Getting back to nermal
This dead-pet shit really sucks! Tomorrow will make a week since I bid adieu to my cat, and like her health progress, it's gotten a little better and then worse again.
It's tough to lose a pet you've had for awhile like this. A part of life for us humans who love animals, and there are a hell of a lot of us, so in my current adversity at least I have a pretty good support group. Among co-workers I can count 7 who've gone through the same experience, and at least 4 of those while I was working with them. Not to mention friends outside of work.
I think it's hardest if you live alone. Your animal housemates become family then in more than just an honorary sense. They're your constant companions. They're the first things you see in the morning(well, for one thing, they're hungry!)and the last thing you see before going to bed at night.
My cat was usually nestled against me at both ends of the day, a warm mass of purring fur either lulling me to sleep or easing me awake. There were some occasions, particularly getting home from work, where I wouldn't see her for a couple hours--then she'd just appear, oh, 'time for food!'--but she was almost always at her station at bedtime and first thing in the morning. When she first got sick and had to be hospitalized, it was my first taste of not having that(unfortunately they don't give you a "surrogate"while yours is being worked on). Getting her home two days later, I was greatly relieved to feel the familiar paws walking over me at 5:30 in the morning, and her weakened but purring little form pressed against my stomach.
This was something I enjoyed the hell of while she was alive and miss the hell out of now that she's gone. Maxine sure liked to be petted. Ours was perhaps a parasitic relationship with me as "petter" and she as "pettee", but it still worked for both of us. Sometimes she would just throw herself on the floor, coquettishly, as if to say, "okay, do me, baby!" And then she'd get pissed if you stopped before she was done, and would go so far as to give you a little bite or slap to express her displeasure.
She and my dog pretty much grew up together, and had a very sibling-like relationship, with its share of teasing and power-plays. There was a layer of quasi-antagonism(on one occasion, she was sitting on the bed getting petted and revelling in all the attention, and hearing the sounds of canine toenails heading up the wooden steps from downstairs, got a priceless disgusted look on her face as if to say, "oh great! Here comes asshole!")mainly on her part, but underneath it, I think, a genuine friendship. I'd find them sitting together more and more as the years went by, and it seemed that they had their own sort of communication going on, their own relationship as well as theirs, individually and collectively, to me.
This is the first day I've felt her presence, and I felt it all around me at different points in the day. Hard to put into words, and in trying to verbalize it am half-wondering if that's just something my mind just manufactured to console me. But I've had the experience with people, friends who've passed on whom I've felt "stopped in" on me on a few occasions--felt like they were there in the room with me.
For some reason, I kept thinking tonight of that scene at the end of Tootsie, where Dustin Hoffman's character is making that last-ditch speech to win back the Jessica Lange character. She says, "I miss Dorothy", and he says "You don't have to. She's right here- and she misses you".
In my case of course, I hope she is. And I hope she does.
It's tough to lose a pet you've had for awhile like this. A part of life for us humans who love animals, and there are a hell of a lot of us, so in my current adversity at least I have a pretty good support group. Among co-workers I can count 7 who've gone through the same experience, and at least 4 of those while I was working with them. Not to mention friends outside of work.
I think it's hardest if you live alone. Your animal housemates become family then in more than just an honorary sense. They're your constant companions. They're the first things you see in the morning(well, for one thing, they're hungry!)and the last thing you see before going to bed at night.
My cat was usually nestled against me at both ends of the day, a warm mass of purring fur either lulling me to sleep or easing me awake. There were some occasions, particularly getting home from work, where I wouldn't see her for a couple hours--then she'd just appear, oh, 'time for food!'--but she was almost always at her station at bedtime and first thing in the morning. When she first got sick and had to be hospitalized, it was my first taste of not having that(unfortunately they don't give you a "surrogate"while yours is being worked on). Getting her home two days later, I was greatly relieved to feel the familiar paws walking over me at 5:30 in the morning, and her weakened but purring little form pressed against my stomach.
This was something I enjoyed the hell of while she was alive and miss the hell out of now that she's gone. Maxine sure liked to be petted. Ours was perhaps a parasitic relationship with me as "petter" and she as "pettee", but it still worked for both of us. Sometimes she would just throw herself on the floor, coquettishly, as if to say, "okay, do me, baby!" And then she'd get pissed if you stopped before she was done, and would go so far as to give you a little bite or slap to express her displeasure.
She and my dog pretty much grew up together, and had a very sibling-like relationship, with its share of teasing and power-plays. There was a layer of quasi-antagonism(on one occasion, she was sitting on the bed getting petted and revelling in all the attention, and hearing the sounds of canine toenails heading up the wooden steps from downstairs, got a priceless disgusted look on her face as if to say, "oh great! Here comes asshole!")mainly on her part, but underneath it, I think, a genuine friendship. I'd find them sitting together more and more as the years went by, and it seemed that they had their own sort of communication going on, their own relationship as well as theirs, individually and collectively, to me.
This is the first day I've felt her presence, and I felt it all around me at different points in the day. Hard to put into words, and in trying to verbalize it am half-wondering if that's just something my mind just manufactured to console me. But I've had the experience with people, friends who've passed on whom I've felt "stopped in" on me on a few occasions--felt like they were there in the room with me.
For some reason, I kept thinking tonight of that scene at the end of Tootsie, where Dustin Hoffman's character is making that last-ditch speech to win back the Jessica Lange character. She says, "I miss Dorothy", and he says "You don't have to. She's right here- and she misses you".
In my case of course, I hope she is. And I hope she does.
posted by Roger U Roundly at 9:07 PM
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