Endings

This hurts much more than I expected. Every time I try to address the subject I start crying. It feels much worse for some reason than all the other times I wrote such a post. I don’t know why. We made the decision for WC yesterday that her heart could not make for her. Although she’s been through several cycles of us saying “maybe this is the time” and then recovering to be quite strong, Wednesday was different. Thursday morning my husband and I had no doubt – it was time. I called the vet as soon as they opened.

WC never liked to be held in our arms. She was a lap cat and a snuggle-up-close cat but being held was never her thing. When she was crying Thursday morning I wrapped her in a towel and held her. And that quieted her and seemed to comfort her. If I’d still doubted, that was the clearest indication.

Oh. Em. Gee. Yeah, I’m crying again. She was SUCH a beautiful girl. Her fur was like silk. No matter how she sat or slept or arranged herself she was adorable. I don’t know if it was the pink ears, nose and paw pads, but she was incapable of not looking adorable.

Her litter mate was GC, who passed in August 2020. Almost immediately WC was diagnosed with the same ailments that had afflicted GC, one of them being a hyper-active thyroid. As we’ve been saying for 2 years now, WC was literally starving to death. So for 2+ years every time that little pink mouth meowed (or more often rrrowred at the top of her lungs) we fed her. I don’t know HOW BC is going to survive because she never had to learn to ask to be fed.

WC liked us I suppose. I have millions of pictures of her on my husband’s lap or legs as he was reading. She loved to snuggle up to him on the couch while he read the Sunday paper. She even liked to cuddle with me when I napped. I often had a 2-cat blanket nap – WC and GC. She LOVED her dog. The dog’s nickname was Mu. Mu mommied WC from the time she arrived. If WC was meowing or fussing we’d say “Mu – go take care of your cat”. And Mu would go to WC and start nibbling her ears, giving her a Mu-doo. Whereas GC and their brother S used to have long-suffering expressions getting their Mu-doos, WC was in heaven. When Mu passed in 2017 WC was in a depression for weeks.

Life with WC has been extremely difficult the last year or so, exacerbated by being forced into such close quarters for months while we renovated the 2nd floor (No, it’s NOT done. I don’t want to talk about it.) I started saying that her plan was to live one day past me, and then she would die saying “My work here is done.” *rueful smile* I thought that when this moment finally arrived, I’d be feeling relief and guilt for feeling relief. I don’t feel guilt. What I feel isn’t relief so much as a lifting of a burden. I’ve been hoping and praying that nature would take care of WC. That WC would be able, like GC and Mu, to go to sleep one night and let go. The vet told me yesterday that despite everything else going on, WC’s heartbeat was strong. WC was a fighter. WC was stubborn. By Golly WC KNEW what she was DUE and she was going to get it. But sometimes that strength can be a weakness. WC was 20 years and 4 months old. She probably had the strongest personality of any of our pets. She had so many quirks and “rules”. But we loved her. We love her. And oh my word, I miss her so darn much.