My cat died suddenly today. Yesterday we were told he had a stomach bug, this morning we thought he's in a lot of pain so we'd better take him back to the vet to be sure, this afternoon he was dead on arrival at the animal hospital.
They resuscitated him after fourteen minutes; the vet said normally they'd have stopped by then but he was really fighting to survive. He just turned ten, we all thought he'd live to twenty. He seemed healthy, he still played like a kitten, I've always been so cautious with any of his health problems, and he's always turned out fine. I was expecting a long, slow illness. I was expecting arthritis and blindness and contraindicated treatments and watching him every day trying to decide if he still had a good quality of life. I put his weight in my diary last week, expecting to weigh him every month just so I knew exactly what was happening.
He had an undetected mass near his liver that ruptured. There's nothing we should have done differently; he was just unlucky. When I think about how much pain he was in last night I want to die. I guess we'll never know but it seems possible that he should have been euthanized yesterday.
When my eldest nephew was twelve, his great grandfather—my poppy—died. We've always had open casket funerals. When my nephew saw the body he said "He doesn't look like he's sleeping. He looks dead." He's entirely right. Dead people look dead.
Chekhov has only been dead for about six hours. Rigor mortis has set in; he's curled up on his side like he was in the car, in my lap. I had to put him down in a chair when I got home; I had a fucking brutal and wildly unfair migraine and all I wanted was to hold onto him but instead I was curled up on the shower floor, in too much pain to even go and get the drugs to stop the pain. But he was curled up in his favourite chair and rigor mortis froze him in that position and he just looks like he's sleeping. He reminds me of the only other time he's been seriously ill, when he looked like he'd aged a decade in the space of a week, all beaten up and patchy shaved fur.
I literally can't imagine the future without him. I can't imagine this house without him. He's such an enormous part of my life. I can't begin to explain how much. It's like the concept of time just disappeared. I keep thinking about that w h auden poem:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
...
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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Mochi & Lime on a costco/sam's club bulk buy run not to feed a bunch of mouths but one singular giant mouth (Lime)
HONESTLY on top of limes bottomless pit for a stomach they ALSO have to feed a family of 6 (mochi, lime, coco, oscar, taffy, and pom who eats human food even though she doesnt need to just to feel included) PLUS have extra for occasional guests (because both tiramisu and lady magg-lynn would kill mochi if they found out she was being a bad host and not feeding her guests
and by "guests" i largely mean people who are questionably friends with mochi who invite themselves over (like sulluvan, marshal, corven, the girl from the m34th who likes lime, ikasumi, lady magg-lynn herself, etc)
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ok just to like paint a picture so. today i woke up at 9 and went to my morning class (was a little bit late) then i got brunch and canceled therapy (was a whole Ordeal trust me..) for like an hour or over idk, then i went back home to work on this research paper & got some food from a local café, then i went to a meeting i had and then walked to my friends workplace and we walked back and then i kind of have just lazed around and im watching my friends show from 1-2. and then TMRW i have a thing early afternoon & a d+d session for like five hours until 10 pm basically and then im probably sleeping in bc of the whole 1-2 thing. And then tmrw i have basically nothing but i then have to call my family bc i havent in a while and i need to do all of my homework. so needless to say this has been a hell of a semester start
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