A Rift in Eden and Time Goes On

The only silence with my regrets is that I hardly ever think of them when happy; but in sad times they all come floating to the surface like dead fish in poisoned waters.  I hurt today.  I'll get over it...I always do...but for now whenever a lull in time passes over me, crying comes with it.

Walking as a whisper on the wind, they've always been and probably always will be in the shadows of the gardens.  There's a connection with people somewhere back in their time or the mother's, and when a vagabond life turns desperate they appear out of what we perceive as nowhere trying to survive.  It's easy to assume they were just dumped, but the abandonment may have occurred seasons ago.

Some compassionate souls collect them like flies to leftovers, and life as they used to know it has been sucked down that vortex of never-ending need leaving them circling a growing black hole that becomes impossible to escape.  It's hopeless to eradicate what others have irresponsibly brought into being and continue to enable.

This whole other world of run-away thoughtlessness has always escaped me, and I have to believe that until now some kind of immense karma protected me from this fallout of human disregard, karma that malevolently sold me out at this stage of my sheltered life.

I believe enough lives were saved, lives that many judge trivial; to justify my decision to step off that spinning out of control merry-go-round and abandon the mission that was mutating way beyond my ability to cope. Someday perhaps I will feel the forgiveness I so desperately need every time that sweet face that showed up at feeding time a week ago to take food from the mouths I already was committed to protect haunts me with the resolution I chose.

Small, less than a year in age, she ate from their plates for a week.  She chose to trust me; I chose to betray her.  She never knew what was coming in her so short of a life.  How could she, after all, she was just a cat, and although we love to paste human traits onto the essences of our pets, she was still just a cat, an innocent in a world of humans not so innocent.

I left her at Metro Animal Control and walked out of her life.  I'd like to think, since she was labeled a stray instead of feral, that she had a pinch of a chance of them keeping her to adopt out, but wishful thinking is seldom a reality.  Her beautiful face will always haunt me till the end of my days, and I leave this post crying again.