Podgie was a cat. Podgie had a mum. That mum was Nelly. Nelly died one day. Podgie did not understand. But we loved her. And we still do. Podgie is a cat. Podgie never went away. Where is Podgie now?
The tragedy is this. Podgie could not understand: where her Heather went, and her John went, and her Mummy went. It makes me cry, when I realise this, that we had, inadvertently, been the instruments of poor Podgie's senility. The number of creatures who Loved Podgie kept going down, and new ones didn't arrive, until only she was left. That must have been a living hell, for poor old Podgie, so she did the only logical thing, pissed all over the place until a fuse blew and they took her to the vet to end that horrid experiment.
Cats who grow up Loved by humans, must always be Loved by humans, if they are to enjoy their life. It must have ripped the soul out of poor Podgie to lose Heather and then John to the evil University System. Somehow, when that fateful phone call came in, to John who was with his then girlfriend Juliet at the time, to say that Podgie had been put down. Inside, deep inside, John was relieved. John was powerless to do anything about Podgie's suffering, powerless. All he could do was to take that suffering and draw it into his big Mental Supercomputer, until one day a funny thing happened. The Supercomputer started to learn.
Animals usually need to be loved. There are exceptions. The main one is the Apex predator. Such a creature, which I simply identify as a TIGER, cannot live in a family. If that TIGER has to catch its PREY, then that TIGER has to die. Then anything that depends upon that TIGER suffers horribly. A loving benign TIGER must, naturally, be solitary. I am like that. Solitary. Confined here within my Mindspace. I know there are people out there, but essentially my entire experience of reality is a single continuous hallucination. It is not possible any other way. I have Purpose. If I fail, what next?