Reflections on Xena

My cat is dying. A little over a month ago, Xena was diagnosed with a cancer on her face. At first I couldn't see anything. By now I've seen some of her teeth fall out, leaving a gap that I have to rinse out after she eats since food gets stuck in there. Her eye started to bother her, and she scratched it so badly that we had to have it removed. Other than that incident though, she seems mostly unaffected in her mood and demeanor. The reason I'm writing about this is that I've never really had to watch someone die before. All my previous pets, as well as all the humans I've known who died, all died fairly suddenly or at least out of my sight. But I can see Xena deteriorating. I interact with her injuries on a daily basis. I know she will be gone soon.  I find that this makes me appreciate her at a whole new level. When she sits in my lap or curls up on me in bed, I'm much less likely to take her presence for granted than before. She has lived with me for almost 16 years now, and I feel much closer to her now than I did before I learned of this cancer.

Of course, one of the things the Buddha encourages us to pay more attention to is the fact that we're all subject to aging, illness, and death. So from this perspective, I've always been watching everyone die. But even though I've heard many times that I should reflect on this as a way to appreciate my own and others' lives more, I've never really been affected by these thoughts the way Xena's situation affects me. I suppose that's mainly because, when I do this, I never really take seriously that anyone I know is going to die. It always seems morbid or even shameful. Even though I claim not to believe in magic, there's a lingering superstitious sense that somehow thinking about people or pets dying will have an affect on the world. As if to imagine something is to wish for it, and to wish for it could affect the probability of it actually happening.

I'm not sure how or if I can use this experience with Xena to improve my appreciation of other living beings, including myself. But I do have a better sense now of what I'm aiming at in practices such as the meditation on the five remembrances. I can imagine what it might be like to have an enhanced appreciation of all the living beings in my experience similar to the enhancement that I've experienced with Xena. One more reason to appreciate her!

Another thing that I have been reflecting on with Xena's decay is what I can see of her response to it. As I said above, she mostly seems unaffected by what is happening to her. While she was clearly annoyed with her eye for a little while there, she has otherwise mostly been her normal, loving self. I like to think of animals as 'just living' in the sense of not struggling with their experience the way most of us humans do. If you go back to my first post, there seems to be no 'second dart' for Xena, just her direct experience of whatever is happening.

I can imagine a human, even myself, in similar circumstances being unable to enjoy what life they have left. "Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why won't I be able to do all those things I still want to do?" etc. Whereas Xena just climbs into my lap with her missing teeth and missing eye and purrs. Of course, she probably doesn't understand that she is dying, but she certainly knows she's got a lumpy face with missing teeth and one eye. That would be enough to put most of us in a dour mood.

This is something I'll have to explore more later, as I'm not sure I'd want to say that we'd be better off without the capacity to reflect on our experience. But in the meantime I'm happy to observe and appreciate and take inspiration from Xena's example.