Kitty love.
I'm sitting here making gaming notes and listening to Kamelot, and life is pretty good. Especially good because my stinky black fuzzmuffin is plastered against my leg, gently heaving.
We had a vet visit yesterday, because I've been sort of worried about her. She's getting old, and it's starting to show in the way she moves and acts and thinks about things. She's been missing jumps sometimes, like maybe her back end pains her, and she is walking a little funny. She shifts in her sleep just a little more than she once did. Sometimes I'll surprise her when she's at exactly the wrong point in her sleep cycle and she will claw the ever-loving fuck out of me before she realizes who it is. She's getting old.
Dr. Tim is a really nice guy, no bullshit. He looked her over and said she was doing well, and that if she has arthritis it's so early that he can't detect it yet. She hated every minute of the car ride and the vet visit, more than usual, but she forgot about it as soon as we got home. Like it's beneath her to hold it against me, even though I don't think anything is really beneath an animal that regularly fails to outwit her own poop.
I love her to death, I love her beyond all reason. She's fourteen now, and because I'm feeling how short her remaining time is, I'm doting on her in ways that I am sure make me look either dreadfully pussywhipped or insane. I give her pieces of my food when she asks for it. I hold my water cup for her because she will drink after me but not after the other cats. I put up with her wanting to be on me or next to me every moment of the day. She is spoiled and hates the other cats and picks fights all the time. Four more years of this? Not long enough. And I want to talk about how I adore her and how precious she is and how nobody else really appreciates her because she honestly is a really unpleasant cat who despises everyone but me. I want to talk about the others, too: the comedy cat and the comfort cat, the fat grey zeppelin of bitey death and the hairy orange toaster of finger-licking love.
I can't, though; it gets all stopped up because the grand total this year so far is nine. Nine cats on my f-list gone. Nine cats and two dogs. And there is no way in hell that is good or right or fair, and I have cried over every single one. It's a pain I feel all too keenly because I know I'm going to have to do it again, sooner than I would like. Someday Tazendra will be the cat in the doorway.
I know that I speak mockingly of my cats, I make fun of them relentlessly in real life and online because they are hilarious. I laugh and tease and pull their tongues out while they are sleeping and show the internet the pictures. I know lots of other people who are the same, who talk about their animals as humorous little footnotes to their lives, but who love them to devastation. Watching my friends in grief, it's agonizing, because when this happens you can't pretend anymore. You can't say "just a cat," "just a dog." You can't laugh it off, and the walls that we put up around our human feelings come crashing down and there we are in all our ugly, helpless glory. We do that around animals a lot, actually. Animals sort of slip in under our emotional defenses.
I think a lot of us are reluctant to admit to other people how much our pets mean to us, or even to ourselves. We feign nonchalance, but the force of grief at the loss of a pet can be shocking, and there's no nonchalance in crying for the third night in a row. I think we would find the world a better place if people were quicker to admit how much they love their pets, and didn't feel like they had to excuse or explain that.
Right now Tazendra's purring and her fur is standing up in humid curls and spikes, and her guard hairs stick out a full inch and a half further than her fluff, like exquisite little organs that allow her to distill purest hate out of the atmosphere and convert it into whatever unguessable humors fill her derelict hide. Her spine is sharper than it used to be and sometimes she forgets what room she is in, but she is still black as mold, she still tears around the house like a mad thing, and she still sits in front of the toilet for hours at a time, silently communing with her underworld god. She is still my cat.
And I guess I've gone on about her after all, which is a traditional thing to do on a Friday, but I just meant to say, when I started out, that I am sorry. All of you who have lost your babies, who have had to help them through that doorway, I'm sorry. I hold you all close, and I think of you at night when the furry tyrants herd me to bed and I have to lie down with them or suffer the consequences, and I wish I Could offer you the comfort of their company, if only for a few hours. I have companionship, and I feel like I don't deserve it because so many of you have lost your little ones.
But we never really deserve them, do we?
We had a vet visit yesterday, because I've been sort of worried about her. She's getting old, and it's starting to show in the way she moves and acts and thinks about things. She's been missing jumps sometimes, like maybe her back end pains her, and she is walking a little funny. She shifts in her sleep just a little more than she once did. Sometimes I'll surprise her when she's at exactly the wrong point in her sleep cycle and she will claw the ever-loving fuck out of me before she realizes who it is. She's getting old.
Dr. Tim is a really nice guy, no bullshit. He looked her over and said she was doing well, and that if she has arthritis it's so early that he can't detect it yet. She hated every minute of the car ride and the vet visit, more than usual, but she forgot about it as soon as we got home. Like it's beneath her to hold it against me, even though I don't think anything is really beneath an animal that regularly fails to outwit her own poop.
I love her to death, I love her beyond all reason. She's fourteen now, and because I'm feeling how short her remaining time is, I'm doting on her in ways that I am sure make me look either dreadfully pussywhipped or insane. I give her pieces of my food when she asks for it. I hold my water cup for her because she will drink after me but not after the other cats. I put up with her wanting to be on me or next to me every moment of the day. She is spoiled and hates the other cats and picks fights all the time. Four more years of this? Not long enough. And I want to talk about how I adore her and how precious she is and how nobody else really appreciates her because she honestly is a really unpleasant cat who despises everyone but me. I want to talk about the others, too: the comedy cat and the comfort cat, the fat grey zeppelin of bitey death and the hairy orange toaster of finger-licking love.
I can't, though; it gets all stopped up because the grand total this year so far is nine. Nine cats on my f-list gone. Nine cats and two dogs. And there is no way in hell that is good or right or fair, and I have cried over every single one. It's a pain I feel all too keenly because I know I'm going to have to do it again, sooner than I would like. Someday Tazendra will be the cat in the doorway.
I know that I speak mockingly of my cats, I make fun of them relentlessly in real life and online because they are hilarious. I laugh and tease and pull their tongues out while they are sleeping and show the internet the pictures. I know lots of other people who are the same, who talk about their animals as humorous little footnotes to their lives, but who love them to devastation. Watching my friends in grief, it's agonizing, because when this happens you can't pretend anymore. You can't say "just a cat," "just a dog." You can't laugh it off, and the walls that we put up around our human feelings come crashing down and there we are in all our ugly, helpless glory. We do that around animals a lot, actually. Animals sort of slip in under our emotional defenses.
I think a lot of us are reluctant to admit to other people how much our pets mean to us, or even to ourselves. We feign nonchalance, but the force of grief at the loss of a pet can be shocking, and there's no nonchalance in crying for the third night in a row. I think we would find the world a better place if people were quicker to admit how much they love their pets, and didn't feel like they had to excuse or explain that.
Right now Tazendra's purring and her fur is standing up in humid curls and spikes, and her guard hairs stick out a full inch and a half further than her fluff, like exquisite little organs that allow her to distill purest hate out of the atmosphere and convert it into whatever unguessable humors fill her derelict hide. Her spine is sharper than it used to be and sometimes she forgets what room she is in, but she is still black as mold, she still tears around the house like a mad thing, and she still sits in front of the toilet for hours at a time, silently communing with her underworld god. She is still my cat.
And I guess I've gone on about her after all, which is a traditional thing to do on a Friday, but I just meant to say, when I started out, that I am sorry. All of you who have lost your babies, who have had to help them through that doorway, I'm sorry. I hold you all close, and I think of you at night when the furry tyrants herd me to bed and I have to lie down with them or suffer the consequences, and I wish I Could offer you the comfort of their company, if only for a few hours. I have companionship, and I feel like I don't deserve it because so many of you have lost your little ones.
But we never really deserve them, do we?