Tree Tuesday: The View from the Window

In Memory of Snuggles Forever missed, always loved. May you nap eternally in the warmest sunbeams. 2021 to 10-20-2025

Tree, as his name suggested, was a creature of vertical ambition. He lived for the highest shelf, the tallest cat tree, and the top rung of the window blinds. He was also, it must be said, a creature of intense, one-sided rivalry. And the object of his intense disdain was Snuggles.

Snuggles was a low-to-the-ground cat—a roller, a sun-puddle connoisseur, a master of the nap. He was also, maddeningly, a master of territorial encroachment. If Tree was in a sunbeam, Snuggles would worm his way in. If Tree was drinking from the water bowl, Snuggles would casually dip a paw. It was a thousand tiny, daily insults that, in Tree’s mind, added up to one giant, fluffy enemy.

Tree spent many hours perched on the highest bookshelf, glowering down. He would watch Snuggles sleeping, a peaceful, oblivious white lump, and wish him far away. “If only,” Tree would think, his tail twitching in annoyance, “that ridiculous beast would just… vanish.” Tree imagined the glorious, quiet peace of a Snuggles-free house: more sunbeams, an uncluttered food bowl, and the entire human lap all to himself. He never wished him harm, exactly, but he certainly wished him gone.

Then, one Tuesday, Snuggles was gone.

The house felt too large, the silence too loud. Tree got the sunbeam, but it felt cold. He had the entire, untouched food bowl, but his appetite seemed to have vanished with his rival.

He watched his human carefully place a small, beloved blanket beneath the big oak tree in the yard and gently cover the earth over it. Tree understood, suddenly, irrevocably. The rival was truly, finally, gone.

Tree climbed to his highest, favorite perch, the window sill overlooking the oak tree. The sun set, casting long, lonely shadows. He looked down at the fresh earth and felt a pang of guilt that was sharper than any claw. He had spent so much of his life focused on the annoyance, the irritation, the wish for absence, that he had never once appreciated the presence. He hadn’t noticed that the house felt empty without that familiar, annoying thump as Snuggles jumped off the sofa, or the soft, rumbling purr that used to vibrate through the entire room.

Every day since, Tree still climbs up to that same window. He doesn’t stare at the sunbeam now. He looks out, toward the quiet mound under the oak, and he misses the low-to-the-ground cat who used to make his life so complicated. He misses the very existence he had wished away.

The Moral

The true tragedy of holding onto dislike is that it poisons the time you had. Never spend your precious energy wishing for the absence of another, because in their sudden, undeniable silence, you’ll find that the space they filled—even the annoying, frustrating, complicated space—is now just an empty ache. The time you spent wishing for silence is time you can never get back. All you can do is hold onto the memory, and wish you hadn’t wasted a single second on anything but the messy, beautiful reality of shared life.