Chaco, Moving On
    Today, a piece of light left my house.  My cat, Chaco, an Abyssinian, who I firmly believe had the Cat Superpower of traveling at the speed of light, was too sick to go on.     I mean it about that Superpower thing.  There’s no other explanation for the way she would suddenly be present at, and shoot out of, any open door.  For the way she figured out, two days after we got her home, how to pop the screen out of the window and dash away into the yard.      I always warned people about her Superpower, but they never believed me until they saw it in action.  My brother once spent a few hours chasing her through the woods because he didn’t take me seriously about it.  My friend Debbie also experienced the shock of a cat who wasn’t at the door, then was outside, beyond her reach.  My sister had it happen to her, and she stood at the back door with an open can of cat food, telling Chaco, “You have to come back inside, or I’ll slit my throat with this can top.  Really.  You’re too beautiful.  Come back inside.”    Traveling at the speed of light, which is around 11 million miles a minute, supposedly slows your aging.  So the physicists say.  But I think there must be more than one kind of speed of light, because it didn’t work for Chaco.    Though she was only four, a few weeks ago she was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease, a genetic defect of her breed called renal amyloidosis .  I gave her all the time I could, days when she still wanted to eat, and drink, and go outside to explore and stretch in the sun.      When she stopped stretching and began instead to hunch into herself, when she stopped demanding to be let out, when she stopped being who she’d always been, I knew it was time to end her misery, and send her on her final escape.         Light moves too swiftly into and out of our days.  Light can't be clutched in the grasping human hand.  Light is what we’re all made of, energy as well as matter, but we can’t any of us keep it as long as we want to.       Chaco was one of the Great Cats of the universe.  When I brought her home, she weighed all of 3 pounds, but quickly subdued the two Labrador retrievers in our house to her will.  That’s about 200 pounds of dog, which must have been the equivalent of subduing Mack Trucks.   Later, she patiently brought live mice to our dog Ziggy, and taught him how to hunt them, how to find them when they hid, how to pounce on them.  As a result, my dog is one of the best mousers we’ve ever had. Chaco loves Ziggy     She was the only cat I’ve had who insisted on taking walks with me and the dogs in the woods.  She always kept pace with the rest of us, following me when I whistled to her.   She herded our chickens away from the road, securing the perimeter like a border collie.  She shot into the bedroom every morning to drink from the water glass I kept at the side of the bed, then stare out the window with Ziggy, the two of them nose to nose, joyful to see the world, ready to be out in it.      She was a vigorous, happy, and healthy cat until a few weeks ago, when she started losing weight and peeing too much.  I made an appointment with the vet to find out what was wrong, and the day that I took her to it, about a mile down our country road she popped out of her cat carrier, and opened the car window with her paw.      Let me say that again:  She opened the car window with her paw.  I tried closing it on my side.  She pressed harder on her side, keeping it open.     I caught her just before she leaped out, and held her close to my chest for the rest of a mercifully short drive.         Here is what I say about the speed of light.  For us humans, it isn’t a physics problem to be solved.  For us, it’s the swiftness of the days, the light entering the window in the morning, and leaving at night.      When my father died, my mother said, “I had no idea my married life would go so fast. I just want him back.”  This, after 35 years.   Sundagger    Chaco was named after Chaco Canyon,  a National Park in New Mexico I happen to love.  She was the same color as the land there, and she was as fierce and wild and gentle and complicated as that land. Chaco Canyon is also a place that’s all about light.  It's home to Sundagger, a spiral carved into the side of a butte that's the only marker tracking the noontime summer solstice, the winter solstice, and the minimum and maximum light of the moon. It was discovered not by a scientist or an archeologist, but by a woman photographer, Anna Sofaer , who happened to be hiking near it at the noontime solstice. She was struck by the beauty of it, because it marks time in the most beautiful way, with daggers of light that pierce the center of the spiral, or hold it empty of light.      Some creatures we meet in the world, human and nonhuman, find the center of our spiral lives and pierce them with light.   Then, they go away, holding us empty of light.         In the Tzutujil Mayan language, the word for grief is the same as the word for praise.  We praise what we grieve, and we are always aware that someday we will grieve what we praise.  Because light keeps moving through the window, in and out, out and in.         Chaco traveled through my life at the speed of light.  And I want her back.   Here is my praise, and my grief for a creature whose light was as big and beautiful as the land she was named for, my praise and grief for knowing that we’re all light, entering and leaving the room.



                                                                   Where Everything Sings (For Chaco)
These gifts are sundagger and time,space held empty of light.The stone bones of earth have brought up bloodbeneath the skin of my thighs and if I could read sign,I would know what this pattern says besideswelcome home.
To know we are only light, piercing the circle of time.To know we are only light dancing through the circle of time.
A forgotten woman wandered here.Anna Sofaer seeking art on the side of a neglected butte,finding science enough to make the professors howl.The ancient ones called her, speaking her name becausewomen's names are dismissed like the oldest wisdom, the oldest dreams,by those who don't know art in their bones,the way these old stones do.
To know we are light piercing the circle of time.To know we live where everything sings and fire still has a story to tell.To know we are daggers of light.
The sun rakes my back with eager fire and I love the blood left there,and my thighs, mesa bitten.Wind will sing this white woman's heart to dreams tonight.This is the generosity of a spare, high land,
and can there ever be enough gratitude for beauty.





 To see more of Chaco's photos, and those of her friends, you can visit me on Facebook .  






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