Retrospective: Pippin Gives Me a Present (and not the wiggly kind)

I wrote this for the website What's Your Grief, but I thought I'd put it here, too. Since I don't remember sharing this particular part of Pippin's life with you.

Cats don't usually give you things. Aside from rodents and birds, of course. But Pippin was unusual in a lot of ways, from being mostly blind (and never letting on how bad his sight really was), to understanding way more than you'd ever imagine, to being autistic, like me.

He was always a very precise eater. He didn't leave pieces of food strewn around his bowl like some. At the time he was eating food that came in several different shapes. And one day, randomly, I came to fill his food bowl and found one piece of food set aside on the floor next to it, very carefully, as if in gift to me. It was the heart-shape.

Did he know? How _could _ he know what that shape meant to humans? Yet, I felt it was a gift, from him to me. It was the _only_ time he ever let a food piece stay outside his bowl.

I mourn his loss still. Because he needed me to be strong, I could be strong for him. Because he needed me to be steadfast, I could be the foundation of his world. I wonder how much of my ability to cope was wrapped up in being the person he needed me to be.

I kept the heart. I kept it with some of his fur I took off the cat trees in a box with an angel holding a kitty on it, and a locket with his picture even though I can't wear necklaces. I have that box sitting on the head of my bed, where he liked to sleep. And oddly, the new crew (CAT) have always left it alone.