Or
One Special Cat
Is there a difference between unconditional love and romantic love?
Is there a difference between romantic love and possessiveness?
Does unconditional love mean that when a man’s wife and soul mate, the woman he knows to be the one love of his life comes to him and says, “I’ve fallen in love with a woman and I think I might be gay,” he says, “Okay, I love you and want nothing but your happiness, so whatever it takes,”?
Is that true love?
Or is he giving up, copping out, “must not have ever really loved her if he gave up that easily,”?
Which is the right thing to do in this circumstance, fight or flight?
Romantic love says, fight, champion, be a champion for your mate, your love, gird up and prepare to do battle. Show her how far you are willing to go.
For her.
Fight.
Unconditional love says flight, go, give up. If you really do love her and want only her happiness, any form of “fighting for her” amounts to nothing more than possessiveness. You don’t want to possess her. You want her to be happy. Yes, with you, but if that’s not happening, if you’re holding her back, all you can do is step out of the way.
For her.
Flight.
These questions troubled me mightily in August of 2001, two years in to the five year affair my wife had with a gay woman; the argument between my heart, which said stay, and my head, which said go, could not be resolved. I was made to see that my love was indeed possessive, that it was not completely unconditional.
I wanted her to be with me.
And there were, of course, the children, the four she had when we met and the two we added afterward. Their factors in this equation of love could not be ignored. If not for the two boys she and I conceived and created together I most assuredly would have left. Not that I do not love the older four, but that their destinies, I mistakenly assumed because I am not their blood father, I never felt were mine to decide. Of my two blood sons, however, I felt no such compunction. Their destinies are to no small degree my responsibility. When things got real bad, when my own pain seemed insufferable, when I watched my wife get ready for her dates, get dressed up all pretty and sexy, how she once dressed for me, and knew that it was in fact not for me, when my hurt and rejection was all I could see and feel I most assuredly would have left if not for the children. In reality it was them I was fighting for. It was for them that I was a champion. When it was the heart that said go, it was the head that said stay, because of the children, because I didn’t want them to have that all-too-normal relationship of divorced parents and the visitation-only daddy, and because I did not want to have that kind of relationship with them. Even though everything in me said go, remove yourself from this pain and suffering, put time and distance between yourself and it, when I knew in my heart I was not wanted by her, I also knew in my heart that I had to stay for them, for the children.
So I stayed, I endured, I suffered. I turned inward and found whatever solace there was to be found. I abused substances, drank alcohol to excess, delved over-deep into porn and kinky sexual fantasy. I went to work each day, did my job, came home, and simply allowed my own heart to break.
By August of 2004, five years after the affair had begun, fours months after it ended in a tremendous flash of energy, an emotional paroxysm experienced by all three of us involved, my wife, her lover, and myself, which against all odds brought my wife and myself somehow closer together than ever yet took the last erg of love energy I felt left in my heart, I felt myself no longer capable of either giving or receiving love. I felt there was no more love left in me to give, and that I was therefore no longer able to receive it. This limbo I was in for I don’t know how long. I didn’t live, I existed, getting through each long day best I could, with whatever it took.
Then Pepper came to me. Pepper is a cat who for at least two years before this had lived in the blackberries along the slough out behind where I worked. I had been seeing him for some time, first as a tiny black spot way down at the other end of the building, then larger and with more clarity as he expanded his territory closer and closer until he was based in the bushes directly outside the back door. A woman co-worker had taken to feeding him and two other feral cats sharing this range, even renting traps and capturing them to have them spaid or neutered. Pepper, already fixed, was spared this infringement on his liberty. I resisted all efforts to impose human values on these basically wild animals, make them dependent upon humans for their survival. The other two would not even suffer being touched. Pepper, though, was different. He clearly had fond memories of an earlier time in human company. He would let anyone pet him. Those of us that smoked out back, at least. Anyone sitting in the chair outside the back door and having a smoke on break would invariably find this sixteen pound black cat jumping up on to his or her lap, insisting on being petted. I resisted this, too, but eventually gave in.
One day, feeling particularly low and unlovable, I allowed Pepper up on to my lap. I was instantly smitten. I felt love both coming from him to me and going from me to him. I wanted with my head not to feel it in either direction, deny its very possibility, but my heart would not do that. It was undeniable, indisputable. Not only was I being loved, I was loving back.
I allowed Pepper on to my lap every time I went out for a smoke after that. I became very grateful for the comfort, the solace he gave me. Very soon he was trying to follow me back in the door when my break was over. At some point I let him. He trailed me to my office in the shop at the back of the warehouse. This only lasted about a week, a week during which he, in retrospect, had been very persistent and anxious, almost panicky. The general manager found out and she freaked. She saw no place for a cat in the workplace. When she insisted, made threats as to Pepper’s welfare, I took him home one day, to live with me forever. That was on a Friday. When I returned to work on Monday there was a crew out by the slough with chainsaws, slashing the blackberries to the ground, part of a native plant restoration project along that waterway and all across the metro area. Getting out of my car and standing there, hearing the frightening buzz of the saws, witnessing the devastation to what had been Pepper’s home, the complete eradication of any cover, feeling the adrenaline of real fear coursing through my system, I understood completely in that moment, and loved Pepper all the more for having chosen me.
After I brought Pepper home, things slowly got better for my wife and me. He was understandably close and possessive with me exclusively at first. But in time he came to trust my wife and to love her as much if not more than he does me. As that transpired, I learned many things from him. I found a bond with him I had thus far shared with only one other individual in my life: my wife. Just like my wife and I have always communicated in an almost telepathic fashion – if she is at the grocery store and I remember something we both forgot while discussing the list, invariably she comes home with it – I found I communicated with Pepper this way too. If Pepper’s water or food bowl was not full, I knew. If he wanted out, even though I was not in the same room, I knew. If he wanted in and I was lying upstairs in my bed falling asleep, I woke up and knew. In the other direction, if I was down or blue, he knew. If I was anxious or worried, he knew. If I was lonely, he knew. And in these times he came to me. If I was sitting at the computer, he jumped on to my lap. If I was upstairs in my room, he came and scratched at the door. He just knew. And he came. I came to think of him as a little love lamp. He came and provided heat and shed light whenever I was feeling cold and in the dark.
It was Pepper who taught me, after my heart was not only broken but shattered in to a million tiny seemingly-irretrievable pieces that not only was I still lovable, I could also still love. In teaching me that lesson, Pepper helped me more than any human being alive to repair the damage to my relationship with my wife, my soul mate, the one love of my life. For that, but not that alone, to Pepper I am eternally grateful. He taught me that love is both possessive and unconditional, when it’s true. And that this is okay. He taught me that love comes both from and to the head and the heart. And that this is okay too.
I don’t know how old Pepper is. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be with me. But I know that when he dies it will be as devastating to me as if my wife or one of my children, all six of them, has died. Sometimes I pick him up and hold him, pleading silently in both my head and heart, “Please don’t ever die,” and knowing in both that someday he will, knowing also in both that because of the bond we share, the love, he never will. This brings me no small comfort, and much gratitude pours out of me.
Without Pepper, I never would have made it through this.
I’m still in recovery. I think it will likely go on the rest of my life. I just thank God that my wife and I are still together, that our family is intact, and that Pepper is still with us all, for however long that will be.
When I told myself I could no longer love or be loved, he came to me and showed me I could still do both.
He’s one very special cat.
April 6th, 2010
