This blog started with Fatberry. He was my cat, a faithful and beautiful friend who brightened my days and surrounded me with love. In 2020, he was hospitalized two times – and miraculously survived both times. Following the second hospitalization, I was filled with a sense that there was meaning to be made from these miracles, that I had a message about serenity and hope that I could share with the public. I started writing. 

He died on Sunday after a long struggle with cancer. We first found a tiny tumor in August of 2021. I had the good fortune of vet insurance for him, so we were able to pull out all the stops – surgery, oncologists, experimental treatments. By February 2022, nothing had worked, and the tumor was back. We went on for months without knowing if he had weeks to live, or days, or months. In the end, he made it a long time. And that time was very high-quality; until the last month, he was our happy, frisky, feisty, funny guy, and we had a beautiful last year together. 

Wasn’t he so handsome? Everyone said so.

I’ve been thinking about the experience of quality time with your best friend. You think you are just a person with a cat cuddled in your lap. And you are. But think about what’s going on here: This friend is a big bag of cells that looks at you and loves you back. He has cells that are soft fur, and cells that are eyes that gaze lovingly at you, and cells that are a safety and contentment system that makes him so, so happy to be with you. And you have cells that process the sensation of stroking soft silver fur as pleasant and very desirable, and eyes that gaze back at his sweet kitten face, and a safety and contentment system that thinks this is the best experience ever. You are both surging with hormones that tell you both what a wonderful time this is, doses of chemicals that stimulate your millions of clever little brain cells to communicate to you that this is just the best. And meanwhile both your organs are doing all the right things, powered by your millions of miraculous cells replicating and doing their work and generally allowing you both to enjoy this experience. You are animals doing something wild – feeling love for each other, love that crosses species, love you both feel deeply, love that moves around in your cells and allows you to feel so, so happy. 

And the layers build from there. You’re in your comfortable home, not being bombed from above. You have the material resources to afford a great home for your cat. You aren’t fleeing catastrophic flooding, or starving to death, or any of the other serious obstacles that could exist to you sharing this peaceful moment together. 

And you are spinning in space. You are on a planet that may actually be the only outpost of life in the entire vast, inky universe. You are both part of an unbroken chain of life that extends back four and a half billion years. If you go back far enough, you started from the same bizarre bunch of molecules that organized themselves to work together and duplicate themselves. You are part of a genetic family that spontaneously and painstakingly evolved over time to feel love, love that you can feel for each other. Your animal kind might be the only beings in the universe that feel love. You think you’re just cuddling your friend, but it’s all these things at once – and more. 

I’ve been dancing around some of these thoughts for the past couple of weeks, but they’ve only started to gel in the past couple of days, since he’s been gone. I wish I’d had these insights while he was still here, it would have made our time together even deeper and more nuanced. I wish I’d put the thoughts together years ago. Now, they only apply to my memories.  

I’m gutted at the loss of my best friend. But it’s not all down sides. I have also spent the past 2+ years worrying about him constantly. Is he eating enough? Did he get his full dose of medicine, and what if he didn’t? How sick is he? Is he suffering? How will I know when it’s time to put him to sleep? What will it be like for me to mourn him? In these ways, I experienced him getting sicker and dying over and over again, for years before he passed. In my heart and my mind, I was constantly making decisions about his care, and second-guessing them. Was I doing enough? What would keep him happy, healthy and alive for as long as possible? Was that even what was desirable? In my heart and my mind, I imagined over and over what the consequences would be of the care I was providing for him. Now that I have answers to all those questions, I know. I can put down all the worrying. I am released from the experience of losing him in my mind. 

I wonder if I could have put down the worrying a long time ago. In my meditation practice, I’ve learned that there are a lot of thoughts you can just let go. You can let them go without practical consequences, and if I had just accepted that I was doing my best, and if I had just told myself I would know what it would be like to grieve him when it was time to grieve him, I think I could probably have saved myself a lot of suffering along the way the past two years. He would have died only once, not time and again in the scenarios I saw in my head. If I had let that go, I would have felt immediate relief, like I’ve experienced a hundred thousand times in meditation. 

Fatberry taught me about love, forgiveness, mindful presence, redemption, joy, what my priorities should be. It’s so hard to understand that all of that was wrapped up in a little 12-pound body, the boundaries of a sack of flesh and fur. His presence filled our space – for Dan and I both, he filled our hearts and minds with a massive constellation of feelings. Maybe this is one of the (many) things Buddhists mean when they say there is no self. There is no limit between the physical body and the energy you put out into the world. It stretches boundlessly past your body, filling the spaces between you and the people you touch, filling hearts and minds and extends into forever, even after you’re gone. 

The Physicist’s Eulogy

They say that when you feel deep grief, it’s a reflection that you felt deep love. I certainly loved that little cat. He inspired me, he soothed me, he brightened my days, he made me laugh – so much, he was truly a hilarious cat, full of personality. I miss him so much, and I will for a long time. I am also honored to be part of the human experience of understanding something about people who grieve, who have lost loved ones whose presence was even more meaningful – spouses, children, parents, best friends. We are so fortunate to love so hard that sadness can break us. We are so lucky our genetic ancestors happened upon this love thing. I am grateful we are on this living planet to love each other and help each other through the hardest sad times. Even through the tough stuff, we are fortunate beyond measure. 

Rest easy, sweetest Fattybear. Thank you for being the best friend I could ever ask for. Our love exists for as long as I live.