In Memory of Peanut

It's been a couple of weeks now since I had to put her down. I haven't wanted to talk about it.

Peanut went completely blind not long after I posted about her. It was a special kind of terrible to watch her cautiously making her way around, testing the boundaries of the bed, the drop-off of the first stair to the basement, the edges of the rooms. My active kitty who was nimble and lithe as a girl was reduced to a fragile old woman, carefully navigating the steps up to my end table and bed.

I'm still not sure she was really ready to go. She slept most of the time, but she was eating and drinking to the last, laid there purring in the circle of my arms for an hour before I took her to the vet for the last time. But she was clearly in pain from her mouth and her eye, and there comes the time, that heartbreaking time when you realize she's not really living anymore. She's existing.

It's a nice urn.

It's still difficult to go to bed at night and look at the empty spot by my head where she used to lay. But I'd rather focus on some of the things I loved about her, and share that instead of the pain of her loss. She is gone. I'll miss her forever, and hope that we will meet again someday.

She loved this ledge. Used it as a shortcut from the kitchen, on the right, to the hallway and my bedroom, on the left, all the time. She was uncanny at predicting my return home every day, and about the time I'd be getting into my car, she'd perch on the edge of the ledge back there and wait. Then run down the ledge to greet me when I came in the door.

I was going to put the urn in my garden, but my roommate suggested leaving it here, and it's so perfectly, heart-wrenchingly appropriate, that I think I will.

Peanut loved milk and Club crackers. Her favorite places to sleep were my bed, the chair in the office, and on a blanket in the office closet. She was not one to enjoy being petted for long periods, but loved to tuck her head under my arm while I hugged her close and played the banjo across her ribs. She liked to get up on the high chest and keep an eye on things from up above. She would head-butt her way into the bathroom every time I went, and after every shower she'd clamor to be let in so she could jump in the tub and lick up all the water clinging to the sides. She liked to eat spiky plants and throw them up later.

These are all such trivial things. She lived in my home and followed me from room to room and offered me her love and companionship. I'll forever be grateful, and I'll forever miss her.

Goodbye, my sweet Peanut. Rest well.

Apathy

Haven't felt like writing at all, about anything. Dangerous, that. I've gotten out of the habit, and once that happens a dry spell can go on for years. So here I am! The Biweekly-At-Best Pagan, here to jump-start my fiction-writing habit again. 

I'd never wondered before if there was a god/dess of apathy. Turns out there isn't. one, at least not that I'm seeing in what was admittedly a cursory search. It's not surprising, I suppose. Apathy by its nature doesn't exactly evoke a personality.

My cat is sick. This is what's on my mind, so I'll write about that. 

Peanut is sixteen, and has always been the healthiest, most kitten-like cat imaginable. Then a few weeks ago she developed a tooth/bone infection, which wasn't diagnosed properly until it had already become severely infected. I'm full of guilt for not noticing until she stopped eating. I should have taken her in the day I first thought her breath seemed especially stinky. But it was even longer before all the other tests were run to rule out everything else that wasn't obviously her teeth as I suspected all along. 

In any case, she has had three teeth removed and we went through an agonizing week and a half of antibiotics medication that I would like to never repeat ever. Still, it persists, and we're doing another course of a different type. If this doesn't work, the next option is a bone biopsy. General anesthesia. Maybe they can kill the infection if they can identify it, or remove part of her jaw...lovely options, aren't they? 

It's a strange thing about pets, how close a bond we form. Peanut is the longest-running relationship in my life outside of my immediate family, and I have certainly seen more of her than them. She's as dear to me as a child and I can't believe that all of a sudden it may be time to think about her life, her future. I want more time. I won't ever be ready. I say this having lost my mother, my brother.

I'm an optimist, though, and I'm not going to concede that it's her time just yet. It'll be fine. She's got at least a couple more years, even if she is possibly going blind as her right eye slowly becomes filmed over with the third eyelid. It's bizarre and horrifying, reminiscent of Vikus becoming a prawn in District 9.

At least, that's what I think when I see it, and it makes me chuckle a little because humor, no matter how dark or inappropriate or badly timed, is how I deal with pain. 

Not too sure what any of this has to do with Paganism. We love animals, pagans. I'm a witch, but I wouldn't call Peanut my 'familiar' so much as my...child. I love her spirit, her voice when she hollers her meows into the echo-chamber of the bathroom, her demands for milk every time I open the refrigerator. 

Those last two haven't happened much recently. :(

It's a reminder that everything comes and goes and lives its time and we are never spared the pain of loss. It's a reminder that love comes in many forms, and that some of our closest relationships aren't with humans.