Simply “The Best” - cat edition
They say cats have nine lives. Macie Mae likely used all of them throughout her seventeen years of life. After multiple surgeries for bladder stones, a visit to an orthopedic surgeon for a torn ACL, drinking distilled water and eating prescription food for the last 12 years of her life, all while tolerating multiple moves with people and animals coming into and out of our lives, she has carefully taught me lessons that I clearly needed in this game called life.
She’s been losing a lot of weight and clumps of fur, stumbling on occasion while getting up and uncharacteristically missing jumps, I knew this day was going to come and I’ve been avoiding it like no other.
It has been so much harder than the first time because I knew what it meant and after she was gone, there would be no more companions of seventeen years to go back home too. My heart is broken. It literally hurts.
Other than her injuries, Macie has always been the perfect cat. Never getting in trouble or damaging anything, or hurting anything, not even a bug. She’s a gentle soul in a non-gentle world. She has the softest, perfectly-kept fur at all times, well, until recently anyways, which earned her the title of my “calendar kitty” due to her photogenic appearance and perfect demeanor.
She and her brother Mario are the closest things to children that I’ll ever know. After Mario crossed the rainbow bridge in June 2023, I got to love a different version of Macie. Previously, she was always in the shadow of her littermate and brother. It was only after his passing did I get to see her step out into a new life that was so different from the version that I knew previously.
Which brings me to lesson from a cat: part two: lesson one: Sometimes you need to wait your turn to step out of the shadows and shine. I’ve gotten more snuggles, kisses, fish lips and cuddle time with her in the past 14 months than I did in the previous 16 years put together. Her love has been on full display, likely always there but hidden and overshadowed by her brother and his unrelenting pushiness. She’ll forever remind me that there’s a time to grow and time to change.
As difficult as Mario’s passing was, I am appreciative that things happened in the order that they did and I got to experience this version of Macie.
Lesson two is about opportunity.
I taught a vision board workshop in Denver last week where we spoke about this topic. How many times in life have you looked back and wished you had taken an opportunity? We’ve all heard the stories about the person that could’ve bought the house in Aspen, Colorado for $40,000 that’s now worth $10 million. The person that wishes they spent more time with family because they didn’t know they would be gone too soon. Life is made up of choices, but it’s also made up opportunities. It’s up to you to accept them or reject them as they come to you. In a larger sense, you have to be open to receiving the opportunity or you don’t even realize there is a choice to be made. Retrospect and hindsight are 20/20 they say, but what if you were open to opportunities and recognize them as such when they come and in-turn, live a life with little regret?
She saw an opportunity to step out from her brother’s shadow, to shine and become the cat she was meant to be. It was the right time, right place and right space of our relationship together for her to do that. It was a short time in her overall lifespan, but time that means the world to me. I’m so glad she saw the opportunity and took it and adjusted when the time was right.
The third lesson she has taught me is to be content with what you have. She has shown me so many times over and over again what happiness can really be. While Mario taught me it is ok to be a little pushy to get what you want, Macie showed me the opposite side of that lesson which is how to be content with what you have. She has always been the adaptable one, making her quiet and safe space until she is ready to take ownership of the situation. Whether that be inside the box springs of a mattress, behind the washer and dryer or hiding in boxes inside a dark closet corner before bursting into the scene and garnering her attention. Life is rarely perfect but she was the queen of adapting and adjusting to life’s ever-changing situations and making the best of it with quiet grace.
Macie has been a best friend, always sticking up for me, even when she knew I was wrong.
Back in April of this year as I was moving back into the Main Street house and unpacking the kitchen, this song came on Spotify and I instantly knew it was “her song.” I teared up instantly upon hearing the version by Cody Belew of Tina Turners hit. Macie was perched on the nearby dining room bench and we looked at each other and gave each other little “love you” winks. (Cat people will know what I am referring to). I have continued to play the song to her multiple times over the last several months in hopes that when the day came when I had to drive her to the vet, I could play it to her one last time and remind her that she will always and forever be “Simply the Best.”
Beyond devastated but also knowing without the deep sorrow, I would’ve never learned the lessons that I needed to learn, brought to me by Macie and Mario.
I love you to the moon and back
Dad
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