Artemesia RIP

I have lost a member of my family.
Someone told me they liked personal information in my blog, of which I have very little. Today though is different. I must write in honor of my dear cat, Artemesia, whom we found dead yesterday under our front steps, after six days of wondering what happened to her. She was almost 20 years old and had a good life, and clearly had gone cat like to find a dark place to die, but that doesn’t make my devastation any less.

I can’t help but think about the thousands of family pets in Iraq who have been lost to the war, as well as the thousands of animals of all sorts who have been traumatized and killed. We never hear about animals in Iraq at all, only our troops, and “the enemy”. Imagine how many families must have lost their pets and livestock to death and loss in the last five years. I did find a blog entry about cats in Baghdad, strays of course, who are heading for Americans who have the food and warmth. How many Baghdad strays were once family pets? Here is another blog by an Iraqi girl. She is a cat lover, but she left all her pets behind when she went to Syria and knows nothing of them. Probably they have joined the strays described in the first blog.

Losing my own pet makes me grieve for all of them as well. We never hear about the ruin of the natural world in Iraq either, we bombed orchards, date palms, we are destroying the lush fruit production in Iraq, poisoning the land with depleted uranium, poisoning the future as well as the past. In a book I read about the first Gulf War a garden destroyed by the war was described in loving detail.

Back to my cat. She was a wonderful pet, very loving, always there when I came home, always there to climb into my lap and be stroked as she purred loudly. That is what she lived for love and affection, caring, and more love. It is the way the world is meant to be. How far we seem to get from that simple fact.

Dear Artemesia Rest in Peace.