she was thinking. Sometimes it was "Oh, this is such a good nap!" and sometimes it was "If you rub my tummy, I will bite you." I would have told you I knew everything about her, but I didn't. I didn't know this cat I loved so much was riddled with cancer. Except, of course, that I did--if not the diagnosis, I knew that my time with her was slipping away. Of course, that's a reasonable thought when you have a cat who is sixteen. Hell, it's a reasonable thought at any point in any relationship. We are all here for a finite amount of time.

And, so, when I'd look out and see Percie sleeping in a sunbeam, and I would know "this is her last summer" or "not only is this her last summer, but she knows it, and she is determined not to miss a moment of it"--I squelched that knowing. I told myself I didn't know. I told myself to stop being morbid. And the more I pretended not to know, the more I could convince myself I didn't know other things, until I stopped knowing  altogether and missed it and wondered where it had gone.

As I struggled to find that knowing, especially as Percie became ill, I called upon my guides for strength and, well, for guidance. And all I would hear is Tai, my little Asian girl guide, singing "The itsy-bisty spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again." 

And she would sing it over and over. I would hear it in my dreams. (So if you're now cursing me for getting these lyrics stuck in your head, imagine having them there, even in your dreams, for three months.) And so I'd ask for guidance and get a nursery song playing in my head incessantly until I figured out--which took longer than it should--what it meant. That itsy-bitsy spider is all about the impermanence of life. It's about beginnings and endings, about being washed away one moment and back in the sun again....back in the sun, knowing the next rain wasn't far away.

Maybe, I reasoned, the message was that we were going to keep doing the same things over and over--going to keep helping her battle infections and nausea and dehydration so that she would be well. Of course, I knew at some level that wasn't it. The rain was coming to take my sunshine-loving cat away. Another ending, another beginning. And there was nothing to do but accept it.

I let Percie go to the person she loved most, my mom, knowing she would find an afterlife of endless sun-napping and the occasional gecko chase.

And I found a new cat, Gabby, and brought her home and we settled in. The beginning was nice. Everything was new and so exciting to her. I got to slowly learn her language. We were having a great time. And then came today--only the fifth day of knowing her--and we butted heads. She wanted what she wanted. I wanted her to understand the natural patterns of my day and energy. Yes, I would start the morning with a play session, but then she needed to know that I would spend hours at the computer, pretty much ignoring her and she was supposed to amuse herself...which she did, by being impossible. Up on the kitchen counters, scratching the couch, into the Christmas tree. I stopped, I played with her, got her jumping and running and pouncing, all in the hopes that she'd settle down and I could go back to my computer. But as soon as I'd sneak away, she'd be causing trouble again, and I'd have to stop. I just kept getting crankier and so did she.

Finally, I called it a day, and had a hot bath. As she always does when I'm in the bathroom, Gabby settled on the other side of the door, waiting for me. (Not surprisingly, since she's a rescue cat, she has some separation anxiety.) But this time she waited quietly, not crying or scratching. When I came out, she was no longer cranky, but the loving kitty I adore and she was so glad to see me. I scratched her ears and praised her for waiting patiently. I pointed out that she had been brave and, just like I had promised, I had come back to her.

Today the rain had washed us out, I told her. I had forgotten she has only been here a few days and she is quite young. She needs more mothering and she can't be expected to know all of what a sixteen-year-old cat came to know. I need to be more patient with her and remember that this time is also finite. I will never get back these first few months before we settle into a routine. I need to make time for them.

Tomorrow, I promised her, the sun will come out and we will start over again.

reincarnation

reincarnation

explain to me
why we return
again and again
to this world
of never quite
what we need;

do we actually
turn to each other
and say
“you know
I’m headed back--
last time didn’t suck enough.”

–Cynthia Sillitoe, December 2013