The white rock in the garden

Rizzo only had four days to change everything.

It was enough.

Adopting a kitten wasn’t the plan when we walked into the animal shelter. But a white and gray fuzzball in an upper cage caught our attention and wouldn’t let it go, and we found ourselves driving home with a gently mewing box in the back seat.

Our spare bedroom became the kitten’s personal castle, a temporary holding space until we could properly introduce her to our other cats. We snuck into the room as often as we could to visit Her Tininess. She’d uncurl from her perch on the lowest shelf of the bookshelf and toddle to the door, looking up expectantly. Small enough to fit curled in one hand, she was self-assured and fearless, clambering confidently over our legs and snuggling into our laps with a mighty purr. She liked me well enough, but she adored my husband, and the feeling was mutual.

Utterly captivated, we gushed over what a great addition to the family she’d be and daydreamed about watching her grow up.

On Sunday evening, we noticed she was breathing a little heavily. The fireworks our neighbors were shooting off probably scared her, we said.

The next morning was Labor day.

She was worse.

We chose her name at the emergency vet’s office. We’d been weighing options since we brought her home but couldn’t decide on one until we had to fill out a form for the worried-looking lady behind the desk. “Rizzo,” we wrote. Rizzo, like from the movie “Grease” – the tough girl with a soft side.

She’d need to be tough to get past the pneumonia crackling in her lungs, the vet said, his face grave. We took her home, gave her the medication he prescribed, and got her to eat a little. Maybe she’ll be OK, we told each other as our small kitten struggled more by the minute to draw in air.

She wasn’t OK. Rizzo died about 1 a.m. as her favorite human stroked her fur and wept.

We buried her in the garden outside the window where he sits with his coffee in the mornings and where our other cats watch over the bird feeders. We look out sometimes at the white rock that marks the spot, and we mist up and reach for a Kleenex.

It’s nonsense, in a way, grieving for a creature we barely knew, who flitted into our lives for such a short time.

But grief doesn’t follow the rules of logic any more than love does. Maybe a Real Grownup doesn’t cry over a kitten. But I do. Putting that sweet animal in a hole in the ground broke my heart, and I miss her, and I’m sad.

Four days after our little makeshift funeral, a headline made my heart lurch. School shooting. Four dead. Another bullied boy got his hands on a semiautomatic rifle.

Good Lord, no. Not again.

More families devastated with loss. Loss of peace. Loss of trust. Loss of a husband. A wife. A child.

More blood on a school floor.

And still that white rock sits in the garden, still it makes me need a tissue.

I’m a fool, I tell myself, for mourning a cat while bullets roar and the world reels with pain. How dare I cry over such triviality. How dare I be so selfish.

But, no.

It’s not selfish to hurt my own little hurt. The God who made kittens doesn’t put limits on who gets to be sad.

…Some sadness ought to make us mad, though.

My sorrow over the loss of our little Rizzo made my hands and feet restless, so I launched into a home remodeling project we’ve been putting off. I couldn’t just sit still and grieve. I needed to turn my sadness into action. 

A child pointing a gun at other children and pulling the trigger ought to make us sad. We ought to go through cases of tissues in the face of such tragedy. Horrifyingly, we hardly gasp when it happens any more, let alone shed tears.

But unless our collective sorrow rekindles and boils into anger that leads to action, how will school shootings ever stop?

We don’t dare close our hearts, calling such horror a fact of life that we’re helpless to change. We should be aching with sadness. We should be raging with anger. And our hands and feet should itch to DO something.

No, most of us can’t pass legislation or start movements. But we can ask if the schools in our town have mental health help for struggling kids. We can vote for politicians who propose safety measures we think will work. We can donate to programs that strengthen families and protect children. We can volunteer as a Big Brother or Big Sister and ask our neighbor if they need a hand with the kids. We can lock up our damn guns.

A white rock in the garden reminds me that, for four days, a little bundle of sweetness made my life a little brighter.

I hope it can also nudge me to look for ways I can brighten other lives and strengthen other homes. Maybe my hands and feet can do some good. Maybe some action I take will help a hurting child believe he doesn’t need to pick up a weapon.

We can never truly know the positive impact our actions have. But we sure as hell aren't going to make anything better by shrugging and doing nothing.