A friend of mine is the groundskeeper for someone who has thousands of acres in conservation and as a farm along the New River in Virginia. For 6 years or so there has been a barn kitty known as Pop. Pop has never been a priority there except to my friend who would buy her healthy food and toss out the junk food other employees bought her as part of the farm tasks, took her catnip and toys, especially one favored string toy with a feather on the end. At lunch and after work most days he would feed Pop, play with her, comb her sometimes matted hair and cut out unredeemable snarls. And they would cuddle. One day recently when he stopped to see Pop he noticed her head was twitching and she wasn't walking well. A trip to the vet indicated some kind of poisoning despite no poisons were ever used or stored in Pop's barn at this organic farm. Despite all treatments, Pop declined rapidly and eventually was in continual seizures and so was euthanized.
My friend was devastated. I told him to get Pop's body and bring it where she could be buried and remembered, but the vet hospital had sent her body away to be tested for rabies and so no fur body to lay in the earth. Today I am planting a new young tree in honor of Pop. I don't know why I'm even writing this except that there are so many deaths, so many losses of those who are invisible for some reason or other, and even though to some these deaths are insignificant, they are not to me. In honoring one I feel there is an extended honoring of all such kinds of losses and who knows how that honor flows on the earth or where it might land? My friend's grief as well, which no one but me will likely witness, is something beautiful we need and so I honor it here along with the life of Pop. Good journeys to you sweet Pop kitty.