Lessons from Chloe

By Alexander, Arizona

Animals are Soul and capable of being channels for the divine, often in powerful ways, just like humans.

A case in point is Chloe, a big, sixteen-year old Russian Blue cat, who translated last night. She came to us in Seattle, from a shelter, full of fears and anxieties that she never seemed able to shake. Her natural reaction was to find a dark, secure place to hide from life: an underwear drawer, a den in thick vegetation. She ate in excess and in a panic, and then vomited on the living room floor. Her spirit was troubled. I used to think that it was our mission to help her heal. But then realized that was merely vanity.

And yet, she had an enormous capacity to give love.

When my wife was going through a “dark night” that came after a job promotion turned out to be hollow, Chloe understood the situation. She came to her each day in bed and lay almost on top of her head and purred so loudly, that it was like the Sound Current—a rolling wave of love. This only stopped once the problem was resolved.

A similar demonstration occurred when “Tiger,” at that time our oldest, and smallest cat, but the clear matriarch of the family, reached the end of her days. Tiger had always resented Chloe, no doubt seeing her as competition, and treated her harshly. Now she had become totally incontinent and so had to be an outdoor cat (our cats have always had the freedom to be in or out). It was winter, albeit in Arizona, but still at a time when nighttime temperatures were getting down to freezing. A cat bed was placed on a picnic bench in a covered alcove. And each winter night as Tiger tried to coil herself into a ball tight enough to stay warm, Chloe would come into the bed next to her and surround her with her ample Russian Blue fur. This scene repeated night after night.

Fast forward, and now Chloe has arrived at that stage: incontinent, and eating and drinking less and less, until finally it appeared that her kidneys had shut down, whereupon she suddenly lost the ability to move her hind legs, or even drink properly. So I set her up in a comfortable place, cleaned her, gave her back the love she had given others and sang the HU and other sacred words for her. Now that she could no longer run to hide, she seemed to lose all her fears, but maintained her wellspring of love. I stayed with her until she left the body.

Along the way, while sharing her last hours and reflecting on her time spent with us, I learned. It’s now clear to me that if we bring nothing into this world, and leave with nothing more than a capacity to love, then we have not lived in vain.