My previous optimism was unwarranted. We lost Cassie Saturday morning. The last time I saw her she was a little head pressing her face against the bars of a cat carrier, but after one last vet visit, we were sure we were doing the right thing.
I’ve never been in that position before. Growing up I had pets… lots more pets than most kids, frankly. The typical family dog and family cat were supplemented by regularly caught toads and a string of hamsters and at the end of my time at my parents’ house, an iguana.
The family dog hated me. I can’t blame her. She was old and my brother and I were young. We spent a lot of time convinced that the family dog should TOTALLY sleep with us at nights and then getting up and letting her out of the room after an extended period of whining and scratching. We won’t discuss the X-Wing incident. Hey You was 21 and was very much my mother’s dog and she ran away one day and never came back.
To illuminate the tree decorationalizing I broke out the gift I’ve got intended for my mom. An awesome freakin’ Nessie lamp! It may be sliiightly dangerous for me to post about this on my Journal, but I don’t actually think she reads it!
The family cat hated me. She hated everyone. Except my friend Kelly’s mom, whose head she’s lick. Angelique was still going strong when I left home, furiously hissing at me every time we met. One day, in the midst of my father’s cancer woes, my mom went to the vet with Angelique, she was determined to be very sick and was put down. My mom picked up two more cats from the pound and brought them home and when I next visited the house there was a new Angelique that was strangely… muscular and weirdly… friendly. And a little black cat that ran away from me a lot.
The hamsters came and went as hamsters to. Some of them hated me, but it’s hard to tell with hamsters. Cause sometimes they bite because they’re filled with suppressed rage and sometimes they bite because they mistake you for a carrot. It happens. It’s why you don’t hold them in your lap while you’re naked.
It’s our kind of Christmas! Filled with weasels and Ewoks! And these guys too. I got the above octopus for Amy to demonstrate that Octopus Christmas wasn’t just last year! The tree is filled with the madness. And by madness I mean the Abominable Snowman! And perhaps Luke Skywalker. Also Boba Fett and some bunnies and at least five cephalopods.
The toads were sort of immortal. I tended to catch one at the beginning of the summer and then we’d release him at the beginning of fall so he could go hibernate. I doubt we ever caught the same toad twice but we always named him the same thing, even the year that we caught a really tiny one that was ended by his intended mantid lunch.
That was a bad day.
And Angelique, who hated me, ate my iguana. So I hated her. Snippy was given to me by Whitney, my high school girlfriend, and she never really got much past her first couple of months and my first visit back from college found me wondering where my lizard had gone.
That was also a bad day and engendered no Love betwixt me and that cat.
And they’re funny stories. Sometimes they’re terrible, but I’m reducing their Lives to cute anecdotes. Cassie was different and beautiful and trusting and I keep thinking I catch her out of the corner of my eye and… and we only have one cat now. I’ve known Cassie for longer than I’ve known Heather and Amy got Cassie and Orion together (sister and brother) back in college… and it’s strange that they will never be together on the couch together, that when Orion is with us on the couch, there will be no Cassie harassing Amy on the couch.
There’s only one food bowl, only one mammal to keep out from under foot while loading in, only one cat to locate when you’ve left the door open for a moment… I miss Cassie.
