This morning I learned that the sick cat I mentioned in this summer’s post, passed away yesterday evening. The news made me sad. Part of the sadness was the loss I could hear in his human’s voice when he gave me the news. Part of my sadness was because he was a cat I genuinely liked and will miss hanging out with.
I was comforted to learn that he died peacefully at home. He had spent the evening on his human’s lap before going into another room to die. I am also grateful that his humans were not forced to make the difficult decision of deciding when his life was no longer worth living. It is a decision I have had to make a couple of times and it is difficult and painful, even when you know without a doubt that it is the right thing to do at the time.
Sputnik’s passing led me down a memory lane of beasties I have known and loved. There is a definite downside to having longer lifespans than the creatures we chose to live with day in and day out. But in my experience, the pain of loss is well offset by the years of love and companionship they provide.
My first cat, a seal point Siamese, was willed to me by an elderly woman I was caring for. She had 4 cats, but her Siamese was her beloved boy and she wanted to make sure he went to someone who knew and appreciated just how special he was. I was a teenager at the time and my father agreed to accept the eventuality of adopting the cat when the woman I was caring for died. We were all surprised when within a month or so, I arrived home one evening with a scared and unhappy cat in my arms. A few days later, I came home with the one remaining cat who had not been placed. The two cats were inseparable and it was obvious that the Siamese missed his sister when she died first.
Just about a year after my Siamese cat died, I went to the humane society and immediately fell in love with a large, opinionated guy named Viktor. For the first few years we were together, Viktor was an escape artist who would somehow always manage to slip past me, no matter how careful I was. He was a 20 pounder, so under normal circumstances he was hard to miss, but stealth was clearly his superpower.
When my soon-to-be husband and I merged households, the integration of his two female cats with Viktor was seamless. And now that he had playmates, Viktor gave up his shenanigans and stopped his disappearing act. The five of us lived happily together for several years before Viktor developed lymphoma and died. We moved back to Portland with the girls and we nursed them both through debilitating illnesses, until they each in turn lost their respective battles.
We now have the privilege of sharing our home with 3 cats that have spent their entire lives together (2 are littermates) and are in many ways closer to each other than they are to us. Nevertheless, I hope we have them with us for many years to come.
If you have a beastie that you know and love, please give him/her a scratch behind the ears today in memory of Sputnik and any other furry friends that you have loved and lost.