Half a Baby Bunny

Let me take you back to my first post and the Billy Collins poem that was my inspiration.  In the very first stanza, Collins falls in love:

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

Let me remind you, too, of my June 15 post, in which my killer cat took down a pesky chipmunk.  I could hardly be angry with her for her murderous instincts, as I was the one who commissioned her to do so.  But I was able, nonetheless, to forgive the tiny rodent for the damage done in my garden, and to fall in love with him.

But this time, Cassie the Killer may have gone too far.  Last night, I woke to that terrible sound of crunching bones, and figured that Cassie had caught another mouse.  When she devours her prey, she usually cleans her plate except for the carefully removed stomach and maybe the head, so I felt no need to get up in the middle of the night to clean up.  Imagine my surprise (and my scream) this morning when I stepped into the living room to find the back half of a baby bunny on the floor.  Not a pretty sight.  (I am sparing you a picture.)  The stomach had been removed, but there was blood, and (forgive me for being graphic here) the poor little thing must have pooped his pants in fear, because there was that, too, minus the pants.  And, of course, there was the whole back end of the bunny, little legs and tail.

I admit, I was pissed at the cat.  Pissed at her for killing a baby bunny and pissed at her for leaving me her mess to clean up.  But you remember that my mission with this blog is to fall in love, not fall in hate.  So I forgave the cat again, and considered falling in love with the half a bunny.

The question is, "Which half?"  Did I fall in love with the furry back end, the tiny legs, the fluffy tail, the isolated tummy, the blood and the poop?  Or did I fall in love with the half that disappeared?  The half that was settling in my cat's belly and lulling her into a morning nap?

Do we fall in love with what is present or what is missing?  The seen or the unseen?  The known or the unknown?  The reality or the memory?

I'll let you think that one over and decide for yourself.