For Cat Lovers

I'd just finished a passage in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It described Susie's dog joining her in heaven: "he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down".

I turned the page to begin the next chapter, thinking "That would be nice, to be reunited with all our pets". In that instant my heart was stunned at the possibility of experiencing all my kitties once more. I imagined my beloved Chong launching himself from the floor to my chest and knocking me down; Sam draped across my shoulders and around my neck; Miss Kitty ensconced on my chest, sucking my neck, washing my nostrils and her daughter Sissie's ears while Sissie attempts to nurse on her mother's tiny titties.

I could see Josephine and her three little kittens smelling of milk and sweet dry grass; Tuffy the manx, hopping toward the house, rabbit-wise; Midnight, my first acquisition, following me home from kindergarten, named after the cat on the Buster Brown radio program; Tom, the only red tiger I ever had, reluctantly riding in my bicycle basket; countless, nameless kittens that came and went too quickly.

Once again Chinky Won Lon and Smokey Joe race up and down a staircase; Baby chews the edges of my sweaters while Diablo climbs the Priscilla curtains at Sunnybrook Farm, then poses peacefully with my Buddha statue in the iris garden. He was a refugee from the nearby corn field. Big Blue comes home to be buried with siblings under the iris. Chi Chi proudly offers me her first mouse, and I see her again with her brother, Chong, curled about each other in the egg basket, a living Yin Yang.

It was as if all their souls blew through mine, and I thought, "If I could be sure, I could believe". That reminded me of a long ago friend who repudiated the Jehovah Witness' heaven because it lacked babies. "If there aren't any babies in heaven", she muttered, "I don't want to go".

Is heaven everything we love? Would that be heaven? Actually, I'd settle just for the answers.

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