The last small thing I cared for was Bean, a tiny black cat who found my family and me in 1995.  One morning I opened the door of my house in East Oakland, and there he was, standing on the porch.

 "Hi," he seemed to say.  "Can I live here?  I like the food already."

We had another cat named Peanut.  Peanut had severe adjustment and relationship issues that lasted until the day he died.  He really hated all of us unless he was hungry.  I should have known NOT to take him from the SPCA when he desperately tried to crawl out of my arms when I picked him up.  He was a rebound kitty, the cat I got for my kids after our loved cat Jennifer was run over by a car.  I brought him home and he lived under the bed for a few days.  He did like my oldest son a little bit more than the rest of us, but if he had been a human, we would have said he had borderline personality disorder. 

But there was no giving him back, and he lived with us and then my former spouse for 13 years. 

Bean wasn't about to run away, even though I at first tried to shoo him back to his supposed owner.  No dice.  Every morning, there he was, his yellow eyes wide and open. 

"Hi," he seemed to say.  "I really like you."

Bean really did like us.  He ran in, snuggled close, moved with us when we moved to two different houses.  At first, we called him Black Kitty, and then BK, and then Black Bean, and then Bean.  He slept on our bed, wanting complete and total connection at all times.  Peanut hated him, too, no cute cat balls of love on our couches.  It was the black (Bean) and the white (Peanut), a story of fighting legumes.

In the summer of 2006, Bean came to live with me in Lafayette, where I lived until the end of that year.  My friend--a vet--told me I needed to get his teeth cleaned and while doing so, they found out he had cardio-myopathy.  An enlarged heart.  She told me it wouldn't kill him soon, but it would kill him eventually.  Meanwhile, he was getting used to my house.  Michael put in a little cat door.  I bought him a collar and tag with his new address.  He snuggled close.

"I still really like you," he seemed to say.  "Even after all these years."

One day I came home from the city, and there was no Bean waiting for me at the door, as usual.  But there he was on the new bathroom mat, a soft fuzzy thing he loved.

"Hi, Bean," I said, petting him.  He purred and took my touch.  But when I left the room, he didn't follow me.  Instead, I heard that sound, a caterwaul, that true gut wrenching sound cats make.  He was pulling himself out of the bathroom and into the living room by his front paws.

I picked him up, called my friend the vet, and we raced in to the office.  As I held him in the office, he looked at me with those happy yellow eyes.  He was purring, as always. 

"If I can stay like this," he seemed to say.  "I'm happy."

It turns out that he'd thrown a blood clot and there wasn't much that could be done.  And as I had done the year before with Peanut because he had a brain tumor, I held a cat in my arms as my friend put him to sleep.

Two cats, two years.  My small, animal creatures from my past were dead.

In a way, and I know this sounds ridiculous, so much more than those animals died right then.  There was the end of yet another two things that connected to me to my marriage and old life.  I would never have wanted them to die, but they did.  Bean's death seemed to mark for me the end of something huge, and I don't think I stopped weeping for three days.  It was the end to so much.  To the houses that they'd live in, the beds they'd slept on, the yards they'd explored.  This sounds morbid, but doors really closed.  Bean's death helped me move into another space, an empty space.  My space.

Bean is in a little redwood box on my office shelf.  "Bean" the tag reads.  Peanut is buried in a hillside on my former spouse's yard.  Michael and I don't want any small creatures now.  When we go on walks and I want to pet one and Michael balks because it takes up time, I say, "Think of it like a fault line.  Every now and again it needs to release a little energy.  Let me pet these animals, or one day you will come home to a little fur ball all your own."

He lets me stop and pet the creatures.

These little creatures do make life fuller, but I don't think I'm up to the pain of losing another one.  With people, we can't make the choice, often, of not loving them.  We are vulnerable with each human we love, knowing that either they or we will die.  Loss comes with the package.  But we can choose to own animals.  We make the choice to bring them into our lives.

I think back to just the cats in my life:  TT, Friday, Petey, Jenny, Buddy, Uncle Eu, Kitty, Cleo, Oliver, Jennifer, Peanut, and Bean.  All with different personalties, all with different ways of engaging me.  All meaning something else, many from different lives, with different people.

But who knows.  Maybe someday, fur ball.   And love.  And loss again.

Jessica