The northlondonhippy

Archive for July 23rd, 2008

My cat died sud­denly yes­ter­day. She was old and in decline for the last few months and I did know the end was near­ing, but it was still a shock to have it hap­pen like this.

One minute before she died, she was eat­ing. I’d helped her to her dish in the kitchen and left her there, hap­pily munch­ing away and returned to the liv­ing room. All of the sud­den, one of my other cats leapt with a start and I heard the sound of some­thing falling over in the hall­way. I thought it was just some post com­ing through the let­ter slot in the front door. I was wrong.

It was my cat, she’d fallen over with what I am fairly sure was a stroke. She was gone in about 2 min­utes, but I was there with her.

She was around 16 years old, but its pos­si­ble she could have been older. Mrs. H got her in 1994 as a fully grown cat, I knew her for over 11 years.

Before Mrs. H got her from the local shel­ter, she had been liv­ing in the local mar­ket, exist­ing on scraps and hand-outs from the traders. She loved peo­ple food and if it was good enough to be on your plate, it was good enough for her — she’s eat any­thing, fruit, veg, meat, cheese, bread, you name it, though of course we mainly fed her cat food.

On Mon­day night, she had cheese from a pizza and licked the rem­nants of a bowl of choco­late ice cream, which was her absolute favourite.

I appre­ci­ate if you’re not a pet lover that this post is prob­a­bly tedious read­ing for you. I am a pet lover, I’ve had dogs and cats my entire life. The rela­tion­ships you have with your pets are some of the most hon­est rela­tion­ships you can have.

My cat hadn’t been well for the last few months. She gone mostly blind, her appetite was decreas­ing and her back legs were get­ting weaker. I would be lying if I said I didn’t con­sider putting her down and my one real regret is that I didn’t trust my instincts. The day before she died I thought about it and even yes­ter­day it crossed my mind more than once. I could have spared her a brief, yet hor­ri­ble death.

Dying is hor­ri­ble and wit­ness­ing my cat’s pass­ing was dis­tress­ing. While it was mer­ci­fully brief, my cat fought and strug­gled to her very last breath, but that’s what she was like. She was a fighter and didn’t take shit from any­one, not even Death, though in the end, Death always wins.

I spent the last cou­ple of days talk­ing to my cat, telling her how much I would miss her when she was gone. I really did sense that the end was extremely near. My other three cats were all dis­tressed as well when she died and could sense some­thing was very wrong. And even though I cleaned up the spot in the hall­way where she passed, they are still sniff­ing around it. They know, even if they don’t understand.

Pets are part of your fam­ily, they have per­son­al­i­ties and strong char­ac­ters and are loyal and faith­ful com­pan­ions, dogs and cats alike. When you lose one, it hurts and hurts deeply.

I can remem­ber when I was a child and we lost a pet, my mother being so very dis­traught that she would always announce with great author­ity and final­ity, that this was the end and she would have no more pets, ever, because los­ing them is so painful. It’s not fair that they have such brief life spans!

I’ve lost 2 cats in the last year and it doesn’t get any eas­ier. I’m lucky now, the three I have are all quite young and I hope it will be a good long time before I have to face los­ing any more.

I’m going to miss my sweet lit­tle girl so much, I already do now and she hasn’t even been gone 24 hours.

In truth, she was partly gone already, as I watched her health decline, espe­cially over the last week or so. I know its a cliché, but she is at peace now. Every day was increas­ingly becom­ing a strug­gle for her. She doesn’t have to strug­gle any more.

I hate death. It sucks, but I think the dying part is the worst of all.