The Fear Of God Lies In A Toothless Cat

“All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.”
--Jean de la Bruyere (French satiric moralist, 1645-1696)

I was a little late this year getting my two guy cats to the vet so I ended up doing the loud "crash-chase-around-the-house-and-capture" routine yesterday. They are both getting old so I suspected that the vet would recommend a teeth-cleaning (which requires anesthesia) for both of them and indeed she did. What I didn't expect to hear was that my favorite cat, Baby, has a severe tooth infection and will need to have the tooth pulled or the infection could go to his heart and he will die. It was at that point that the Fear began to hit me.

Yes, I do recall the series of Betta fish posts I did recently, how afraid and upset I was, and how I survived Lazzy's death but this is beyond that. I got Baby too-soon after he was born and he could fit in my hand. Since the first night I got him, he has preferred to sleep on my head at night. At first it was annoying but I became used to it and preferred it. Now that he is 16-lbs, sleeping on my head is a little annoying again and I have breathing and allergy problems but I still prefer it.

When Baby first came to live with us I wasn't too happy about it. He is a black cat and I wanted an orange one. I was home all day in those days, he was constantly at my side doing something, and I did not care for the invasion. Now, he continues to stay within a few feet of me when I am home but now I go looking for him if he is having an independent moment and I do not like him not being nearby.

He is more loving and affectionate than any other cat, or person, I've known. He likes to lick me (yuck), cuddle, "spoon" in bed, stare into my eyes, listen to me, and tell me how he feels (which he does ALLOT of.) I don't think he is 100% cat but is also part dog and part human. He is able to fetch and bark. Hmmm...now that I think about it, he also sounds like a raccoon and pig at times...so add those animals to his breeding. He frequently sits human-style and other such things.

Yes, he is my best friend and I have never been closer to another living being than I am with him. (In fact, now that he has heard me typing, he needs to lie on the keyboard.)

Being close to others has been an issue with me lately. It has become more clear to me that all my current relationships are what I call "arms-length" relationships because that is the distance I am kept from others. How much of this has to do with me versus them remains to be determined but in any event, it has become quite painful.

I do pretty much everything alone and spend most of my time alone at work and home. Except for drinking and happy hours (which do not count as real human contact), no one asks me to spend time with them and no one accepts my few requests either. No, I do not have any family. I'm not emotionally intimate with my spouse and he cannot list one reason as to why he loves or stays with me so the cat is pretty much all I have (next to myself, of course.)

Being so alone and experiencing the "ultimate-aloneness" that everyone runs from is definitely my equivalent to the "Fear of God" phenomenon. The knowledge that I have to drop Baby off at a vet's office, leave him screaming (yes, he does scream), crying, hissing, and ALONE in a place where something painful and dangerous will happen causes my stomach to hurt more than the colonoscopy and sickness I experienced lately ever could.