to the great bit litter box in the sky

[fearlesstemp]

My little cat died. I am so sad.

Our family had two cats, and while everyone loved everyone, Molly was officially mine. I got her when she was eleven, this tiny little black and white standoffish furball that grew up into a slightly larger black and white furball that always seemed vaguely annoyed to have to deal with our existence. My kitty.

She'd been sick for a while, which was documented on and off in this very journal, and then in the last two days she started swelling up and having a hard time finding a comfortable way to settle herself. When the vet saw her, she said it was probably a tumor, and it was time to end her suffering.

I'd been staying at my aunt's and hadn't seen her in a while, so I had to race home on my lunch break to see little Molly before they took her to the vet. She was swollen and her paws were discolored and she'd stopped cleaning her fur. She looked awful. But she walked right over to me when I called her, and sat down in front of me and let me pet her. She almost never did that. And I sat there in the hallway crying and crying and scratching her under her chin, thinking, she doesn't even know she won't be around tonight. But cats never know. They don't know they're going to die at all. They're not really sentient creatures. It's silly to be so emotionally invested, to love a little critter that much. But that's how it goes.

Anyway. She was a good cat. She used to sit with me when I was sick, and liked to sleep on her back with her feet straight up in the air, and she never clawed the furniture. Until she got sick and started jumping on the counters to get to food, she never misbehaved at all. She caught mice and moles and bunnies and was too smart to wander around the attic when we put her up there to catch what we thought were mice but later realized were bees. She was surly and standoffish most of the time but also adorable. She was Bucky to Scout's Satchel, for those of you who read Get Fuzzy.

My brother had to take her in. I felt bad he had to do it, and had to do it alone, but even though I offered to blow off the rest of the day and go with him, he insisted he was fine. I spent most of my lunch hour sitting up there in the hallway bawling, so I went back to work looking half-dead, all pale and blotchy and bloodshot. Then I had to go to my aunt's to close up the house and walk the dog one last time, since they weren't getting home until after ten.

I'm home again now, done housesitting. Molly is gone. When I went upstairs to change into my pajamas, I found a pile on my pillow: peanut butter cups, Oreos, and a 12-pack of Diet Coke. From my brother, who had been sitting in his bedroom when I was crying in the hallway. I thought I was being so quiet with the crying and brave when I talked to him later the kitchen, but I'm not a good actress at all. Between this and rescuing me after my car was towed on Friday, my brother is earning serious bonus points.

The icon is from the one picture I have of Molly on my computer. She is, characteristically, eating. Today I gave her a bowl of milk and a can of tuna fish and she ate all of it. Deathly ill, and still hoovering food down. Clearly she was my cat.