Goodbye, my friend

This weekend, my cat died.  I took him to the vet on Saturday to see if they could give me some guidance; I knew he wasn’t well and he most likely would not get better. I walked in thinking I was putting him to sleep, but after talking with the doctor, I knew that I needed to know more.  So we agreed that a blood test was the way to go, so I would know I was making the right decisions.  Saturday night, he seemed okay – even though I was warned that he might be “off” due to the stress of the appointment.  Sunday morning, we woke up to find vomit and some poop on the bedroom floor; when he wasn’t in bed with me during the night I knew something was wrong.  He was laying in the hallway outside of my daughter’s room; Rob thought he was dead.  But not yet, he picked his head up when I reached down to pet him.  He laid there for a while, rolled around a bit, slept, responded to me when I petted him and almost held my finger when I put it under his paw.  But, somewhere around 11:00, he stopped breathing and he was gone.

It felt very strange to have him in the house, but he wasn’t really “there”, much like how it was to sit by my mother’s bedside knowing that she wasn’t really there.  My sister came over after work, picked him up and took him to the office so I wouldn’t have to do it this morning.  It was strange to hand him over to her; I put him in the carrier and put a towel over him – I thought it was the right thing to do.  That’s what you do when someone dies, you cover them with a sheet.  I cried when I picked him up and put him in the carrier, and I cried when my sister took him from the house.  It feels very strange in my house today.  I threw most of the day-to-day things out – his litter box, the mat under his food dish – and the rest got cleaned up by the carpet cleaner.  It’s as if he wasn’t there at all, much like my mom.

I’m trying to sequester myself a bit today.  I’m sad and I don’t want anyone to know why.  It’s okay if they think I’m just being bitchy or whatever; I don’t really care.  I just don’t want to have to say that my cat died.  Saying it out loud makes it more real and just harder overall.  I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter if they walked on two or four legs, it doesn’t matter if you were prepared for them to go or not.  If they are a part of your family, your immediate family, and they are suddenly gone, it still hurts just about the same.  I hate thinking that my mom is laying in a coffin, in a drawer. I hate knowing that at some point this week, my cat will be burned in a fire until he is just ashes and that fuzzy little face with that little tuxedo on that made him look like he was formally dressed for all occasions will be nothing but a pile of dust.  I  miss him terribly and I hope that, just like my mom, he is healthy and happy again and can run and jump and have fun like he did before he got old and sick.  Getting old sucks for the one getting older, but watching someone age and get sick – at least in my opinion – sucks even more.