From Jim Willis:
[Cross-posting/publication on or before January 25, 2005 will be greatly appreciated. If you like, please light a candle in their memory or do something extra special for an animal; please give a rescued animal a good home if you can. Thank you.]
You had come from everywhere, on two continents, and you had come from every circumstance: neglect, abuse, apathy, human boredom and irresponsibility, human "inconvenience" (e.g., "we’re moving; a new baby; career changes"), medical issues, elderly, handicapped, blind, deaf, psychic pain and behavioral problems. Almost none of you could have been described as "well-behaved" and I counted myself lucky if you happened to arrive housetrained and without aggression. You cost me a small fortune and I had started with far less than a small fortune.
I knew from the beginning that you would become the "too many" and that I would be subjected to some criticism, especially from those who do too little, too late, or from the "theorists" who never provide a practical application. I hadn’t been "schooled" in how to rescue animals – almost nobody is – so it was a lot of "learn as you go." I did learn, over three decades, and you became my best teachers. I accumulated some academic accolades that should have proven that I knew what I was doing, but you were always the first to embarrass me in public and prove to the world that I didn’t know how to proceed. My only "house-rules" were that you were allowed to destroy furniture and carpets – which you did gleefully – and that you weren’t allowed to harm each other, which you complied with admirably. Hundreds of you went on to wonderful lives and permanent homes with compassionate people. Some of you stayed behind with me, even after my human mate of many years abandoned us, because in most human opinions, you were the "unadoptable." The truth is, I never could have endured parting with you.
Parting with fourteen of you on the afternoon of January 25, 2004 was forced upon me when our home burned to the ground and took you away from me. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t thought of you, what you meant to me, and how much I miss you... how much I learned from you. I could write a chapter on each of you and how you had thrived with love and good care, a homemade diet, maybe a little bit of tough love and positive-reinforcement training that added some stability to your lives and set some parameters you could depend on. It had become my mantra that I would never betray your trust and that you could always depend on me. I rarely left you for longer than an hour per day, but as the fire marshal told me the evening of the fire, if I had been home, I wouldn’t be here now. I have no doubt that is true, because my first impulse would have been to try and save you as I’d once saved you. I will live with that regret forever, and the evening of the fire, I didn’t want to be in this world any longer if I couldn’t be with you. However, a half dozen of your brothers and sisters survived, and I had to continue on for them and for whatever reasons our Creator decided I should remain behind.
You were feline and canine and lupine, but you were never less worthy than me and never less than my children. Despite the respective tragedies and disappointments of our lives, and our emotional baggage, we somehow formed a family. I remember and still miss dispensing vanilla wafers at bedtime and rolling around with you in the snow, and having my eyeglasses slurped off my face…cleaning cat vomit out of my computer keyboard. I always knew that you had done far more for me than I had ever done for you.
People, even religious people of different faiths, often ask me if I equate animal life with human life. What a silly question. Do we not all bleed the same red blood, suffer the same pain and fears, and breathe the same air? Aren’t we all looking for the same safe environment and companionship we can trust? Are we not all marvels of Creation and biology? Have most humans ever, personally, visited a slaughterhouse, or their local "kill-shelter’s" euthanasia room? What an utterly silly question with such obvious answers.
Humans, who I like to call the "blind species," need to be forgiven, especially by those of us who have achieved enlightenment as a benefit of sharing our lives with you and your kin. Most of us consider it one of the blessings of our human lives and we all need to help educate other humans while helping to save more animals. To lose one furred, feathered, or scaled companion who has shown us nothing but unconditional love is heart wrenching; to have lost fourteen such in one day has approached the unbearable at times for me. But God and you have shown fit to have blessed me with wonderful friends, human and furred, to make sure that I do go on, especially to go on and speak for those of you who have no voice.
