Writing Wrongs

May 26, 2004

Last night, my very old kitty died. This wasn�t unexpected. She was very old--I had her since my days of being stationed in Germany. She had slowed down this past week, but she was still eating and drinking well. I didn�t think she was this close.

I brought down her medicine last night (the stuff she hated) and saw that there wasn�t any point. She looked just like Sasha, my other German cat, did on the day he died. Why make her miserable with a dose of medicine that wouldn�t do any good?

She was in my basement office, one of her favorite spots. She would purr and meow when I visited her, but this also agitated her, so I tried not to upset her with constant visits.

I suppose I could have loaded up the kids and made the trip to the emergency vet. I took Sasha to the vet that day. He died about five minutes after I left him to go to work. In retrospect, I wished I had kept him home instead of subjecting him to a car ride and the strange smells and people at the vet.

Katja was weak, but didn�t seem to be in pain. I figured that if she hung on through the night, in the morning, I would take her in.

I sneaked downstairs one last time after putting Andrew to bed to say goodnight to her.

At two-thirty in the morning, I woke from a dream of Katja. She was curled in the crook of my knees, purring. I could feel her, hear her, yet I knew, there was no way she could make the climb upstairs or jump on the bed.

I tossed and turned for twenty minutes before heading downstairs to confirm what I already knew.

She was gone.

She was a major source of comfort during my Army days, and she had been my companion longer than I�ve known my husband. The house was so quiet this morning without her good-morning meow.

It seems strange to lose this part of me.

Charity Tahmaseb wrote at 9:40 a.m.

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