Oh Katie!

by Karen Weigum
(Victoria British Columbia, Canada)

Oh Katie!

For the cats I had in my later adult life I wrote a little story-poem about them after they passed. In fact I wrote it in the immediate days afterward. I can’t do that for Katie. She lives on in my heart and means too much to me to just write a story, but I want to say how dearly she was loved. She saw me through my senior years. She gave her heart completely to me and I gave mine to her. We grew old together and I will never let her go. This is now 2 months later and thoughts of her fill my heart.

Its funny because when I first got her she didn’t have first place in my heart. That was taken by elderly Susie-cat. Katie knew that and it saddened her. She would go away in the daytime and hide under a bush. I had to look for her in the evening and would find her hiding there. In the evening she would go to the darkened basement to sit alone. Sometimes I would go and bring her upstairs but she wouldn’t stay. She knew she was second fiddle and thought that was her place. Oh My Katie, that hurts to remember. There I would find her at bedtime and we would spend the night snuggling together but the next day would be the same. But the years passed and so did the other cats and then there were just the two of us alone and together. Somewhere along the way she became the most precious friend. I loved her so, and the love she returned was complete and entire and trusting. She needed me, and how I needed her. What more can I say. She will always be my own little girl and there can never be one to replace her.

I see her little eyes looking up at me as she did the day she went away. It was the same look she gave me as she first sat in front of me at the shelter and begged me to love her -trusting, loving, pleading. I said yes to her then and I can not ever say no to that love. She deserves better than that. She gave herself to me heart and soul. She trusted me implicitly. She does not deserve to have her memory pushed off and away as if she doesn’t matter any more. Her love for me, my love for her remain strong and true. I can not turn that love away. She was a gift from God to my lonely heart. And I continue to hold her in my heart and always will.

Now I realize why it is that I can not let go of her. This has never been completed. She wasn’t willing to go yet. She wanted to live. That memory of her sitting before me the day she went away looking up at me with those loving longing eyes, -that I can’t forget. They pleaded with me. Oh My Girl, those eyes. They plead with me still. They tell me this thing is not completed. She wasn’t ready, nor was I. That word: Completion. I have held that word in my heart as a description of heaven! That’s why I can’t let her go. We both need completion. We won’t find that completion on this earth, but Oh My…. We will see completion. We both will. Yes we will. Ah My Katie. What a time that will be. I will see you then and we will both be complete.

When I used to go away for a little trip, sometimes to leave her in the care of a sitter, or left alone just briefly, I felt compelled when driving back home to be calling: “I’m coming to you Katie. Hold on, I’m coming to you.” In a way that proved to be prophetic because now I find myself to be calling that out again: “I’m coming to you Katie. Hold on, I’m coming to you.” Because I know I will be joining her and we will walk through those gates together. She is waiting for me and it won’t be long now, that I know. My girl and I together.

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