I drove my cat to her death today, Devi yowling in her crate on the passenger seat of my rig, my fingers touching through the crate holes, hoping my love and gratitude would travel like lightening to her heart. She quieted as we rose over the low hills between home and the high destination unknown to us.

I drove home empty crated today, yowling, tears striking my cheeks like lightning. My son came to bid Devi goodbye, his words to her so intimate it hurt to hear. And I, holding Devi still for final ministrations, lost myself in this great whiteness where thought and words end. I still don't know how Devi and I merged in the white upon her death.

Devi came to me as a four-month-old kitten, pregnant already, bullied by a tomcat, crying at the thick wooden door of our house. I still don't know how she talked through wood.
She delivered three kittens in my lap, looking into my eyes as labor began, asking me to explain to her this pain, that suddenness of kittens. I still don't know how I comforted her.

Devi held me night after night for nine years after my husband died. She kneaded my chest until I put my forearm full length under her and held her neck and head in my hand. Her massage of purring, soft warmth of underbelly fur, and braille of delicate bones decoded this huge beauty within her. I still don't know how beauty caused me to hold on, hold on, hold on.

Devi had feline AIDS. Hard that last year was, diarrhea, skeletal thinness, crazed yowling, fleeing from the unseen down the hallway, hiding shoe deep in the closet, and at last an exhausted slide into sleep crimped by pain. I fought and fought to heal her until she jumped on my bed one last time and held me after almost a year's absence. She told me it was time and mine to do, the mechanics of release. I still don't know how she threaded through my thick denial.

Last week I drove to Sacramento to help a friend deal with a painful rejection. I saw Devi walk across the top of my friend's refrigerator. For real. With my very eyes. I still don't know how this works, just that the whiteness is now larded with the luminous gold of her eyes.