"Billy the Kit" - 2000-2012
by Salman Hameed
I have mentioned Billy the Kit (Urdu speakers should put an added emphasis on the two "Ls" in Billy) couple of times on Irtiqa. Just this past week we detected a big inoperable tumor under his tongue. He had always been healthy and led an active life. Now he is permanently a part of the White Rose Garden in Brattleboro, Vermont. I got him from an animal shelter in Las Cruces, New Mexico and, a few months later, drove across the US to western Massachusetts. He was my first pet and I just didn't realize how much these pets become a part of you. I know he was a cat - and that he didn't know anything about death. But I find it intriguing/perplexing that this loss has gone into a peculiar grief component (dedicated for non-humans) that I didn't really know that it existed. Well...almost all of the atoms in Billy's body were formed in the Big Bang and in the stars, and now they have been recycled back into our planet. So good bye to this celestial cat :)
Just this past December, the New Yorker published this fantastic poem by Franz Wright:
I have mentioned Billy the Kit (Urdu speakers should put an added emphasis on the two "Ls" in Billy) couple of times on Irtiqa. Just this past week we detected a big inoperable tumor under his tongue. He had always been healthy and led an active life. Now he is permanently a part of the White Rose Garden in Brattleboro, Vermont. I got him from an animal shelter in Las Cruces, New Mexico and, a few months later, drove across the US to western Massachusetts. He was my first pet and I just didn't realize how much these pets become a part of you. I know he was a cat - and that he didn't know anything about death. But I find it intriguing/perplexing that this loss has gone into a peculiar grief component (dedicated for non-humans) that I didn't really know that it existed. Well...almost all of the atoms in Billy's body were formed in the Big Bang and in the stars, and now they have been recycled back into our planet. So good bye to this celestial cat :)
Just this past December, the New Yorker published this fantastic poem by Franz Wright:
On the Death of a Cat
In life, death
was nothing
to you: I am
willing to wager
my soul that it
simply never occurrred
to your nightmareless
mind, while sleep
was everything
(see it raised
to an infinite
power and perfection)--no death
in you then, so now
how even less. Dear stealth
of innocence
licked polished
to an evil
luster, little
milk fang, whiskered
night
friend--
go.
- Franz Wright
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