Who Saved the Cat?

Tiggy, the Firefighters, and the Vet - A Parable

When the firefighters pulled Tiggy from the basement of our burned up, smoked out, water-logged home, she was a lifeless jumble of bones in a sack of feline fur. For all intents and purposes she was dead, unable to save herself from drowning in eight inches of water because of smoke inhalation. The firefighters worked hard on her and got her mostly breathing on her own. We rushed her to the vet, fearing the worst. The vet immediately put her in an oxygen tent (a cage with a plastic door) and began treating her aggressively with corticosteroids and antibiotics. We visited her every day. It was heartbreaking. We had no idea what to expect. When we went to see her on the third day, she was blind, had no use of her front legs, and did not know who we were. The vet said she had suffered an "unknown amount" of neurological damage and that even if she did survive, that her life might not be worth living. We briefly considered putting her down, believing it might be best for all concerned. We quickly discarded that idea in favor of taking her home and nursing her back to health as best we could. Death was not an option. She was a member of our family.

The next morning Tiggy seemed to have regained some of the strength in her front legs. Though still totally blind, she seemed anxious to examine her New World. We let her exercise her new legs for a few minutes several times each day, for that seemed what she wanted most. It was soon evident that she was getting stronger and that some of her eyesight was coming back too! Though we were not hopeful for a full recovery, she made amazing strides in the months that followed. Less than a year later she had full use of her limbs and eyes. She did not return completely to her former self, however. Her personality changed, mostly for the better. She was cuddlier than before, often sleeping at my side. She was quieter than before. Sometimes, as she sat in early afternoon sunbeams, her head would gently shake and bobble like one of those toy dogs in a car's rear window, as if contemplating the mysteries of the world. She spent many of her days like any ordinary cat, content to sleep on the back of the couch from whence she could survey her domain.

Now the $64,000 question: Who saved Tiggy? Did the firefighters save her? Did the veterinarian save her? The answer, I believe, is that they both saved her. Both the firefighters and the veterinarian played very different, but equally vital, roles in saving Tiggy's life. She would have died if either one had not done their part. The secret to preserving Tiggy's quality of life was to have both the firefighters and the veterinarian do their respective parts, in concert, in order, each one with their own distinctive talents, knowledge, and abilities. If either had failed to do their job, Tiggy would have died. If either one had tried to do the other's job, Tiggy would have died. If there had been two sets of firefighters or two veterinarians, instead of one of each, Tiggy would have died.

Men and women are like veterinarians and firefighters. Their roles and responsibilities are very distinct from each other, yet equal in importance. Many good things are lost if either one shirks his or her duty. Good things die when either partner is missing or tries to do the other's job. When they work together, each performing his or her own role, miracles occur. Tiggy is my living proof.

A Cure for Loneliness

One of my all-time favorite songs is "All by Myself" by Eric Carmen. The melody is based on Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 (in C Minor Opus 18 II Adagio Sostenuto). It a beautifully melancholic piece that exudes all sorts of sad emotions. It is easy to see why Carmen loved it so and put words to it. One part in particular always touched me:

Living alone, I think of all the friends I've known,
But when I dial the telephone, nobody's home.
Hard to be sure, sometimes I feel so insecure,
And love so distant and obscure, remains the cure.

I believed this for a long time, that love was the cure for all that ailed me. Having come from an family that failed in its attempts to love me unconditionally, I was in constant search for feeling, for meaning, for something that would grab my heart and rip it out with such fervor that I would finally realize that feelings are good and that I really was alive, not just existing, not just the brunt of someone's idea of a cruel joke. I believed that "love" would make me FEEL something. I tried many things: porn, self-gratification, masochism, gentlemen's clubs, anything to try to make myself feel something. Nothing worked. Luckily I stayed away from drugs and alcohol. Being obsessive-compulsive, I believe that drink would have ruined me completely.

The truth is, in fact, the love is NOT distant and obscure, and worse yet, even if you were able to find it, it turns out it's NOT the cure either. The idea of "love", as defined by society, is a mythological panacea. Having taught us that we are not responsible for our own actions (more on that in a later article), society would have us believe that something other than our own minds and our own selves is responsible for our happiness. Society hopes to convince us that happiness, joy even, is found in things, in other people, in any noun that is defined outside of ourselves.

True happiness, the "Cure" as Eric Carmen calls it, is not found far away and is not intangible. The cure is inside of us each one of us. It is up to us to determine how miserable or felicitous we want to be. If we live our life waiting or hoping for some external influence to change us, then we are living a wasted life. Each one of us has control over our own thoughts, feelings, ideas, perceptions, interactions, emotions, and self-worth. Discard the bad. Hold fast to that which is good. Choose to adopt the positive and divorce yourself from that which is self-deprecating.

The cure is inside.