Of life and death
Published by Dwynter in the blog Dwynter's blog. Views: 335
About two months ago, I was going to blog about my pets. It was going to start out with, "I have two cats, both of which are getting quite old. One day, I know I will loose them."
Well, that day came to pass July 9th for one of them.
Let me back up a bit. These last ten years, I've had three cats, all indoors. The lone female was Zombie, and the males were Cassanova and Thrawn, in order of age. Zombie died about seven years ago of kidney failure. Thrawn, the youngest, died suddenly for completely unknown reasons six weeks ago today. I didn't have much time to mourn over it, as I had to go to work the very next day. Thrawn was my wife's cat, really. He spent his time around her, laying near her, following her around the house, all the typical things you might expect. He was also pretty fat, weighing twenty pounds, and he had a slight deformity in his front legs, so he walked a little bow-legged in the front. They were also slightly shorter than his back legs, so I referred to him as a bulldog. He also had some breathing problems that the vet couldn't really figure out. He didn't seem to have any trouble, so he said just to keep an eye on it.
Now, another thing to know about me is that about five years ago, my life began to change, and in not a good way. I lost my job, and had to take one that paid 30% less. One side effect was, we stopped taking the cats to the vet. By this time, we only had the two, but even that was a difficult expense to fit into the budget. So, we got out of the habit of taking them to the vet.
And then Thrawn suddenly got sick, and there was nothing we could do for him. We had to put him down as we didn't want him to suffer.
At first, it was just sad, but as time went by, and I had some time to think on it, I began to feel guilty. I actually had to borrow the money to take him down to the vet this last time. And I feared that if I had bit the bullet and taken him to the vet regularly, maybe he'd still be with us. Maybe whatever hit him would've been spotted and we could have it cheaply fixed. Worse, since it was my wife's cat, she was devastated. No one expects the youngest to die first. They're supposed to die in order from oldest to youngest. And it was, as I said, her cat. She went through a period of a couple of weeks in which she didn't do anything except dwell on Thrawn, and all of her art work became centered on Thrawn. And she didn't eat much. Maybe one small meal a day, or even every other day.
And to top it off, our other cat, Cassanova, was very confused. Him and Thrawn were pretty good buds, and he started wandering around the house crying, wondering where his buddy went. He even started not eating. Sometimes he would cry into the night, waking me up. A full night's sleep meant nothing anymore. I started to withdraw, and hide from the world, avoiding my friends, not talking to any body, not coming here. I couldn't write, as I was usually too tired to focus. I worried that my job might suffer, and I could have gotten fired.
All this really stressed me out. In fact, I developed insomnia, and starting having anxiety attacks. Finally, on one of the walk's my wife and I take, I told her how guilty I felt, and that it was my fault Thrawn had died, since I didn't have a better job that could afford to pay for all this. She didn't blame me, of course. It didn't quite make me feel better, but it started the process.
Cassanova still cries a bit more than he used to, but he's eating more. So's my wife. She's kind of happy she lost eight pounds, in fact. And I'm about to get a money influx. I could have used it earlier, but, oh well. I can still use it.
Lately, I've come to realize what it means to stop being sad, and just moving on. I'm still not entirely certain how to do it, but I suppose I'll figure that out as I go along. I'm not sad Thrawn died anymore, but I am sad I didn't talk to anyone sooner. It may have saved me a lot of stress. It just felt like - no one was available. I hate to be the "wet rag," as we said when I was younger. I can be such a hypocrite at times. I'm always encouraging people around me to talk when they're down, if not to me, then to some one else, some one they trust. For me, the two people I trust the most weren't quite available. One was depressed herself, the other was, well, exhausted I'll say.
OK, I've talked enough. Time to get on with life.
You need to be logged in to comment