If I died, would she feel guilty?

What if I don't overcome this flu I have now and died?

I think my human will be wracked with guilt. It will be a long while before she would be able to let go of the 'what if' questions - What if she had not boarded me in a cat community where, understandably, germs are passed around more freely? What if she found some other solution [read "compromise"] to my tearing up the new furnishings in her home?

I hardly fell ill when I was with her. The couple of times I caught a chill, she picked up on it rightaway and took me to the vet. Other than that, there've been a couple of urinary tract infections, which the vet also fixed.

The weather has been kooky lately, which is maybe how I got sick. It's either hot as hell - which sends me and my roomies leaving our room through the hole in the wall to go for cooler air in the garden beyond - or pouring heavily, which sends the temperatures dipping, especially if it's a night-time rainstorm.

Or someone in the room passed me the germs, which is rather more likely what happened.

Anyway, I was thinking about the nature of guilt just now. If I died, and my human needed to get over her decision to 'dump me', it would entail her forgiving herself.

We are always told to forgive others because it's good for the soul. It's like an anti-depressant. Don't seek an eye for an eye, or stew about seeking an eye for an eye, because all that stored up aggro is bad for the constitution.

And that's just the physical side of it. Ever kept company with someone so full of venom against someone else he perceives to have done him an injustice? It isn't very a positive or life-affirming business, really.

But how often do humans think about forgiving themselves for what they have done? The option is to stay guilt-ridden. Forgiving oneself takes work, though. It takes adopting a different reality. It takes disentangling the self from the perception that another person or thing had 'control' over the action that was taken.

I believe my human would take full ownership of the decision she made. She had come up against keeping me vs giving me up. She chose to give me up.

It was far more than being a vote to keep her new furniture in good condition, though a big fringe benefit for her is that she freed herself from cleaning up after me. [List: Scattered litter, fur all over the place, occasional puddles of vomit, litter-box smell and poo/pee and my dark brown 'dhoby marks' on strategic walls/furniture.]

I understand that, for her, It was also a vote for harmony at home, since her hubby has never been that crazy about cats, or, more particularly, about me!

He thinks I am an evil, ungrateful and unfathomable ball of fur, though he has acknowledged I do have my 'softer' side. He has seen me come when called and once said that maybe I had a zipper on my belly, which, when undone, would produce a dog that had been wearing a moggie costume all this while.

Of course it hurts that she chose her marriage and home over me. But a choice had to be made. I absolve her from blame for it. So if I go, I go. It's enough that I had eight good years under her roof. [Really? Am I so magnanimous? Or am I just being a manipulative S.O.B. using reverse psychology?]

Guilt... regret... My human has always been one to take decisions based on information then available at each crossroads at that time, and never look back. Life is not about continually keeping a cost-benefits scorecard for every choice one makes. She is sure of her decision, my human is. Her mom asked her last week whether she would ever bring me home again, and I believe her answer was an unequivocal 'No'.

The poet Robert Browning's words capture her thinking:

'I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
I regret a little, I would change still less.'

Anyway, Auntie S started me on this medicine called Vibravet today and fully expects me to make a turnaround. She told my human today that I'm still eating well, which is a positive sign.