Rest in Peace, Mocha

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are

- Sting

I didn’t know Mocha the cat, but I’ve been finding myself profoundly affected by her death. I’m sure this is in part because my psyche is still reverberating with the aftershocks of my mother-in-law passing away. I’m also sure this is representative of the kinds of deep emotional connections that I feel toward animals—the kinds of connections that have been represented at various times on this blog. Yet, I also don’t want to dismiss these feelings.

On Friday morning, while my wife and I were walking through town for exercise, we noticed a dead cat in the middle of one of the city’s neighborhood streets. Immediately, we voiced a sense of sorrow over the cat’s death. Then, we noticed that the cat had a collar and a tag. Monica suggested that we look to see if we could find information to contact the cat’s owners, particularly because, while the cat had died, presumably by being hit by a car on the road, her body had not been mangled by whatever had happened and we wanted the owners to have a chance to take the cat’s body before cars ran over it and inflicted more damage. The cat’s tag revealed her name—“Mocha”—along with an address and phone number. After a couple of calls with no answer, we realized that the address was for the house directly across the street from where Mocha lay. Fortunately, someone was home and we were able to inform the woman who answered the door of the news about Mocha. The woman subsequently came out to get Mocha.

Mocha looked like a nice cat. She had been dressed in a pretty collar with a heart-shaped nametag attached to it. She looked well-groomed and, I’d like to think, well-loved. I can picture her sitting on her porch licking her paws or enjoying the breeze in the shade of the trees. I can also picture her family saddened by the loss of their pet so unexpectedly and suddenly. These impressions of Mocha are, of course, my own idealistic images of Mocha’s life and home. Her life and home could have been very different and her death could have happened differently than I envision it. It’s possible that, inflicted with some disease, Mocha simply fell over dead and happened to be in the road when it happened. It’s also possible that her family didn’t grieve much over her loss, though Mocha’s collar, tag, and grooming, as well as the woman’s reaction at the door, lead me to suspect otherwise. In the end, I don’t know the details of Mocha’s life and death, but I’m willing to allow my fantasies to exist as my understanding of Mocha … and I want to think of Mocha often, reminding me, even if through my own illusions about her existence, of the joy and pleasure that can be experienced by cultivating time with animals, of how fragile all life is, and of the way that continual recognition of that fragility can help one treat one’s world and one’s fellow inhabitants in that world more sensitively and more compassionately.