instinct and loss

July is one of my favorite months. Summer really kicks in, flowers are blooming everywhere, kids are playing and biking all over the neighborhood, so what's not to like?
However, this July, while beautiful, has been full of lessons for me. This week alone I've experienced the effects of instinct and loss.

Being an animal lover, there is no boundary for the range of emotions I feel for animals. I love them all. But they all have quirks and instinctual behavior just as humans have a conscience and drive to do certain things.
On Monday, my cat was doing her usual morning stalking and watching the house sparrows at my suet cakes. She normally doesn't catch them, but on this day she did. I was in the bathroom getting ready for work when I heard the chaos in the living room. Being naked, I couldn't run to the balcony door without being seen, so I ran back to put on a robe. During that time, after the bird had been trying to fly away it hit a wall and fell to the ground. My cat got a hold of it and I found her tightly carrying the bird in her mouth. I managed to pry her mouth open and remove the bird. I held the bird in my hand, feeling it's loose head since the neck had broken. I held it for several minutes, not knowing the severity of it's injuries. I took a look at the bird's neck, limp and bloody. I took it outside and sat on the balcony with it, watching it die in my hands. Of course I was irritated with my cat for doing this, but it was her instinct that drove her and it wasn't her fault or under her control. Instinct.

On Tuesday, as I was walking through the alley to feed the alley cats, I could hear a high pitched crying. I knew it wasn't a bird and realized it was the all too familiar cry of a newborn kitten. I dropped what I was doing and searched in the direction that the crying was coming from. Finally I found a newborn, maybe a day or two old, kitten in a shallow, small hole. Seeing no sign of the mother, I scooped up the kitten. I was frantic and tried to contact animal control, office closed. Then I contacted the animal shelter and the manager asked if I could foster her for the evening, which I was happy to do. I drove to the shelter and they gave me some milk substitute and a small bottle. When a newborn is found without it's mother, there isn't a great chance that the kitten will live, but sometimes miracles happened. I did my duty and woke up every two hours to feed the kitten. It wasn't taking to suckling like it should; where was the instinct? I did manage to get her, a calico, to eat a little. She seemed strong and would cling to my fingers as I placed my hand in the carrier ever so often throughout the night. In the morning I carried her to the shelter for them to care for her. They never found a foster, so staff had to take her home at night and feed her. Try as they might, she still wouldn't suckle properly. A few days later she died. You have to be aware that this can happen when a newborn doesn't have the mother around, but it still hurt. Loss.

So, I feel that I did what I could to comfort the life and death of two small souls in the world. I can't say I wasn't emotional attached in some way to the bird and kitten. In Buddhism, it's said that we must strive to become detached, because with attachment comes suffering. I can't see how it's possible to be detached and still care about the world and life, nurturing and saving it. It's my instinct to do what I can to ease suffering, but it doesn't go without a sense of loss when things turn out differently than I wish them to. If I were detached, would I have left the kitten to cry and starve into the evening? Did I do the right thing? It's hard to answer these questions without some certainty that all I did was follow my instinct and let my heart guide me to do what I thought was right. But with that comes a price and that is loss. So it goes.