I Just Remembered That I Love Him

  You really don’t know how much you love something until you
                  nearly lose it… until you are threatened w/ its nonexistence.
    Toby whittled away to nothing in a matter of weeks, then he disappeared.
                I hadn’t given it thought until today, or rather yesterday,
  and I cried, but I held back. I know why Miranda was
  upset. Yoshi has an IV, the vet said to prepare ourselves.
          But now it looks good and he will live.
    I look at Yoshi, this cat whom I’d scorned since Simba’s death,
    scorned him for peeing on the floor, for being too fat, too tense, too skittish.
                This cat I’d made fun of, I’m guessing to block the pain
    when he, too, inevitably dies… well, that wall fell quick.
                  Seven years we’ve had Toby & Yoshi; nine years we’d had
  Simba. When he died, I cut myself off. I no longer loved Toby & Yoshi.
            Now Toby is, most probably, dead.. and its so sudden, like Simba, I cannot
believe it. But unlike Simba, there is nothing to shatter that. I doubt we will
      ever find the body.
                    So now I look at Yoshi, w/ his valium (temporary, of course)
  and I feel only love, and I wonder how I could have blocked myself from
them, and I feel a hole in my heart for Toby, whom I loved, I really did & do..
      But for the past two years expressed little more than resigned tolerance.
        It hurts to love, even a cat. Especially a cat… I feel as though it is not
      worth the pain. I would rather have many friends, socialize often,
        love my characters, pour myself into them, and give them to the world,
            depend on God, lean on God; never mourn a living thing again.
                But that is not how it is, nor how it was meant to be.
      My characters in MisPan quarrel & bicker & hold grudges & resentments;
          they fight, they hurt each other, neglect & are neglected by each other,
    embarrass & disrespect each other; but.. They have each other..
      Really have each other.. A ‘protect & look-out for’ instinct that needs
    neither words nor thought; they fight for each other, comfort one another,
    laugh with, tease, provoke, joke, torment, trick, manipulate, con, embrace,
  nurture, lash out, tickle, yell at, cry about, cry with, lift up, carry,
  guard for, side with, agree, sit up with, labor for, give to, surprise,
    tackle, kiss, run with, play with, relax with, forgive, love.
          There are hurts & even betrayals but at the end of the day,
  when the war is raging around them, they know.. They know they would die
  for one another. And that just says it all.
                I love these characters, & I feel safe loving them because I hold
  their lives in my hand… or rather, my head. I control what happens to
  them. I control who lives & dies, who is faithful & true.. & who is not.
  Who gets hurt, & who does the hurting.. Who is reckless & who prays for the
reckless.
          Yoshi is asleep on the cot, & I would have had no trouble
moving him before, would even have enjoyed it. But not now.
            My body is too weary to even cry out for sleep, but I will not disturb that
        cat. I have just remembered that I love him.