Missing Simon

I think we're going to be okay, Domino and me. We are snuggled in front of the wood stove here at Sanctuary, listening to waves of welcome rain pattering across the roof like tiny animal feet.

It's been a difficult week for us. Simon, my faithful kitty companion for eleven years, began having seizures. I mistook the first on Saturday for slipping on the stairs. He had started favoring his right front paw so his gait was a little gimpy. He cried out and I picked him up and cuddled him and he seemed alright.

On Sunday he had two more. They were unmistakably seizures. They were relatively brief, ten to 15 seconds, maybe. 

They were terrible to watch. 

On Monday I called our vet's office. My favorite doc was in surgery all morning. Would someone else be okay?

A no-brainer.  But how I dreaded this visit. 

The vet gently examined Simon and was trying to find a way to soften the diagnosis I was already expecting, already dreading. I cuddled him as the first injection was given. I continued as he drifted asleep and the second, fatal injection was inserted. They gently set about positioning his body as if he was taking a catnap there on the hard metal table before rigor set in.

The assistant quietly took my payment right there, to spare me stopping at the desk in the waiting room on the way out. They wrapped him in a soft blue towel and tucked him back in his carrier and I took him home for the last time.

On Tuesday I walked through our woods, shovel in hand, searching for a place suitable for a kitty cemetery. I think it's been a long time since I buried a cat. I found a place among the trees where the rich, red-brown earth was soft and yielding. I dug a Simon size hole, retrieved him from the mudroom, carried him like a baby still wrapped in the blue towel, and gently placed him in his resting place. I gathered a collection of Sanctuary rocks and piled a cairn to mark the spot.

I felt unexpectedly lighter once the weight of this task was completed.

But on Wednesday, Domino, my bushy-tailed, black-and-white shelter kitty, stopped eating. He barely sniffed the fresh breakfast in his bowl. I never heard the crunch of dry food. Not once all day long. I put tasty food in a small bowl to tempt him, thinking if the mountain will not come to Muhammed .... to no avail. I wasn't the only one missing Simon. We adopted Domino almost five years ago, one from a litter of four looking for a good home. He doesn't remember a life without Simon.

So Domino and I carried sorrow around with us all day long, each in our own way. I walked up to the rock cairn, more than once. He fasted and curled up in a ball and slept by the warm wood stove. We listened to more bands of rain sweeping across the roof and watched a movie upstairs in bed at night.

On Thursday I was roused from deep sleep by a warm, black and white ball of fur purring loudly in my ear and kneading the quilt that covered me. 

You're feeling better! I say. You've missed him, too, haven't you? 

I think we're going to be okay.