I typically end up procrastinating for a while before I post each one of these, sometimes because I don’t know what to write, and sometimes because I just need a few minutes after getting home from a long day.

I was skimming the internet tonight, after getting home rather late and wanting to unwind just a bit.  I somehow stumbled across an article about how cats sometimes purr right before their death.

Crazy right?

I’ve always understood a purr to mean a cat is experiencing happiness and contentment.  To purr right before death…that speaks to me.  A purring cat is a cat at peace.

It turns out that purring is a bit more nuanced than just “I’m happy, so I’ll purr.”  so you can’t be totally sure what a cat is experiencing in those moments.  I mean, cats aren’t people, so attributing human thoughts and feelings to them may be doing them a disservice.  Cats may be more complex than a human construct such as language could effectively describe!  Or they could be pretty dumb in the grand scheme of things.  I’d rather not make the assumption that I am the smarter creature.  It would be quite embarrassing to discover I was wrong!

I digress.

I don’t want to be too morbid here, but I hope to face death in peace, happy, content with what I have accomplished and where I have been.  Even if things didn’t exactly go my way, I hope that I can spend my final moments on earth with the knowledge that I am dying in peace.  That my unfinished business is not unfinished because I was a coward, but rather simply because I ran out of time.  Maybe I won’t be dying peacefully, but I hope to be dying at peace with who I was during my time on earth.

In my heart, I hope that when my time comes, I can face death with a purr.