In Memoriam: Chibi

My best friend has passed away.

For fifteen years he was my confidant, constant supporter, friend. He knew my heart without words. Somehow I felt he would always be there, even as friends and lovers and partners went separate ways.

His name was Chibi. For you, he might be just a cat. For me: a person.

I picked up Chibi, as a sick kitten on the street, when he was just a little over a month old. He had worms, herpes in one eye, and lice.

After getting cleaned up at the vet, he became my constant companion. He slept with me and when I worked, he would sit between my keyboard and the computer, keeping a paw on things.

He knew my moods and when I was down, he would come and purr and lick my nose or lie on the floor and show his tummy for petting, knowing it would cheer me up. He watched TV with me and particularly liked movies with horses and bears. Dogs not so much.

Chibi did not like men much. He would hiss if an unfamiliar male human tried to pet him. I suspect he had been abused by someone on the street since when I picked him up he had had a barely healed wound, as if he had been kicked.

But he loved human women. So a visit to the vet where the doctor and nurses were all female was total joy. He seduced them ease that I admired.

But he was not indiscriminate. He could choose.

If I brought a girl back to the apartment, Chibi would judge them. If he didn’t like them —which occasionally happened — that was the end of that, for me. He was never wrong. His intuitions were better than mine.

The last couple of years of his life Chibi had hyperthyroidism which was controlled more or less by diet, there being no radiation treatment centers for dogs and cats in Japan. “Controlled”, yes, but the condition was doing its damage. And finally Chiba suffered renal failure.

He died in my bed.

I cried.

In the morning I took him to a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, one of the few, if not the only one, that gives Buddhist rites to animals as people. In death, Chibi officially became part of my family.

What is that makes us “human”? It is not our DNA; it is personhood, which depends on empathy and altruism, the ability to surrender our individual, solipsistic ego and incorporate another’s being within us, along with their needs by so doing becoming more than we could be alone.

We are not “human” because of our much-touted “sapience”, which is limited anyway. “Humanity” is a measure of our capacity for love.

“To be or not to be”? The question is not about whether to end it all. That comes soon enough. Rather, I take this question as being about who and what and why we are. And ow.

Cats and dogs do not have egos as we have. But they are each themselves, unique beings. They are also, as we are, social animals, so their Being includes us — if we let them. Our Being must include them too. I=We. The ontology of love is Us.

How many times have you “fallen” in love; then fallen out of love or been abandoned by your partner? Did your Mom and Dad, brother or sister understand you? Where they always there for you? Do the people at work see the Person inside you? Do you see the Person inside them? Love is not about words — it is about feelings and the perception of personhood.

We bandy around the word “love”…words, words, words… but so little meaning. Love is rare. And it finds us, rather than the other way around.

In the movie Avatar, the aliens do not say “I love you”. Rather, they say, “ I see you”. If your lover one day says, “I used to love you so much”. And then, “But things have changed”. Most likely they never “saw you”, not your personhood anyway, in the first place. So never loved you. They saw what they wanted to see, not what is or was. Which usually means they saw only what they could see in the mirror….

The philosopher Merleau Ponty corrected Descartes saying, “I see therefore I think therefore I am”. Maybe it should be, “I see therefore I love therefore I am”

Cats and dogs don’t see themselves in the mirror: but they feel and they “see” with their hearts, not they eyes. Love is not a word for them: it is a feeling of connection and trust.

Chibi had real love. And loyalty. He gave to me. I gave to him.

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.”

The Brothers Karamazov

He was family. What family should be anyway.

As a cat, Chibi could not lie.

Nor could I lie to him. You cannot have real empathy or love without honesty. And Chibi taught me honesty.

Thank you Chibi for being with me until the end. Thank you for being a better person than I. Thank you for making me a little better person. Thank you for helping me “see”.