These Are Not Tears, Smoke Is In My Eyes

Though it seems as if it’s been months, it’s “only” been five weeks since the morning I came out of our bedroom at 8:00 am and instead of being greeted by Smokey, our bouncing grey basketball of fur, I found him lying in a heap in the hallway, motionless and too ill to stand. Since then there’s been a lot of lap-time and tears, because I know he’s in pain, and I’m tired, and hoping that all I’m doing will help him survive. 

It was sudden, at 2:00 am he had insisted on going for a run in the long corridor that serves the wing of the building we live in. He thundered down the long run, stopping to sniff at the doors of those units where other cats and dogs live. When we got back to our own door he took off and ran down to where the wings intersect and ran down an adjacent wing and back, scampering like a kitten.  

Mr. Smokes on a better day

Our vet’s office starts taking calls at 8:30, and as soon as we were able to get him into the office we had him there. She examined him and noted that while he had no fever he had extreme jaundice. His ears, eye membranes, and gums were a deep peach colour. When his blood tests came back we learned his bilirubin level was over 100, when it should have been no higher than 3.  The question was “Why?” 

She prepared us for the most likely and worst possibilities; feline leukaemia, feline HIV, liver cancer or possibly gallstones, which could be treatable with surgery. When the leukaemia and HIV tests came back negative the next step was to seek the opinion of a specialist who could do an ultrasound looking for a liver mass and/or gallstones. This was quite a trip (45 km), with Ian doing the driving once and me doing it the second time, but from the ultrasound we learned that he had almost certainly had had a gallstone which he’d managed to pass, probably overnight, but which had backed up horrendous amounts of bile in his liver and body tissues. They’d shaved his belly for the ultrasound and his normally pink-white skin was absolutely the colour of an over-ripe peach. 

More ominously the ultrasound revealed he had hepatic lipidosis, a frequently fatal liver condition in cats. Hepatic lipidosis happens when an abnormally high amount of fat accumulates in the cells of a cat’s liver. Even though there is all this fat in reserve, a cat has no ability to convert these fat reserves into energy when it does not eat. When a cat doesn’t eat for 24-48 hours its liver can begin to fail, especially if there are other factors going on, like a gallstone, which has filled the liver with bile. 

Smokey, who is usually a chow hound, ate very little on Saturday, and almost nothing on Sunday. He had slept a lot and seemed a bit lethargic, but then on Sunday night, or early Monday morning, he ran up and down the hallway like a kitten. In retrospect maybe he was in pain on Saturday and Sunday, and that running and jumping was an attempt to dislodge the gallstone blocking his bile duct.  (Apparently it worked!)  

Once we had our diagnosis the treatment plan was clear, but the outcome was not guaranteed. Many cats do not survive hepatic lipidosis. We came home with medication to stimulate his appetite, because getting food in him was to be his only chance at life. My job was to feed him a half-teaspoon of food made into a slurry, so he could just lap it up, every hour around the clock. This was as big a challenge as having a newborn.  

We were back to the vet’s for medication for vomiting, for IV fluids, for more appetite stimulants, for probiotics, to have him weighed. 

After two weeks we moved to feeding him a teaspoon of food every two hours. Profound gratitude.  Now I feed him at 2:00, Tony feeds him at 6:00 and I feed him at 8:00, so I can actually get some sleep. 

Five weeks and we’re still not out of the woods. One day in three or four he eats well, the others I have to take the bowl to him, wake him and urge him to eat a teaspoon of food. He may eat only two or three teaspoons of food on those days, and I fret all over that we’re going to lose him. Recovery from hepatic lipidosis can take months. He’s still jaundiced, his ears look waxen and his poor little naked belly is the soft, fuzzy yellow of apricots. 

Hobbes the little brother, has stuck to Smokey like a burr. He was very upset when Smokey was away at the vet’s. Now when Smokey lies down Hobbes will soon snuggle down beside him, and the two sleep contentedly side-by-side, for the better part of the day, and night too. 

It is not yet the end, because it is not all right yet. 

You Can’t See Emptiness, But You Can Be It

Days continue to shorten, Christmas now approaches. 

It’s a time of expectation. 

We look for light; light from the sun, light of the heart, renewal of the light of the soul. We look for what we long for, whatever it is; connection, relief from loneliness, ease of despair, ease of pain, some sign that the burdens of today and tomorrow will diminish. We look for new beginnings. 

Reading through my collection of much loved passages from Buddhist teachers I ran on this one again, from the book Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden by Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller. It always reminds me to lay aside my inner chaos, let go and just be. 

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, meditating on the Heart Sutra*,
Clearly saw emptiness of all the five conditions,
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain.

—Heart Sutra

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. This single phrase is the summation of the Buddhist path, the culminating insight of the Way. But having uttered it, I’ve already strayed from it. Having read it, you’ve missed it, because now your mind is running amok trying to understand it, and here I am trying to chase after you. So let’s come back together in one big, empty place, and start over.

What looks solid is not solid; what has no shape comes in all shapes. In a physical sense, bamboo is strong because it is hollow. It is supple and resilient; it bends without breaking. It supports incredible weight. It grows unimpeded by any known barrier, spreading outward everywhere. This is true of you, too. Where do you think you begin and end? Your feet? Your head? Your skin? Your eyes, nose, mouth, ears? Your thoughts, memory, feelings? The way we limit ourselves imposes a bunker mentality and defies scientific reality.

It helps to remember what you took on faith in fourth grade science. All matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are mostly empty space. By definition you can’t see emptiness, but you can be it. Now, to live and let live in emptiness. That’s the secret to paradise.

First, be quiet. Give away your ideas, self-certainty, judgments, and opinions. Let go of defenses and offenses. Face your critics. They will always outnumber you.

Lose all wars. All wars are lost to begin with. Abandon your authority and entitlements. Release your self-image: status, power, whatever you think gives you clout. It doesn’t, not really. That’s a lie you’ve never believed.

Give up your seat. Be what you are: unguarded, unprepared, unequipped and surrounded on all sides. Alone, you are a victim of no one and nothing.

What appears in front of you is your liberation. That is, unless you judge it. Then you imprison yourself again.

Now that you are free, see where you are. Observe what is needed. Do good quietly. If it’s not done quietly, it’s not good.

Start over. Always start over.

*The original wording is: “Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, doing deep Prajna Paramita,” but since non-Buddhists would not know that the Prajna Paramita is the Heart Sutra, I simply translated the term. Avalokitesvara is  the embodiment of the Buddha of Compassion. 

--

It’s so Zen in here

But we are simply Zenning by omission, in other words we have not yet hung a *single* painting on our walls. We still have a line of large boxes in the newly-designated ‘guest room’. They are full of paintings, books and other treasures junque yours truly has forgotten about. Boxes of antique china sit on top of the fridge, waiting for lights to be installed in the sideboard. I am not loading that china into the sideboard, then hauling it back out to install lights and then putting it back in again. Nope. 

20" x 26", weighs about 25 lbs! Ugly to boot! 

We have numerous *large* paintings, heavy suckers. I can’t lift them and hold them up while we decide that they need to go four inches to the right and an inch higher. Himself is no better, having a useless right arm. And until the big ones go up, we can’t hang the little ones. It ain’t arf frustratin’. 

The “Call us and we will come” guys, Karim and Sayid, are simply lovely, but possess a fatal flaw when it comes to this kind of task. They do not listen to instructions, general or specific, especially if they come from the mouth of a woman.  I know *where* I want the pictures hung.  Karim and Sayid would not hang them there. 

But it’s only been five months since we started. I don’t know why I’m impatient. Apparently Rome wasn’t built in a day either.