My cat died today. I said I didn’t want her to die to myself yesterday as drool was pouring like a faucet from her nose and mouth, and yet she did. It’s been a long day even without having been there to make the decision to let her go to the place beyond. This is, I think, the first post on this new site that is in medias res – it’s happening in front of my face. I’m not buffering and editing past truth. There’s no lustre in the lustrata. There’s just raw emotional gunk. All that build-up and here I am I find myself feeling so detached today. Incapable of giving the girl the rousing eulogy she deserves.
Which is not fair. The quiet ones deserve it at least as much as the loud ones.
I was not expecting it. Lily was 14. Sweet. Tiny as a kitten and then big and round and barrel-shaped, then, tinier and tinier, wasting away.
She was part of a BOGO, a cat purchased when I was heading off to college, when my sister was getting a cat and she could live with my parents until I came home for the semester and could take over her ownership. The other cat – Beau – is fancy, white, preening, all ego and heterochromatic eyes (not that any one would find *that* pleasing). He takes up all the attention. Little Susie, the brown tabby, my mother – official cat determiner – replied when I asked what was special about the one I had chosen: nothing, she’s a standard house cat. She did have some funky colors, pretty eyes. But she didn’t do tricks. She didn’t do anything more than the least required of her: be warm, be sweet, caper about a bit, and live. Standard.
Save for those few moments when she was comforting, was close and let you wring out all your anxious emotions into her as you pet her. She had a good knack for that.
At any rate. Darling. I shall always miss your companionship. I’m glad you’re free of all your health problems. You were special to me because you were. No more reason than that.
