Ananda left the body around the Winter Solstice, year before last. She came to via a woman whose attainment of (in my view genuine) enlightenment changed her life radically. She asked the Satsang if anyone could take her cats, and I volunteered. Ananda and Kali were both strays taken in off the street, and Kali was really half-feral. Black as midnight, she was incredibly strong, a ferocious beast - and my girlfriend and I were a pretty hard sell for one so unaccustomed to trusting humans. Ananda - once we passed inspection - won our hearts with the beauty of her spirit. I jokingly called her "the Buddha's lap cat", but really, it was something like that. She seemed to truly have received some kind of transmission, to be touched by grace - one could feel it in her presence. Cats seem to have this capacity to sense and mediate subtle energies, and man, they love the Shakti! Some yogis avoid them for this very reason, considering them an energy drain. It didn't feel that way with Ananda - her influence was Dharmic, to the very end. Her favorite napping spot was in front of a photo of Anandamayi Ma, and every night she would offer Darshan, from the top of the refigerator.

Kali died first. She would become frightened, and hide for days - cats perish quickly without a food supply, and I believe she weakened her body prematurely. But towards the end, something beautiful happened - her heart somehow melted, and she began to spend most evenings in my lap, gazing into my eyes with grateful wonder, absorbing the possibility of love instead of fear. There is the potential for deep healing in these trans-species relationships, and it goes both ways. Ananda was my dear and close companion for another five years She liked most often to be near me, and the preference was mutual. She always had to have her outdoor time - being feral and all, you understand - and she would only return to domesticity if I came out and called her. Death came so suddenly - she went from being her lively usual self to a wasting shadow, almost overnight. She died of kidney failure - by all accounts, not a pleasant way to go. My partner - out of concern for me, as much as for the cat, I think - insisted we try whatever heroic measures the veterinarian could offer to save her life. So we did all that, even though I saw her eyes pleading, just let me go. It was a rough week. I was the one who called it - we have to accept this - either we let her go off and find a private place, in the manner of her kind, or we assist her passage in the way our society does. I whispered mantras in her ear as her body went limp and the eyes no longer showed her presence.

Her last gift to me was her death. All of a sudden, the transience of this life came into sharp focus - our time here is so brief, and the end can come at any time. Who are we? What ultimately matters? What (if anything) survives the body's demise? I'm not too proud to admit it was a *cat* who got this through to me, hopefully in time to fulfill the potential of this *human* birth.