I will find you

Perhaps I’ll take a moment to explain why animals mean so much more to me than people. They have for as long as I can remember

As a child I fell in love with Bambi and Thumper, Lady and the Tramp and every real animal I caught sight of.

The horses that drew the cart which delivered coal, or the Rag and Bone Man’s wagon.

“Twopence” the Scottie dog that I watched playing in an adjacent garden and the stray cats that marched up and down the wall between the properties.

When we visited my mother’s family in the country, there were barnyard animals, though I was terrified of cows and endeavoured to keep a fence between us.

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When I was very little there had been a dog called Bodger and a cat which my father always referred to as Timoshenko though I seriously doubt that was its given name.

I only remember hearing about them.

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By the time I was old enough to form memories, Judy had come along.

She was a wire-haired terrier who was devoted to my aunt Win to the point where if I kissed my aunt goodnight, the dog lunged at me, barking furiously. It didn’t frighten me. I only wished she would allow me to be a friend.

One night during a fierce thunderstorm that distracted us, she chewed the foot off my golly, but grandma knitted a new one for it.

Aunt Win was a nurse who lived with her invalid brother George and my grandma. Until he became seriously disabled with muscular dystrophy, uncle George bred budgies in a large aviary. I loved being inside with the birds, listening to their happy chatter.

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Another relative who lived in a suburb of London had a black cat called Michel or possibly Michelle. It had been rescued during the Blitz and was very elderly, so I only saw it a handful of times but it was the first cat I met in person – so to speak.

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The first tears I shed for an animal, though would have been for Bambi.

What a terrible film to take a child to see.

However it was a story my mother read to me one night that reached that part of me where grief resides, I’ve never been entirely sure why. The memory was so vivid, I obtained a copy of the book a few years ago to find out what had touched me so.

Pookie (by Ivy Wallace), is the story of a little bunny that is rejected by its family because it has grown wings and goes off to find its Fortune which for Pookie means Love.

Pookie has a terrible time and is overcome by a winter storm:

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“I can go no further”, whispered Pookie, “This is the end of me!”

And his little rabbit heart broke in two.

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That will have been the sentence that did it. I remember crying my eyes out and that my mother did not comfort me. I don’t recall what she said, probably something like:

“Don’t be silly, it’s just a story. Now go to sleep”.

Children of my generation were supposed to toughen up. No mollycoddling for us. We were the post WW2 lot. Life for us was soft and we should appreciate it.

There was value to that, yet I cannot comprehend deliberately exposing a child to such sad stories. When they made me cry, my tears were dismissed. I was too sentimental.

Perhaps I am, but there is naught I can do about it.

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It isn’t only animals that I care deeply about. I have enormous empathy for marginalised people; for those whose lives are upended for the convenience of others; for the victims of war, abuse and natural disasters.

Such human stories touch me too. But humans generally are more likely to receive aid.

Domestic animals and pets are totally dependent on humans for their food and shelter, while wild animals depend on humans not to destroy their habitat, prey on them or destroy the environment.

Animals cannot speak for themselves. They depend on us to interpret their needs and to respect them. Because they are not human, their lives are deemed less important, expendable.

When I hear them dismissed as “just animals”, it breaks my heart. All life is precious.

We breed animals for the sole purpose of feeding ourselves and while I understand that this is necessary, I so wish it could be more humane, but that would involve cost and humanity has become dedicated to profit, seemingly above all else.

Animals are blessedly free of the many appetites that drag humanity down. They are still a part of Nature that we have divorced ourselves from to our detriment.

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Where humans have failed me repeatedly and caused me pain, animals have only ever brought me joy. The sadness in this is that almost all animals have much shorter lifespans than us, but that is the price you have to pay.

With each loss I feel another piece of my heart break away and the struggle for perspective becomes ever harder.

Thinking about this, I remembered the dedication in a book I read. It said:

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To Little Mango

Ndikupezani

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The book, Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition by Caroline Alexander.

I took it that Little Mango was a cat, but did not understand the saying.

As I often do after reading a book I particularly enjoy, I wrote a letter of thanks to the author, receiving back a post card:

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Ndikupezani.

I will find you.

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