“It is only natural that we and our children find many things that are hard to talk about. But anything human is mentionable and anything mentionable is manageable. The mentioning can be difficult, and the managing, too, but both can be done if we are surrounded by love and trust.” ~ Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)
Sally Mitts, the kitten who is the main character in my children’s book series, will grow up and grow old. We all do. And true to life, the series will eventually follow her through life’s phases into her spirited old age. Way off in the future, mind you, but one day.
Mortality is a bittersweet part of existence. Age gives wisdom and grandeur, and death makes us treasure life. (No, I don’t intend for Sally to die in the series). The idea of life’s cycles and phases made a huge impression on me as a child, reading books like A Wrinkle In Time, Charlotte’s Web, and Animal Farm. I felt more tender toward all living beings, understanding life’s ephemeral fragility. Time, change, aging, death: Inescapable links that weave us all together. How can you be cruel to another being, knowing how fragile and brief the flame of life is?
I realize there is a security to be found in books where the characters never age. Sally could always be a bouncy kitten, a perpetual cartoon-like mascot in a safely enclosed world. But then Sally would lose her magic, and become flat as a board. Sally is alive, her adventures are fully felt, and as a living being, she grows from experience. Her mind, her heart, and her body go through experiences as she matures. That is called aging, and it has only one trajectory. Old age, and finally death.
So because Sally is fully dimensional, she will grow old. Will she be treasured less by readers when she becomes a sassy old cat, with wit and wisdom? Certainly, our society would make you think so. Every year senior cats are cruelly dumped into shelters in huge numbers by people who no longer find them “cute”. “Everybody wants a kitten, nobody wants a cat.” My Sally, the inspiration for the Sally Mitts series, was dumped in a shelter with her kittens. All of her kittens were adopted. Sally was left behind, small and unspectacular looking. If I had not had the great good fortune of her taking a shine to me, she probably would have stayed there for years, growing old in her no-kill shelter.
I like to believe that people will want to follow Sally Mitts as she grows and changes. She doesn’t have to be a round-bellied tike to be beloved. She needn’t make people feel safe by remaining static. We’ll see.
Let me ask you. Did you love your cat less as they grew old? Or did you treasure them all the more as time marked their features with its passage, and you saw the tell-tale signs of little infirmities?
Did you, do you love a senior cat?
Below: Beloved 37-year-old cat with their person
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