Memory

Last night Cat-Dad and I were spending some quality time together watching a recording of one of his favorite musicals - Cats. It was a first for me, and it especially struck a chord when Elaine Paige as Grizabella sang Memory. Surely, hers was an affliction written for all of us abandoned cats that in real life have found ourselves living on the streets.

Cat-Dad could see that I was visibly moved, and after the show took me into his office and turned on the computer. We found and replayed the YouTube version of the selection we had just heard. But then, he opened another interpretation that he said spoke to him even more poignantly of the need for feline rescue. It was the original lyrics of Memory which were replaced because of their intensity.

Cat-Dad then told me the story of Mitzu and her five unborn kittens. She was a cat who had been captured on the streets by Animal Control and taken to an Animal Shelter. Tired and weak from her attempts to survive, Mitzu was rescued from that shelter shortly after her arrival and brought to Cat-Dad's home. There she would recuperate and have her kittens, and all would be helped to find a new life.

How Cat-Dad had felt for this little cat who had had such a terrible life. He wept when he told me of how she became ill soon after arriving, having contracted a respiratory infection at the shelter. He tried everything he knew, but in her weakened condition, Mitzu had lost the will to live. Within only a short time she became so sick that he admitted her to the hospital. There, despite the efforts of the emergency veterinarians, she was so depleted that all hope was lost. At 4:00 am, the decision was made to remove the tubes, and administer the merciful drug that would allow Mitzu the street cat to finally sleep. Cat-Dad and their entire rescue organization were shattered by this death that no one could understand. Not at least, until he read these lost and abandoned lyrics.

Daylight, I don't care if it finds me
With no breath in my body, with no beat in my heart.
For I'm certain that now I know what happiness is.
Wish I'd known that from the start.

Oh, how I know what Mitzu was feeling. During those first few weeks of my own recovery from pneumonia and starvation, I was often overwhelmed with love and gratitude for being taken from that life on the streets. If I had died right then, I could have felt I had truly lived, even if for only a few days. For it is reaching out with love to another that truly gives our lives meaning. And this was the first time that both Mitzu and I had ever known the kindly touch of a human hand.

It has now been five years since this little mother passed through our rescue/foster home, yet plainly her impact is still strongly felt. Cat-Dad went on to say that warmly wrapped in a blanket, Mitzu and her five unborn kittens now sleep on the hillside behind our home that overlooks a small stream. Finally, she has found a safe home and someone to love her as she deserves. She continues to live on in the hearts and memory of all who knew her; and now, Mitzu also lives on in mine.

With love for all,

Noel
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As I leave you a shadow of the light I once was,
May my memory sleep at last.
- Tim Rice

Street lights, and the darkness between them,
Like the good and the bad side of a life almost done.
Shake the memory of my passions returning to me.
None forgotten, no not one.

One life, is there only the one life,
That we lose in the living in an endless decline?
No complaining for no one else has seen what I've seen.
One existence, only mine.

Don't look back, no don't look back,
So hard to heed that warning.
Such temptation but the past is past,
And night makes way for morning.

Daylight, I won't care if it finds me
With no breath in my body, with no beat in my heart.
For I'm certain that now I know what happiness is.
Wish I'd known that from the start.

Burnt out ends of smoky days,
The stale cold smell of morning.
A street lamp dies another night is over
Another day is dawning.

Touch me, is there no one to touch me
It was easy to love me in my glamorous past.
As I leave you a shadow of the light I once was,
May my memory sleep at last.

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Lyrics by Tim Rice