Chicken Soup for the Cat & Dog Lover's Soul (16 page)

Those doubts may be why, even now, I occasionally stop in my rush to leave for school in the morning and, instead of ordering Holly into the car, look at her, asking, “Do you want to go to school today?” When she leaps up eagerly, all wags and excitement, I figure she’s answered that burning question for all of us. Yes, Holly is working today.

Barbara J. Wood

The Healing Touch

As a veterinarian making the journey from physical medicine to spiritual understanding, I found it was the animals who were my greatest teachers. I owe an especially large debt of thanks to an old gray tabby who was once brought into my practice for treatment.

The old tabby’s pelvis was fractured so badly he couldn’t stand. He had been sideswiped by a car, but luckily his fractures were such that they would heal naturally over time without an operation. Although he didn’t appear to have any other injuries, it was critical that I keep him in the clinic for a few days just to be sure there was nothing else wrong.

“You don’t understand,” his owner said pleadingly. “This cat is seventeen, and I have another one just like him at home. They were littermates, and they’ve never been apart a day in their lives. You’ve
got
to let me bring him home.”

There was no way I could release the cat, no matter how emotionally wrenching the separation might be. Until he was able to stand and had bladder and bowel control, I had no choice but to keep him under observation.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s best for the cat if he stays.”

By the next morning, I wasn’t so sure. The tabby gazed into space with such a vacant look in his eye that it seemed he had already given up and died. His vital signs were normal, but there was no life in him. He didn’t meow.

He didn’t purr. He just lay there without eating, staring into some distant place where all hope was extinguished.

As I pondered what to do next, the phone rang. It was the tabby’s owner, and he was frantic. “My other cat’s been screaming nonstop,” he complained. “He never went to sleep—just prowled around searching and meowing. You have to
do
something.”

“I don’t know if it will make a difference,” I said, “but why don’t you bring the other cat here?”

The owner made it to the clinic in minutes. When he walked in with the other cat under his arm, I thought I was seeing double. The brother cat was the image of his littermate—a fluffy pearl-gray with stripes. But while his injured sibling lay in a cage torpid in depression, this one was taut with anxious energy.

The minute I opened the cage door, the healing began. The electricity between the two cats was palpable. At the sight of his brother, the ailing cat’s eyes brightened, his ears perked up and he struggled in a futile effort to get up and draw near to him.

But it was actual contact with his brother that really made the injured cat come alive. The healthy cat bounded into the cage, rushed up to his brother and, meowing with joy, began licking and sniffing him all over. With the all-important physical link reestablished, the hurt cat mewed in response, and mustering all of his strength, reciprocated by licking any part of his brother’s body that brushed by him. A leg, a tail, an ear, a shoulder—all were touched by his tongue.

The two cats couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. They kept licking and cleaning and smelling, oblivious to anything but each other. They made it clear that for the rest of the clinic stay, they would be in the cage together.

That night, I peeked into the cage and saw that the cats were still inseparable. They were huddled close together, purring in unison, as the brother cat encircled his hurt twin with the loving warmth of his body.

After about three days, the hurt cat began to display normal body functions, which suggested that he had no further significant internal injuries. By the fourth day, he was able to stand on his own, with the help of his brother. The brother nudged him with his nose a few times, and the injured cat got the message. Haltingly, he struggled to his feet, leaning briefly against his brother for support. A few seconds later, he stood proudly on his own and took a few wobbly steps.

The next day, they went home. I didn’t see them again until two years later, when they came in for a checkup. By then, they were nineteen and still in good health. The injured cat had fully recovered and never showed any ill effects of the accident.

It was clear that the old gray tabby’s recovery resulted not from some medical breakthrough or traditional veterinary science, but from the tender touch of a brother—a profound caring that had been transferred from one to the other through the touch of a tongue and the contact of warm fur. It was these physical acts of love that had brought the gift of life.

Allen M. Schoen, D.V.M.

The Language of the Heart

Soapy Smith is a twenty-four-pound calico rex rabbit. A rex rabbit’s coat lacks the stiff guard hairs of other breeds, resulting in a fur texture that is as soft as a cloud. People look startled when they first touch him and remark how soft he is. I’ve noticed he seems to make everyone who meets him a little softer, too.

One day, Soapy Smith and I visited a shelter for battered women located in a bedraggled section of the city. The women in the shelter looked at me through downcast eyes. No one smiled a greeting, and they appeared uninterested in Soapy’s carrier. Everyone seemed tense and ready to flee. One little girl in particular moved like a wisp in the background. Never raising her eyes, never reaching out, she drifted in and out of the gathered group. The staff informed me that she had been there for over a month and had not spoken the entire time. Nothing they tried had any effect. Her mother said she had talked at one time but not in recent memory. I didn’t want to imagine what could have happened to rob this little girl of the natural curiosity and enthusiasm so natural to childhood.

Spreading a blanket on the floor, I sat down and opened Soapy’s carrier. As the silent child circled past me, I told the group that Soapy would come to talk to them if they sat on his blanket. Several children did this, including the silent girl. In a short time, Soapy emerged from his carrier and slowly hopped from one child to another. Unlike visits at schools where the first touches produced squeals of delight, this visit was unusually quiet. After touching Soapy, these children looked down and sighed softly or smiled into their hands. Soapy continued his rounds, and the children and their mothers gradually began to talk about Soapy and ask questions.

I chatted with the women and children as I kept one eye on the little girl. She sat rigidly at the edge of the blanket, legs held stiffly out straight in front of her. She was staring hard at Soapy. It appeared that he kept making eye contact with her. He would hop from child to child, each visit taking him a little closer to the girl. I began to wonder if he was pausing to give her time to watch him. During all other visits we had given together in schools, his usual behavior was to hop around the circle letting each person pet him. When he got back to me he would wash his face and then start the circle again.

That day, I watched as Soapy finally worked his way toward the girl. She didn’t reach out to him or encourage him in any way. Rather she sat tensely, just staring.

Finally Soapy came to a stop about two inches from her thigh. He quietly reached out and laid his chin on her knee. I was astonished. While a common behavior for dogs, this is not a behavior exhibited by rabbits, especially not by this rabbit.

The child did not reach out to pet Soapy. Instead, she slowly leaned toward him. When her face was within inches of his, she carefully reached out and circled him with her arms. So softly that no one in the room could hear, she began to talk. Folded around the rabbit, she pillowed her head on his back and whispered to him. Soapy remained motionless.

I looked up and noticed that the shelter workers had stopped talking. Every adult in the room froze in place. Time seemed suspended. Then quietly the child unfolded and sat back up. Soapy sat up too, reached forward and briskly licked her knee. She did not smile. She did not reach out to him, but the rigidity of her back relaxed, and her shoulders rounded into a comfortable slope. The little girl stood up and walked over to her mother and began to suck her thumb.

The little girl reappeared when I was preparing to leave. She reached her hands out and looked me directly in the eye. I held Soapy out to her. She wrapped him in a big hug and pressed her face against him. Suspended from my hands as he was, I was concerned that he would begin to struggle. Instead he reached out his head again and laid it on the child’s shoulder. His breathing slowed and he closed his eyes. As quickly as it happened, the little girl released her hug and stepped back. As she turned away, I thought I saw the beginnings of a faint smile.

The rabbit in his cloud of soft, warm fur had touched something deep in the child—something that had died from too much hard experience. Soapy’s innocence and trust appeared to kindle those very same qualities in the little girl.

Numerous times, I’ve seen how the loving presence of an animal can heal where words have no effect. It seems the language of the heart is simple after all.

Maureen Fredrickson,
program director for the Delta Society

Body and Soul

I was fifteen years old when I began my long battle with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. As a teenager, I succumbed to the intense peer pressure to be thin. But when I started dieting I soon lost control, and I couldn’t stop losing weight. When I dropped below ninety-five pounds, my frightened parents took me to the hospital. Back in 1969, few people had even heard of eating disorders, and neither my parents nor the doctors knew how to help me.

Finally, after four years and several prolonged hospital stays, I forced myself to get better. I managed to gain back every pound I’d lost and resolved to get on with my life. I even had a boyfriend.

Then one day my best friend told me she’d seen my guy out with another girl. “He hates me because I’m so fat,” I sobbed.

And so it wasn’t long before I’d all but stopped eating again. My family watched in helpless horror as I repeatedly collapsed from malnutrition. I felt so ashamed and couldn’t bear the pain I was causing them.

Finally I left home, hoping to make a fresh start. I packed my car and drove until I ran out of money in Phoenix, Arizona. I liked the Phoenix climate. The warm sun felt good on my emaciated body.

Unfortunately, hot sunny weather also meant lots of short shorts and halter tops. I was painfully thin, but whenever I looked in the mirror I was horrified by what I saw. “I need to lose more weight,” I panicked.

Whenever I went out with friends I ate and drank normally, but afterward I always raced to the restroom to purge. The more I purged, the more depressed I became.

Depression led to binge eating, which led to even more purging. I knew I was slowly killing myself. I didn’t want to die, but my illness was stronger than my will to live.

I went to psychologists and attended support groups, but they didn’t help. Ultimately, I grew so weak I had to quit my job and go on disability. My health steadily deteriorated as I lost irreplaceable muscle tissue. My seventy-eight-pound body was so ravaged from malnutrition, my kidneys began to shut down and I was in constant pain.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” my doctor said bluntly. “Barring a miracle, you’re going to die.”

My brother Robert brought me home to Michigan, where I took an apartment, crawled into bed and waited for God to take me. I hated my life and could hardly wait for it to be over.

The first morning I opened my eyes in my new place, I discovered a pair of liquid brown eyes looking back at me. It was Cassie, the Australian shepherd a friend in Phoenix had given me just before I’d left town.

“I suppose you need to go out,” I sighed, struggling to my feet and putting on a robe.

At the front door, Cassie just sat there gazing up at me.

Ruff!
“You come, too,” she seemed to be saying, and grudgingly, I shuffled off to get dressed.

A few days later in a nearby field, Cassie started pouncing at my feet and barking, eager to romp. “Go on ahead,” I said, but Cassie wouldn’t leave my side. She barked and barked until I finally got the message and began walking with her. Daggers of pain shot through my nutrient-starved bones with every footfall. I cried out in agony, but every time I stopped moving Cassie waited at my side and wouldn’t quit barking until we were again on our way. As painful as it was, I felt my blood—life—stirring in me for the first time in a very long while.

Somehow, Cassie knew there was something terribly wrong with me. She sensed my every mood and refused to leave my side. When I grew despondent, she curled up beside me. When I sobbed in pain, she licked away my tears.

Once, on one of my bad days, I asked my sister Pam to adopt Cassie. “I don’t have enough strength to take care of her anymore,” I explained.

Pam shook her head no. “I won’t take her,” she said firmly.

“Please reconsider,” I begged. “Cassie needs a good home and someone who will love her.”

“She already has both of those things,” Pam insisted. As hot tears filled my eyes, she hugged me and said, “Don’t you understand, Cynthia? Right now that dog is the only thing keeping you alive.”

She was right. I needed a miracle to stay alive, and Cassie was that miracle. She was my constant companion, my best and truest friend.