/an/ - Animals & Nature

Yesterday was the first day in eighteen months that I watched the sun rise and set without my best friend being in the world.

Ned, for the short duration of your life, you were able to take away all of my sorrows, so it's only natural they all flood back to me now.

You have not suffered and died in vain. I'm taking your spirit with me, little buddy, everywhere I go. I know you never understood anything I said, but I understood you when you came into my room every day and announced your presence with a loud meow. When you jumped up on my desk and headbutted me, we each understood that we loved eachother.

I kept my window open for ten months so you could come and go as you pleased. You could have gone anywhere in the neighborhood, but you chose to spend so much of your time with me. Thank you.

It isn't enough to say I "miss" you wrestling my hand and tearing it to shreds with your front and back claws, or how you'd lick it afterward. The ninety minutes or so every day we spent together weren't enough. To go back and spend more time listening to you chat my ear off would add years to my life. But you already added back the years of my life that had been taken. Thank you.

I'll never feel your paw caress my cheek again as you tried to massage spit out of my mouth, or so your funny little face as you licked the spittle from my lips, closing your eyes, purring, and kneading a blanket, pretending I was your mommy giving you milk. Whenever your mother saw you, she hissed and swatted at you, poor little thing — You needed more love than nature could provide, and that's why God introduced us.

Whenever you were stressed or wanted to express joy, I had a lot of fun making biscuits with you. The simple distractions of a loving little animal were a pleasant break from the constant, bleak dress of daily life.

I'm sorry I couldn't find you a safer home away from cars and people who try to run over and poison cats. I'm sorry none of the farms I called were interested in an excellent mouser like you, and that I only called fifty or so of them. You would have been safer on a farm, where you would do less damage than you could to the ecology here.

I'm sorry I had to force bad-tasting antibiotics into your mouth for the last week you were here. I didn't know they wouldn't help you. I'm sorry I waited too long to pressure the vets for bloodwork, and didn't realize the upper respiratory infection you were suffering from was secondary to kidney failure. Whether you contracted feline infectious peritonitis, or succumbed to the pesticides my crazy landlady sprays all over the cat spots, or ate a lily to medicate yourself while you were sick, I'm sorry. You saved my life, but I failed you. If you were here, you wouldn't understand a thing I'm saying, but I hope that, wherever the energy that was your beautiful soul is, if not with me, that you understand how sorry I am and how much I love you.

When the University of Minnesota called me last Saturday to inform me your creatinine levels were rising and they wouldn't have access to a dialysis machine until this morning, I tried to get them to give you antioxidants, antivirals, senolytics, plasmapheresis, or peritoneal dialysis, but heard that none of them would have helped in the state you were in. The pharmacy, too, would not have opened until this morning. So we all waited for you to urinate, like we had after your tail-pull injury last October. But, unlike then, when you recovered all but the function in your tail, you didn't, and your creatinine levels and blood electrolytes rose. That night, I heard you could enter cardiac arrest at any moment.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, I received the euthanasia call, and gave my stoic answer, "Of course." Did I want to come down and say goodbye? "No, it wouldn't help him. It would just be for me, and I don't need it." Did I want a necropsy to be performed, to determine the cause of your illness? "Yes." I want all inquiries made. Because I love you. And I did let you roam wherever you pleased, but that was because I loved you!

I hope you're proud that I didn't cry a single time while trying to treat you, that only now have I become a weepy little bitch. You have not died in vain. You were not just a cat. I'm going to conquer the world because of you.

Goodbye, kitty.