R.I.P. Blackness
It's 2:45am, and I've been sitting here for the last couple of hours next to the mortal remains of my oldest cat. She'll be buried tomorrow and then I'll have to go to a job where being cheerful and helpful at the customers is priority #1. I don't know how that's going to go at all.
Some of you have heard this story before. Too bad. I really need somewhere to vent this right now and LJ's it.
It was the day of my 2nd Grade Christmas party, and I had told all my my classmates that my mom was going to come and probably bring cookies or something. This is a big deal to a 7 year old, and it hurt my 2nd Grader street cred quite a bit that she didn't show up. All day, I wondered why she would betray me like that, since she knew all about the 2nd Grader street cred thing. After school, I waited by the side of the building like I always did until mom pulled up in her van. I asked her why she didn't come to the party and she opened the sliding back door to reveal the kitty carrier (we had one cat, Tribble, at this point) with a mass of artificial white fur taking up nearly the whole space. I was confused until she pointed out the tiny ball of black fuzz on top of what turned out to be a big white teddy bear with a red ribbon around it's neck. She told me that some family with kids had had to give up one or more of their kittens to the Humane Society for some reason, but that they hadn't wanted to (hence the teddy bear, which they insisted the kitten couldn't go without) and that she figured getting a kitten for my Christmas present was more important than making it to the party. I fully agreed.
That was 15 years ago. Blackness is the only day-to-day important thing in my life I've had longer than my hat. I've had other things for longer, sure, but nothing I interact with on any regular basis. Only one of my human friends has been in my life that long (Corey, for those who know him), and I haven't spoken to him in a few years now, though I still hear and hand news of what's going on with him (he's getting married, go figure).
When I went off to college, Blackness was extremely displeased, and while the other cats would be overjoyed to see me when I came back for breaks, she would go out of her way to ignore, avoid, or even get up and leave the room when I was there. Just as she'd start to warm up to me again, break would end and I'd be gone, thus renewing the cycle. The only exception to this was winter break of my senior year, when she did precisely what she started doing a few days ago, namely not eating and spending most of the day very still and preferably on someone's lap. Whoever owned that lap would have to check periodically to make sure she was breathing. That lap was usually mine that winter and it made for a kind of nerve-wracking break. She managed to recover then, and I had hoped she'd be stubborn enough to make it through this time, but after the little infrequent panting breaths stopped earlier this morning...there is no way to finish that sentence that won't cause me to cry some more.
This is hardly the first cat of mine to die (Leonora had to be put to sleep when I was 3 because of leukemia, and her frightened and pained purring as dad took her to the vet made a huge impression on me. I'm so glad that Blackness didn't purr, because it means that she may have just dropped into sleep and not felt more than very tired and old. Tribble was hit by a car sometime in middle school, which was its own kind of traumatizing and is a whole 'nother long story), and she can't have been very happy hobbling around the house she used to very much own, but it hurts. She's been with me so long, and even now, I look over at her and expect to see her tail or ear twitch in irritation that I'm not petting her. I miss her already and I'm sitting right next to her. At least she was as comfortable as we could make her.
There will probably be picspam to follow at some point.
~October 31, 1994 - January 26, 2010
Some of you have heard this story before. Too bad. I really need somewhere to vent this right now and LJ's it.
It was the day of my 2nd Grade Christmas party, and I had told all my my classmates that my mom was going to come and probably bring cookies or something. This is a big deal to a 7 year old, and it hurt my 2nd Grader street cred quite a bit that she didn't show up. All day, I wondered why she would betray me like that, since she knew all about the 2nd Grader street cred thing. After school, I waited by the side of the building like I always did until mom pulled up in her van. I asked her why she didn't come to the party and she opened the sliding back door to reveal the kitty carrier (we had one cat, Tribble, at this point) with a mass of artificial white fur taking up nearly the whole space. I was confused until she pointed out the tiny ball of black fuzz on top of what turned out to be a big white teddy bear with a red ribbon around it's neck. She told me that some family with kids had had to give up one or more of their kittens to the Humane Society for some reason, but that they hadn't wanted to (hence the teddy bear, which they insisted the kitten couldn't go without) and that she figured getting a kitten for my Christmas present was more important than making it to the party. I fully agreed.
That was 15 years ago. Blackness is the only day-to-day important thing in my life I've had longer than my hat. I've had other things for longer, sure, but nothing I interact with on any regular basis. Only one of my human friends has been in my life that long (Corey, for those who know him), and I haven't spoken to him in a few years now, though I still hear and hand news of what's going on with him (he's getting married, go figure).
When I went off to college, Blackness was extremely displeased, and while the other cats would be overjoyed to see me when I came back for breaks, she would go out of her way to ignore, avoid, or even get up and leave the room when I was there. Just as she'd start to warm up to me again, break would end and I'd be gone, thus renewing the cycle. The only exception to this was winter break of my senior year, when she did precisely what she started doing a few days ago, namely not eating and spending most of the day very still and preferably on someone's lap. Whoever owned that lap would have to check periodically to make sure she was breathing. That lap was usually mine that winter and it made for a kind of nerve-wracking break. She managed to recover then, and I had hoped she'd be stubborn enough to make it through this time, but after the little infrequent panting breaths stopped earlier this morning...there is no way to finish that sentence that won't cause me to cry some more.
This is hardly the first cat of mine to die (Leonora had to be put to sleep when I was 3 because of leukemia, and her frightened and pained purring as dad took her to the vet made a huge impression on me. I'm so glad that Blackness didn't purr, because it means that she may have just dropped into sleep and not felt more than very tired and old. Tribble was hit by a car sometime in middle school, which was its own kind of traumatizing and is a whole 'nother long story), and she can't have been very happy hobbling around the house she used to very much own, but it hurts. She's been with me so long, and even now, I look over at her and expect to see her tail or ear twitch in irritation that I'm not petting her. I miss her already and I'm sitting right next to her. At least she was as comfortable as we could make her.
There will probably be picspam to follow at some point.
~October 31, 1994 - January 26, 2010