Appreciating Ugly

by Deane E. Kogelschatz

It was back in 1994, some fourteen years ago. We had found our beloved cat dead and we were just getting over the trauma of losing a pet. A veterinarian had recently opened his practice, the first for our sleepy little southern town of Cottonwood, Alabama, and we had become fast friends.

A wonderfully sensitive group, Bruce and his staff called me in for coffee one morning and presented me with a surprise. It was a pure white kitten. Warm, cuddly and with a beautifully shaped head and face, it was perfection in appearance with the exception of a black spot in the middle of its face. It was a gorgeous cat with an ugly spot, strategically placed so that it looked like a smear, and for a moment I was repulsed at what I considered a disfigurement. I thought the black area on her face was ugly and faulted her whole look. I didn’t want her but had to accept her since she was the doctor’s gift to us in response to the loss of our other cat.

As she grew, Smokey sort of grew on me but not very much. I simply didn’t like her looks and her black spot was getting larger as well as beginning to color her ears and part of her tail. All this while I was having momentary thoughts about what was ugly and what was not, and half-way wishing she would disappear. She granted my wish when she was about a year old. We live out in the country next to a swamp and I felt sure she had been done in by a snake or one of the wild dogs that roam the area.

It only took a day to get to me. I knew deep inside that Smokey sensed my energy, knew she wasn’t wanted and had responded to that by leaving. This challenged my beauty/ugly values and I began to realize what an ass I was, causing her to leave simply because of the markings on her face. I looked in the mirror at my OWN face and realized how superficial an ‘ugly’ opinion is.

I began to feel really bad about the situation and began a search for her, up and down fence lines, in planted pines, and shorelines of the ponds. No Smokey. We watched for the circling of buzzards having found one of our pets that way, but only saw some too far away to investigate.

I continued to feel worse about this event I had created with its emotions and sadness. Most of all, I couldn’t stand knowing that Smokey knew full well that my dislike for her face had sent her off to a death in the swamp.

Smokey had been gone two months or so and I was out in the garden leaning on my hoe, resting. I glanced down my fence line and spotted a little blob of white, far away. Wondering what it was, I stared at it, squinting, trying to see if it was really moving or not. It was. I just stood there watching and finally realized that it was Smokey, walking very slowly my way. When she got to the the end of the garden I walked over to her and picked her up. She was in terrible shape and looked like hell. I confess to a tear. We nursed her back to health and she became a true member of our family.

It is now some fourteen years later and at a regular check at the vet’s, Smokey received a death sentence. Her kidneys were failing and the levels of toxins in her blood were three times normal. Bruce recommended that she be put down as she had only about two weeks to live and death from kidney failure was extreme and painful. But I just couldn’t do it.

The next morning in bed, I watched Smokey lying between Sandy and I, and I began to think about her choices as well as mine. Just for the heck of it, I thought I would attempt a communication with her and see if we could reach an agreement for her to stick around for another year, just to show me, for my personal benefit, that such a thing could be done if we mutually agreed. Well, it didn’t appear to be much of a communication but my sense of it was that she agreed. I told my wife Sandy and my veterinarian friend Bruce what I had done and why. Both devout Christians, their disbelief was obvious, but they humored me anyway.

Within three weeks of her diagnosis Smokey appeared fully recovered. She was back to eating well and had put on weight. She now appeared as normal as she ever did.

Smokey is gone now, some seven months after her death sentence. She had started to fail again and there was nothing I could do. When I returned from the vet, I walked back to the garden and stood in the same spot, looking down my fenceline where I had seen her walking toward me as she came back home that day. This time I saw her walking away, stopping briefly to turn and look at me, making that familiar meow sound through a purr as she so often did when I petted her. The tear I had back then returned, joined by some others. I waved back and that was it.

Smokey taught me a lot about beauty. When people would comment on her face I used to tease and say that as she was chasing one of those tar trucks, it put on the brakes and she couldn’t stop. Now, everytime I see something that in the past would have seemed ugly, a thought pops out thanking her for providing me the experience that there is nothing ugly except what your perceptions make it. I understand, now, that what some would call ugly is simply a different kind of beauty.

Thank you Smokey.

Love, 
Deane