We had to euthanize our cat yesterday afternoon.  She was old, would have been nineteen years in March.  And despite the fact that we knew the day would arrive, no one told us it would be February 17, 2014.  I had planned to vacuum. 

It’s strange how losing such a little creature inspires such powerful pain.  She’d been around so long, losing her seemed like it would never happen.  I wasn’t prepared.

Odd how accustomed we became to her.  Though small in stature, her presence loomed large around the place. The little thing had a combination meow-plus-purr sound that I found very predictable and comforting.  Her chitter-chatter was as much a part of this cabin as the refrigerator vibrating, or the drip from the bathtub faucet.  The void of her absence today shouts in its silence.

We most likely kept her going far too long.  That was our issue.  There had been earlier brushes with momentary paralysis, glandular issues, and diabetes. Yet the old thing still used her box properly, ate and drank like a truck driver, and talked and talked, rubbing herself on every door-sill and corner in our/her house. 

That little girl surreptitiously weaseled her way so far into my heart, that my sorrow today has thrown me for a loop.  An ice-cold straight razor has cut me from my heart to my stomach, flowing loss and regret.

Writing does help. I now seize the written word as my own form of exorcism and cleansing–banishing my demons of doubt and sorrow. Yet I can still picture her, lying on a towel, looking at us while the vet injected a syringe into her leg.  Her little head lolled over, and my grief erupted.  

Driving back up to mountains we kept telling each other it was the right thing to do.