It Might Be Easier to Become a Cat

Just Kidding. Don't Do That.

Yesterday, apparently, was International Cat Day, which must be at least as significant—in the ranking of made-up days—as Internation Women’s Day. Two lovely families, countries apart from each other, lost adored cats this week, which put me in mind of something I wrote a while ago when my dog died. This is the part I was thinking of, which was actually about the death of a cat I loved, even longer ago:

“I’m so sorry about your cat,” whispered a vet who went under the name The Cat Doctor, handing me an envelope that contained the bill for a very expensive cat ultra-sound, the bill for cat euthanasia, and a copy of “Rainbow Bridge.” Your animal, when it dies, posits the poem, goes to a big green field where it plays with all the other dead animals, waiting for you to die, and the two of you can cross the Rainbow Bridge to live forever together somewhere that I suppose must be like Valhalla. The poem didn’t go any further than that imaginary joyful reunion, and I shoved the envelope in a desk drawer and tried not to think about it. The idea of a field full of all the world’s dead pets waiting for their owners to die too felt, if not luridly idolatrous, at least twee and too nakedly self-referential.