His life won’t be the same without her

She brought beauty and joy

And she brought inspiration.

She was the purest soul,

The lightest heart.

Her heart will weigh no more than a butterfly’s wing

In the hall of judgement.

She was also intrepid and brave.

Born as a human pet,

Escaped or abandoned,

She made a home in the wild.

She asked for help, but she never asked to be rescued;

She accepted her life.

She was seen in the kitchen garden on warm summer days,

Eating carrots and beetroots.

She made a nest in the compost heap,

Boxed in wood and covered in iron.

And then under the pallet of granite and in the garden walls,

He imagined her curled asleep, warm and dry.

Then one day as he went to feed the birds,

Cold and wet, she looked up, deeply into his face.

And so, she started to come when he called

To take food from his hand.

She would scamper back and forth to one of her nests,

With mouthfuls of food.

She was the most beautiful and lovely

Creature he had ever seen,

A mysterious gift of life.

He delighted in her scamper

And the tentative way she came to his hand when he called,

“Beautiful and brave Rusky.”

His heart swelled full

When she first touched him with her beautiful hands.

And his heart melted

When she sat on his hand to eat a morsel.

She would let him stroke her soft warm fur, but she was clear,

“You’re not to pick me up.”

He would think about her all the time,

With happiness and worry.

He told everyone about her;

Describing her and her funny little ways,

Showing photos and videos, revealing his love and passion for her,

To share his joy.

Returning home from work,

He called and called,

And then called frantically before she came.

She was bedraggled and shivering.

He saw a cut on her back as she struggled to climb up into a shrub,

Not back to a nest.

And so, he took her in,

Taking away her freedom.

He could not bear the feeling of her wet,

cold and in pain.

With a heavy heart, he made her a home with logs, paper and hay

And treated her wound.

He would sit with her

And to talk with her.

He loved her voice and her careful grooming.

He loved her sweet warm smell.

Only one of her pups, Nib, survived the lonely birth night

Beautiful like his mother.

The lump had to be removed.

He sobbed.

“She only has a 50/50 chance of pulling through.”

“We don’t know how old she is.”

But she did recover, and who could doubt whether she would,

She had already survived so much.

Only to fall to another illness.

It made her unsteady at first;

Her head to one side she looked up into his face.

The treatment did not work this time.

He sat with her, stroking her as she lay dying and, for the first time,

He told her how much she meant to him.

He will summon the strength

To bury her;

Above the kitchen garden,

Where she was happy and free.

He will never forget her and the joy she brought into this life.

His life won’t be the same without her.