Angels In Our Lives
As I look out on snow that has fallen here in the Sierra Foothills, my mind travels back to a December almost thirty years ago when I watched as a white cat walked gingerly across our frozen pond at a place Kit and I called Breakfast Creek. The sun’s glare made it impossible to tell if the surface was water or ice. I can’t imagine making that crossing, but then, I am not a cat. But what if I’d had no choice. Could I have made myself light as a feather? As lithe as a cat? Would a guardian angel have appeared to carry me safely to the other side, as weightless as its own airy apparition?
We are all little angels at birth, arriving into the world in a state of pure, naked innocence. As infants, we are our parents’ precious angels. Then we sprout wings, learn to stand on our own, and eventually fall a notch or two from grace when we reach the “terrible twos.” But for some our state of angelhood can last a lifetime. Aunties and grandmothers see only wings, never warts.
At Breakfast Creek, angels appeared in the shapes of animals and frequently arrived in our barn unannounced around Christmas time. Sam, our old coon hound, found his way to the barn our first Christmas there, stayed four years, and was gone. Sam was a young walker hound who had gotten lost and found a home with us as if it were meant to be. On snowy days, Sam accompanied me on long walks down local country roads I had not yet explored. My guardian hound, this loyal canine friend quickly became a much-loved addition to our family of critters that included Francis—a resident Toulouse goose that conveyed with the property—and two Russian Blue kittens, Kashmir and Jammu.
After Sam died, other animals began to appear. The first was Barney, an old yellow bruiser of a barn cat who arrived one day with Blanche—a dainty white adoring mate. Barney fathered four kittens and dotted on them like an old daddy lion, allowing them to play with his tail and pounce on his body unmercifully. Then like angel visits, short and bright, Barney, disappeared as well, but left behind an angel kitten we remember to this day.
As I put up Christmas decorations now almost thirty years later in a place that is a world away from that old Missouri barn, the image of a white kitten on a small cookie tin brought back memories of a tiny kitten we named “Pocket.” He was the runt of Blanche’s last litter, born in our barn sometime the September before Barney moved on to another barn. While his siblings grew fat and climbed trees like monkeys, Pocket remained small and moved with a kind of palsied motion. Like Dickens’ Tiny Tim, Pocket’s sweet innocence filled the barn with joy far beyond his birth weight of a single pound.
While days remained warm late into that November, the sun helped Pocket keep pace with life. Though his steps were wobbly and falling seemed more natural to him that walking, he gamely ran after his stronger siblings, grabbing onto life with a fearless spirit, totally unaware that he was moving through life with a terrible handicap.
Each morning and again before dark, I collected Pocket from the litter in the barn, tucked him inside my jacket, rubbed his little head between his ears, and brought him into the kitchen for some warm milk in hopes that his bones might grow strong and quiet his jarring motion. He traveled against my chest, a pound of happy purring, observing the world through bright eyes from his warm nest in my jacket pocket.
On the first of December, Pocket rode with me in my red pickup truck to the University of Missouri Veterinary teaching hospital to be seen by a neurologist. For two hours, he was examined, observed, weighed, wormed, checked for ear mites and fever, and vaccinated. The doctors finally diagnosed Pocket’s condition as probable congenital cerebellar hypoplasia. There is no treatment. He would be prone to accidents and need extra care. A guardian angel would be essential because his nine lives would be tested daily.
Over the next few days, the temperature began to drop. Then a cold early morning rain blew into the area. That morning, I went to the barn later than usual to collect Pocket from the pile of kittens he curled up with each night. When I entered the dark barn, I felt an emptiness that told me Pocket was gone long before I found his lifeless body in the cold grass. All these years later, that feeling of emptiness returns when I think of animals from that earlier episode in my life that I loved dearly and lost too soon.
Why had Pocket come into my life and left it when he did? Did I gain courage from witnessing his courageous spirit take hold of life at a time when my own life was undergoing new and uncertain challenges? In this season of Christmas, memories of Pocket’s plucky spirit still bring joy on even the darkest of days.