I can’t believe I’m about to write about losing a kitty again, two months after losing our other one, but here I am. My heart is shattered into a million pieces, and everything feels a bit surreal. Even though I knew she didn’t have a lot of time left, I still thought we would have a bit more than we did.
She was only ten, and that’s too young to bury a cat. She was especially close to me, and spent all her time near me, next to me, or on top of me. Every night she would sleep on my back or quite literally in my face. When I would go to the bathroom she would follow me in and lick the shower curtain with joyous abandon. I never did figure out what she saw in shower curtains, but they sure did bring her joy.
As she got older and chunkier, the weight of her on my back at night while I was trying to sleep was both comforting in a weighted blanket kind of way, and alarming in a “I hope I can get up if I need to” kind of way. But most of all, it was sweet and special. I always knew that within 5 seconds of getting in bed, she’d be climbing up on top of me to sleep.
A few months ago she lost a lot of her mobility in her back legs all of a sudden, and started hiding all the time. I’ll spare you the details, but to sum it up I went to vet after vet and the prognosis shaped up into something terrible. But just when it seemed to be hopeless, she bounced back and gained some of her mobility back. She was coming out and socializing again – and walking! She couldn’t jump on the bed anymore, or get into the litter box, so I got her a ramp to get onto my bed, and crafted her an easy-access litter box out of a Rubbermaid bin that she could walk right into without having to step up or climb. I was so thrilled she was getting better – and therefore the terrible prognosis was wrong – that I didn’t think of anything else but my joy at getting to keep her. I set about making sure all her spaces were accessible to her with her limited mobility.
It only took her a couple days to figure out the ramp, and she started joining me in bed again. She cuddled up and slept on my back again! She was socializing and an active part of the household. She got back to licking the shower curtain. Life was back to normal, and I relaxed.
It was short-lived. Things took a turn so fast. The end came quicker than I knew it could. It was peaceful, and she knew she was loved. She passed quietly.
We buried her in the backyard.
It’s hard to sleep now. The absence of her weight on top of me is the heaviest emptiness you can imagine. I keep looking for her, wishing one more time to see her little cross-eyed gaze, and watch her open her mouth in her trademark soundless meow.
The night she passed, I looked across the room to a spot she loved to sit in and saw the cat brush there. She loved to be brushed, and I had left the brush there a couple days earlier after giving her a good brushing. It was full of her fur. I picked it up, sobbing, and cleaned it out into the kitchen trash. I then placed the empty brush on my computer desk and went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, the brush had a clump of her gray fur in it. I have no other animals with that color fur, and I know for a fact that I cleaned every piece of fur off the brush, because it broke my heart to do it.
I’d like to think she visited to say goodbye.
I’m keeping the fur in that brush forever.
