[en]

You might remember, when I was grieving Bagha, that I tried to sort through what pain was associated with not having a cat anymore, and what was of the loss of one particular cat I had loved, Bagha.

With my new cats, I am remembering there is a bunch of nice things about having cats (aside from them making your travels slightly more complicated) — whoever they are.

• They help me connect to people socially. There are people in the neighbourhood I had pretty much not spoken to since Bagha’s death, and that I have spoken to again during these last weeks, because pretty much all we can easily socially connect on is cats. I find myself wanting to invite people over more (“come and see the cats” is a great pretext and easier than “I’d enjoy spending time with you” — I probably need to work on that, though )
• They encourage me to take downtime. Whether it’s watching them in the garden, playing with them, or petting sessions, I’ve been “stopping” more.
• I have to care for them on a daily basis, and I’ve found that in a strange way, taking care of something/someone else encourages me to take care of myself too.
• I walk around my neighbourhood, either to accompany them, or to look for them
• I again manage a coworking space featuring kitty company, entertainment, and relaxation!

Similar Posts:

• Lift09 Workshop: Where will you work tomorrow? (Pierre Belcari)
• Double Life
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• Second day offline
• End of Orange
• Different Kinds of Downtime
• LeWeb’09: Facebook, Facebook Connect, Identity (Ethan Beard)
• Lift12, People vs. Technology: Stefana Broadbent
• Missing Kitty
• Bye-Bye Bagha (1996-2010)

[en]

Gosh, three weeks already. I thought I was going to update you more regularly (well, if you’re subscribed to me on Facebook, you will have got many photographic updates — see also on Flickr) but time just flew by.

Where to start? Well, first, they have names. They had shelter names when I adopted them, of course: El Tunis and Brando. Now they have their real names: Tounsi and Safran.

Here they are at eclau, ready to go outside. They don’t normally wear collars, but I got some elastic ones that are easy to slip on and off and made some name tags for them. They’ll wear them when they go out while they get acquainted with their new territory and the humans which inhabit it. This was after their first day out, back home (they have their “spots” on the couch:

They have pretty different characters.

Tounsi is not that interested in humans to begin with, but he loves being petted and cuddled. He’s the dominant one of the two, independant, and a hunter. I have banned catnip mice from the flat (this video will show you why). He has round eyes, his lips are always slightly parted (and that’s when he doesn’t forget to close his mouth!), and his elbows stick out a bit — added to the fact he is very alert and tends to trot around to whatever interesting is going on, it gives him a bit of a comical look. He’s very soft, and always very hungry (he’s lost a bit of his paunch since I have him, but it’s been a struggle for me to figure out how to feed them).

Safran is very very cute. He looks like a cuddly soft toy. He’s a flirt: he always comes up to new humans, and if you crouch down, he’ll put his front paws on your knee or even on your shoulder and give you kitty-kisses in the ear (or lick it!). Very cute. But beware! He’s in fact quite shy, and his tolerance for petting is quickly reached. He lets you know that with teeth and claws (more often the former). That means that it’s fine to pet and cuddle him (carefully!) when he comes to you, but he’s better left alone if he’s napping in a corner. Same goes with carrying: when in the mood, he’ll try and climb on your shoulders and settle there, but if you pick him up to carry him you’ll be greeted with bites, hisses and growls (depending on the situation). I sense some learned helplessness here: he doesn’t even struggle to jump down (even when he’s free to just hop down!) but hisses and bites.

They are both splendidly litter-trained (not a single accident, fingers crossed!), and have mostly given up on trying to eat my plants and shred my tatamis and yucca with their claws since I got them kitty grass and a proper scratching post (this is only their third day with access to the outside). Look at the equipment:

(Litter box in bathtub: less litter all over the bathroom and flat, and I clean my bathtub every day — it’s never been so clean!)

The first week with Tounsi and Safran was not that easy. Not their fault, but I had a very hard time naming them, I didn’t love them yet (I’m starting to), and I had a sudden backlash of grief (expected) about Bagha. The fact that Tounsi looks and behaves more like Bagha than I initially thought was particularly painful. I mean, look at these two photos, and tell me if they don’t remind you of somebody:

Well, the hardest is past, they have been introduced to eclau and are starting to feel comfortable there, and they’ve been going outside (supervised most of the time) since Friday. I’m so happy for them! As for me, I’m starting to settle down and get used to having them around. I’m even starting to like them!

Head over to the rest of the photos.Similar Posts:

• Hello, Cats!
• Bye-Bye Bagha (1996-2010)
• A Day in my Life
• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• A Week Without My Cat
• Flexible
• Kitty Story
• The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness

[fr]

Me voici donc rentrée d’Inde. Mission de mon retour: trouver deux chats à adopter. Oui, deux. Bien avant la mort de Bagha, j’avais décidé que “la prochaine fois” je prendrais deux chats. Je trouve ça sympa, deux chats.

Du vivant de Bagha, vu son âge et son caractère, ce n’était pas vraiment envisageable de prendre un deuxième chat.

Je suis donc à la recherche de deux chats. Chatons, adultes, j’avoue que cela m’importe relativement peu. Qu’est-ce qui est important?

• qu’ils s’entendent bien (donc typiquement je cherche des situations genre “doivent impérativement être adoptés ensemble”)
• qu’ils sortent
• qu’ils soient bien socialisés et peu craintifs: ils passeront du temps à l’eclau où il y a du monde, même si c’est assez calme (je vis dans le même immeuble)
• que je puisse faire connaissance des félins en question avant de me décider, donc pas trop loin de Lausanne!

Ils seront bien entendu soignés aux petits oignons: pas gâtés (je suis plutôt stricte côté friandises etc) mais câlinés, soignés, bonne nourriture (véto-approved) et excellent vétérinaire. Et maîtresse un peu hypocondriaque, ce qui a un avantage: aucun risque je laisse des situations se détériorer avant d’aller consulter.

Ce n’est pas si facile, comme démarche. C’est en fait la première fois que je me mets en quête d’un chat à adopter. Mon premier chat, Flam, était le chaton unique de la portée suivante chez mes voisins, une fois que j’avais reçu le feu vert parental pour avoir un chat. Le deuxième, Bagha, que vous connaissez bien, a fait le trajet Inde-Suisse suite à un concours de circonstances impliquant un déménagement en Angleterre et de longs mois passés à vivre avec sa première famille. Tous deux sort morts de leur belle mort, Flam à 16 ans, Bagha à 14.

Toute mamy à chats que je suis, je n’ai donc pas eu beaucoup de chats.

J’ai décidé que je parlerais de ma recherche autour de moi, et que je ferais également un saut à Sainte-Catherine d’ici une semaine ou deux si rien ne se présentait. (La semaine prochaine c’est Lift, et deux semaines plus tard le module 4 de la formation SAWI, après ça se dégage.)

Ce matin, j’ai fait un saut sur Anibis et j’ai assez vite décidé de faire une croix sur les petites annonces. Lire les annonces, ça me déchire entre “je veux adopter tous les chats qui me passent sous le nez” et “j’ai peur de faire un erreur lors de mon choix”. Impossible de choisir quoi que ce soit. Typique.

Donc, soit il y a dans mon réseau des chats ou chatons à donner dans les semaines à venir, soit je vais au refuge.

Je sais qu’une des racines de ma crainte d’erreur a à voir avec le fait que j’ai probablement encore à accepter que je ne trouverai pas un autre Bagha. Adopter un autre chat (même deux), ce ne sera pas retrouver Bagha. Je suis encore triste. C’est normal, en fait: être prête à reprendre un ou plusieurs compagnons félins, c’est une étape du deuil.Similar Posts:

• Semaine chargée!
• Abou Dhabi, ça me fait toujours envie
• Risque
• Semaine Bollywood sur Arte
• Chat perdu? Pas si sûr…
• Internet et la mort: plus qu’une vitre brisée
• Bloggy Friday d’octobre
• Tounsi perdu et puis retrouvé
• C’est un mec. Y meurt.
• Correction cérébrale

• Bagha’s Story, First Part, First Draft
• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• Bye-Bye Bagha (1996-2010)
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• A Week Without My Cat
• Internet et la mort: plus qu’une vitre brisée
• I’m Home
• The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness
• Tears Do Heal — But Slowly

[en]

In a couple of weeks, it’ll be one whole year since Bagha died. I’m feeling sad these days. Memories of my last weeks with him. Life with my old cat, wanting to make the most of my time with him, but not knowing how short it was going to be.

I realized how close we were getting to a full year when eclau turned three early November. Eclau’s second birthday led to the first Jelly there, and the photos I took that day are some of the last ones I have of Bagha.

I did take some photos after that, actually, but hadn’t put them online. Here’s the last photo I have of Bagha, just two weeks before his death. I was actually playing about with my new camera, and imagined I had all the time in the world to shoot great photos of Bagha with it.

You haven’t seen many “dead cat” posts here lately, because mostly, I think I’m done going through the worst of my grief. Time does heal. So do tears and pain, actually. That was a new idea for me — that feeling pain was part of the healing process. Writing about what I was going through helped, too.

This summer, I realized I was slowly starting to be ready for another cat. Or cats, actually — I want two. During my latest trip to India, I got to hang out with a couple of Indian cats (Ebony and Cookie), and remembered how much I missed feline presence. I miss having a cat. I want to have a cat or cats. The timing isn’t good though, because with six weeks in India coming up, I’m going to wait until my return (this is something I’ve had planned for a long time now: cats after India).

So anyway, not so much to write about. I’ve been settling well in my catless life.

But right now, it’s coming back. I’m leaving for LeWeb tomorrow — it was my last trip away before Bagha died. Christmas is coming up. My friends and I were cooking Christmas biscuits when Bagha had his heart attack. My last interaction with him, before the attack, was to invite him over to lap up a broken egg from under the table. Then he went back to my room to resume his nap on the bed.

I miss him more now than I have these last months.

Christmas was a blur. Bagha died on the 19th, and I was beside myself with grief during those days where I’m usually winding down for the end-of-year celebrations, preparing presents, looking forward to spending some time with my family. Christmas approaching, and my departure for India just after that — they remind me of how horribly sad I was at that time.

I wish I could go back a year and have my last weeks with Bagha again.

These days, like last year at the same time of the year, I feel I have pretty much managed to get back on my feet and regain some balance (some days better than other) after what has been a pretty difficult year. When I lift my head up these days and breathe this new air, I remember that last time I felt like this, and the air was cold and the nights were dark, Bagha was here with me.

I miss him.Similar Posts:

• A Week Without My Cat
• Of Grief and Travel
• Tears Do Heal — But Slowly
• Bye-Bye Bagha (1996-2010)
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• I’m Home
• The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness
• Sorting Through Grief
• Back From India
• Two Deaths

[en]

I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite a few months. What prompts me to write it now is that there is a cat in my flat, and will be for the next month. Kitty belongs to a friend of mine, who is going abroad for a month. She used to cat-sit Bagha back in the day. So, I’m taking care of Kitty for her while she’s away.

Kitty is a shy character, maybe a leftover of her past life as a stray. I have been trying to coax her out from under a piece of furniture with little bits of ham — and my plan for making friends over the next weeks involves clicker-training. You’ll get photographs once she comes out of hiding.

Over the last months, saddened though I was by Bagha’s death, I have been enjoying the freedom of catlessness. I have travelled a lot (maybe too much), and appreciated being able to stay elsewhere overnight on a whim without feeling bad about leaving my cat alone. (One could discuss how justified feeling bad about leaving Bagha alone for a night was, but that’s another topic.)

Now that I’m clearly out of the acute stage of grief, and that my catless life seems very normal, I wonder how I’ll feel about giving up some of that freedom again for furry companions. Of course, the freedom you give up for an animal when its young and healthy is not the same as when it is old and declining. (Kittens, though, are another story. I’m not sure I want kittens. Kittens are cute. Of course I’d love kittens. But I’m not sure I want to go through a year of having baby cats in the house.)

I’m not finding it too difficult to enjoy my freedom. I thought I would be more conflicted about it. Feeling bad about being happy to be free [because I don't have a cat anymore]. I was a bit, intially. Now… sometimes I even forget to be sad. I think that’s a good sign.

This month with Kitty, in addition to helping out a friend, is also an opportunity for me to be “with cat” again. Another cat than Bagha. I mentioned that one of the things I needed to do to sort through my grieving emotions was separate my sadness of losing Bagha from my sadness of being catless. Maybe the coming month will be a chance to tie up a few loose ends around that theme.Similar Posts:

• Tears Do Heal — But Slowly
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• Of Grief and Travel
• A Week Without My Cat
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• Sorting Through Grief
• Two Deaths
• Travel Adrenalin Rush
• Missing Kitty

[en]

I started writing this months ago, not long after Bagha died. In India, to be precise. As a way to help me come to terms with his loss, I spent some time trying to write down what made him special for me. What is it exactly that I’m grieving, through him?

I actually tried to blog this once before, and that ended up being the article “Sorting Through Grief“. Like all painful things, it’s tempting to postpone this kind of exercise — but now that I’m preparing to take Bagha’s ashes out of the back of my cupboard to scatter them in the garden he loved, I feel it is time to pick up this list again. I need to move forward. These last weeks, or maybe months, I’ve slipped into a not-too-uncomfortable limbo somewhere along the road of grief. There was a little sideroad somewhere with a bench, and I sat down.

It’s time to start walking again.

What follows is a little raw. It’s also not “perfect” — meaning that I’m aware I’m failing at sorting through some of the things I was hoping to sort through while writing this. That’s the whole point, I guess. Otherwise I would just sail “happily” through grief, if it wasn’t that difficult for me.

So, what made Bagha such a special cat for me? Quoting from my previous post, here’s what I’m trying to disentangle:

• what it means for me to now be living completely alone (ie, “petless” => by extension, what having a pet — any pet — adds to my life)
• what made Bagha special, as compared to other cats (his personal caracteristics, pretty objectively)
• what made Bagha special for me, in terms of the relationship we had and what he meant to me

I’ll start by setting aside the obvious: what kind of cat Bagha was, outside of the relationship I had with him.

Physically:

• he was big and strong
• he was a beautiful animal
• he had a mashed-up nose and ear tufts
• he had a long non-twitchy tail
• he slept on his back with his front paws crossed
• he was long-legged and slim with very sleek fur — had the body of an Indian cat
• he was a spotted/striped tabby with lovely eyeliner

And also:

• he slept on his back, front paws crossed on his chest
• he had a very girly high-pitched meow which was kind of comical for such a big boy
• he snored gently in his sleep and made little moaning noises when being petted

Character-wise:

• he wasn’t fearful
• he liked people and people liked him
• he was smart
• he was communicative
• he was dignified
• he had an attitude
• he was cuddly without being needy
• he was patient and tolerant but not out of fear
• he had a strong character
• he was very territorial and peed on all the bushes

Things he did (I’m aware we’re in the anecdotal department here):

• he opened the fridge
• he drank out of the toilet
• he gnawed on drawer handles
• he played with sticks and chewed them like a dog, holding them between his two front paws
• he would creep into cupboards the second the door was opened
• he opened drawers
• whenever possible, he would rest his head on a pillow (proper or improvised — a laptop would do)
• he would deftly knock over glasses of water to drink it
• he would knock things off my bedside table if I didn’t wake up fast enough

How he was with me, bearing in mind that this is pretty standard cat-behaviour:

• he loved having his belly rubbed
• he liked being carried under one arm
• he liked being cuddled curled up on my chest
• he’d sleep with his head and paw resting on my arm

More about his behaviour and interactions with me and other humans, which is maybe a little less “cat-standard”, but not yet the stuff that made my relationship with him so special:

• he would come back home all by himself, right into the flat, and come and say hello
• he trained the whole building to let him in and out
• he would patiently let me give him his meds or put his collar on before going out
• everybody who met him liked him and saw he was not an ordinary cat

Here we are, now. The cat-companion. This is what the emptiness of his absence is made of.

• he slept with me every night
• he would follow me discreetly from room to room
• he’d sit on the table while I ate
• he’d wake me in the morning to go out with just one meow
• he would come and lie down where I patted my hand
• he would come and cuddle when I watched TV or worked at home

Trying to rise above the mundane details of daily cohabitation (even if they’re important), here are some of the deeper roles Bagha played for me:

• he would be waiting for me, always happy to see me
• he kept me company every day
• he helped me connect to people in my building and neighbourhood
• he connected me to India and Aleika
• he was a constant through all the changes my life went through these last ten years

Of these, I guess the fact he kept me company and was happy to see me are more pet-generic than Bagha-specific.

But the role he played in helping me find my place in my neighbourhood, the connexion to India and Aleika, and the ten years of my life that he saw me through — those are things that are uniquely linked to Bagha. No other cat will ever be able to give me that again. He was a living, breathing, purring witness to these things, no lost forever. I carry those years and that part of my life completely alone, now.

Along the same lines, here are two more things I’d like to add:

• he made eclau a special coworking space
• he brought me closer to some of my friends who lived in my flat to take care of him when I was away

Eclau will have other cats, and be a “special” coworking space in that respect in the future. Salem, my upstairs neighbour’s cat, has already taken quarters on the couch, and will probably soon have his own page on the eclau website. Some time next year, I’ll be ready to have cats again, and they’ll come to eclau too. It will always be a kitty-friendly coworking space — but Bagha was the first, and his constant presence in the office was soothing for those who worked there.

The fact that quite a few of my friends cat-sat at some point or another when I was travelling over the last ten years made him a connexion between me and them — connexion which is now gone, like some of those friendships. His absence makes their pastness a little more present.

On a more emotional level:

• I loved him and cared for him
• I gladly gave up some of my freedom because I loved him
• I accepted some risks (like losing him to a car accident) because it gave him a better life

These are things I learned for life because he was my pet, and will treasure for ever. His legacy in me. Traces of his life that his death cannot erase, and which — I believe — make me a better person.

I believe there is no meaning in the world other than the meaning we put in it, consciously or not. Beyond the meaninglessness of life and death, we choose to make sense of our lives so that we can keep on growing.

Maybe Bagha’s biggest gift to me, beyond the ten years of precious companionship he gave me, is in his death. I got to say good-bye. Not at the moment of my choosing, of course — death rarely gives us that — but did get to say good-bye properly. I am saying good-bye.

So here’s the meaning I choose and which makes perfect sense for my life, almost as if it were provided by some intention bigger than and beyond me:

Bagha let me love him for a long time and with all my heart, so that I could learn to love and grieve properly.

Amongst all this, I wonder, what is just the pain of finding myself “alone”, or catless? What does it mean to me to have a cat? I’ve tried to break it down into “plus side” and “minus side”, because part of the grieving process is also greeting the new good things in my life brought about by this loss (I have a blog post draft sitting in WordPress titled “The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness” — I will write it someday).

Having a cat means:

• having company to sleep with me at night
• having somebody to care for
• having somebody waiting for me to come home
• having somebody to communicate with and keep me company
• having cuddles and affection handy when needed
• having an attraction for visitors and a topic of conversation to make friends amongst cat-lovers

But it also means:

• giving up some freedom (no unplanned trips)
• expenses (food, vet, etc)
• having to cat-proof the home
• having to get up to let the cat out, or change the litter
• worrying that it didn’t come home (or might not)
• negotiations with neighbours/concierge if it causes any trouble

The pain of losing Bagha is still very present, nearly five months after his death. There is still a terrible pit of sadness in my heart, but it doesn’t overflow with tears anymore when I don’t want it to.

I sometimes try to imagine my future cats, who are maybe not even born yet — I fear that I will not love them as much as I loved Bagha, or that they will not be quite so extraordinary, and I know that I still need to spend some time walking down that road.

Similar Posts:

• Sorting Through Grief
• Of Grief and Travel
• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• A Week Without My Cat
• The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• Two Deaths
• Bye-Bye Bagha (1996-2010)
• Bagha’s Story, First Part, First Draft
• Having Cats

[en]

I’ve had a handful of pretty miserable days upon my return from England. Feeling very sad again about Bagha’s death, and some other losses 2010 brought along with it. But this last couple of days have been better, because tears do heal, and spring is here.

Three months after Bagha’s death, I’m thankfully not bursting into uncontrollable tears in socially awkward settings anymore. It comes and goes. I might spend a week or ten days with hardly a tear, and then a wave hits and I’m going through stacks of tissues every day. I’m getting used to it.

I know I need to though, so I dive into the pain and grief when it comes — and when it’s appropriate to let myself do so.

When I’m “in”, it feels like my life is over, like it hurts so much that I’ll never get over it. It feels like some part of me will forever refuse to accept that he is dead and gone, refuse to accept that there is nothing I can do about it, and refuse to accept too that nothing will bring him back. It feels like I will never manage to move on and open my heart this much again, like I will be stuck in grief forever.

Of course I know this isn’t true, and outside of these moments of intense grief, I’m living my life pretty normally these days, despite my heavy heart.

But what I’m starting to understand — and understand really because I’m experiencing it — is that these moments of pain where I am so adamantly refusing to accept that Bagha has died, and I now have to live without him, are actually the very thing that is helping me accept it.

When I was told this it made immediate and perfect sense to me. I feel pain and sadness because I am facing the fact Bagha is dead. Even if my reaction (defense mechanism) to that pain is a futile refusal to accept that which is causing the pain (clearly a flavour of denial — “I want my cat back, I don’t want him to be dead”), it remains that if I am feeling that pain it is precisely because I am realizing or accepting a little more that my life from here onwards will be without him, and I have no choice in that matter.

That is why sadness and tears heal: they are the expression of a step forward in accepting a difficult reality. And though it feels sometimes that the steps are small and the road long, I know I am making progress, and that my heart will heal again.Similar Posts:

• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• Sorting Through Grief
• Of Grief and Travel
• A Week Without My Cat
• The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness
• I’m Home
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• Two Deaths
• I’m really liking San Francisco

[en]

Two heart attacks, even. The first is Bagha, you’ll have guessed. The second is Jean-Christophe, who was deputy head in the school I taught at and with whom I stayed in touch over the years: fellow blogger and lifter, I enjoyed our lunch-time conversations about social media, web technology, education and the various things of life. He was a really friendly, genuinely nice person. I didn’t know him very well, but we did hang out once in a while. He wrote a very nice piece about me for Ada Lovelace Day in 2009. He died almost exactly a month after Bagha.

I was very, very shocked by Jean-Christophe’s death — and remain shocked. You don’t expect young, healthy people around you to drop like a stone and die in the middle of a basketball match (he was 42, a regular player, didn’t smoke…). I was also shocked by Bagha’s death, but the grief was so great that I just couldn’t stop the tears for days on end, and it took over.

Two deaths, one human, one feline, one of a being who shared almost every single day of mine for 11 years, the other which I would see a handful of times every year. Two different reactions on my part. On a slightly “clinical” level, I’ve found it interesting to observe how I’ve been processing both these deaths. Beyond the obvious animal vs. human difference, I’ve realised that what really counts is the role they were playing in my life.

Jean-Christophe was a truly lovely person. His death pains me, and even though he was somebody I trusted (to the point of collapsing in his office during my first year of teaching when things were not going well at all) we weren’t close. He was somebody I knew and appreciated, a part of my network (our discussions revolved primarily around work and common interests, not each other’s lives). If I think of his family, my heart breaks for them, but I am not touched as if it were my family.

Not seeing Jean-Christophe is the normal state of my life, so beyond the shock of the announcement, I am not confronted much with his death. A couple of times I’ve thought “oh, I should ask Jean-Christophe if he knows somebody who…” and caught myself. Beyond the shock and discomfort of seeing the sudden death of somebody who is just a few years older than myself, and of knowing that a wonderful human being is no more, the impact of Jean-Christophe’s death on my life has been pretty minimal.

Maybe this minimal impact (compounded to the fact I was in India for the funeral so couldn’t attend and therefore share others’ grief) has allowed me to stay in some stage of denial — or maybe the fact he was a rather “weak tie” in my life simply makes the whole grieving process less painful and visible.

Bagha, on the other hand, even though he was “just a cat”, was part of my everyday life for years and a primary emotional attachment. His loss is a huge disruption in my life, all the more because he was an elderly cat who had started to require care — some parts of my life were organized around him. Making sure somebody was there for him when I travelled, coming back home to give him his meds, being available to take him to the vet when things weren’t quite right.

Except when I was in India, I have not been able to “forget” his death much. The flat is lonely without a feline presence. Another cat naps on the couch at eclau (I’m happy about that, though). I’m still surprised that I can stay out when I hadn’t planned to. I can leave stuff lying around in the flat (even food) and nothing happens to them. Open cupboard doors are not important anymore. I’m not woken up at 6am by somebody furry who wants to be let out.

When somebody asks a group of people “who has a cat?” I have to keep my hand down now. I don’t have a cat anymore. I’m not a cat-owner. I’ve had a cat since I was nine, even though my first cat, Flam, lived at my parents’ for three years when I moved out, and I was briefly catless between her death and the moment Bagha officially became “my” cat. But being a cat lover and owner has always been a big part of my identity, which I feel I have now lost (risky parallel: does it feel like that to long-time smokers who give up the cancer-stick?). Of course, I will have cats again (after India early 2012 is the current plan), but right now, I’m part of these petless people.

Almost everything in my life reminds of his death. I still have a photo of him as background image for my iPhone, because I’m not sure when the right moment to change it would be, and what to replace it with. Though I’m slowly rebuilding a layer of habits and memories of my new life without him, I feel his loss almost every day — some days worse than others.

This makes me realize that in a way, it is less the intrinsec value of the being who died (who would dare put a cat’s life before that of a human being?) than the role played in one’s life and one’s emotional attachment that determines the amount of grief. Sounds obvious, uh, nothing new under the sun here. But it has another taste when you’ve reached the conclusion all over again by yourself.Similar Posts:

• On Grief and Losing Bagha
• Of Grief and Travel
• Sorting Through Grief
• A Week Without My Cat
• Tears Do Heal — But Slowly
• Bagha: One Year, Coming Up
• What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me
• Dog
• Missing Kitty
• After a Day Back at Work

[en]

In summer 2009 I bought an exercise bike. I have heart valve prolapse (no panic, nothing really alarming, had it all my life) so my endurance is naturally bad, and some irregular judo training is absolutely not enough to compensate for my sedentary lifestyle and increasing age (I’m not 20 anymore and I’m starting to see it).

Cardiologist’s instructions: 20 minutes a day (30 seems better) at 125-135 or so (that’s for me, varies with age). I’ve exercised pretty regularly since then, but I regularly fall off the wagon, sometimes for months on end. Between Bagha’s death and India for example, I hadn’t sat on it much since mid-December before I clambered back on the wagon a few days ago.

We all know that getting back on the wagon is always difficult — whatever the wagon. What helped me here? Realising that in the case of exercise, anything is always better than nothing. So instead of trying to do my whole routine immediately (which includes 150 ab crunches of various varieties, stretching, a yoga exercise, “gainage“, and 30 minutes on the bike) I decided to just start with 15 minutes on the bike and 50 abs. In the spirit of what I learned reading 6changes, I’m first getting back into the habit of exercising — nevermind if I’m not really doing as much as I should be doing. That’ll come later.

So, if you’re not exercising and feeling guilty about it, start with something easy. Get into a routine of doing some exercise every day. Whatever you do will be better than nothing.

I think a big mistake people make when they decide that they need to start exercising is that they try to do too much too quickly, hence falling victim to New Year Resolution Syndrome.

You’re going to fall off the wagon. The most important question to answer is: when you do, how will you climb back on? Take it easy.

And remember: just walking ten minutes a day is better than not moving at all — even if in an ideal world you should be doing 30 minutes of exercise a day.Similar Posts:

• My Journey Out of Procrastination: Getting Thrown Off and Getting Unstuck
• Dehydration
• In Praise of the Morning Routine
• Getting Back on the FlyLady Wagon
• I Need to Blog!
• Different Kinds of Downtime
• How Will CoComment Change Our Commenting Habits?
• On the Road to Being a Healthier Geek
• 911: Coping
• Frozen Ramble