Grieving our furry pal

She's gone now.

And every day I’m reminded of the little habitual things she did that I miss. Drinking water off an open shower door. Pawing when she wants my attention, looking at me with those big dough eyes. 

But then there are other little things she did that I don’t have to deal with now.

I don’t have to look back over my shoulder before I open the front door to make sure she isn’t close enough to escape, though she never did. 

I don’t have to call her as I go upstairs each night to go to bed  or beckon her for her nighttime meal. Yet she always came swiftly.

I don’t have to clean her litter. But, come to think of it, she kept a very tidy house-let.

I don’t have to make sure I have both wet and dry food on hand — and only the kind she liked, of course.  Then again, she really wasn’t a picky eater; I just liked pampering her.

I don’t have to admonish her every time I hear a little kerplunk telling me she has just debarked from the kitchen counter that she was barred from. There are no kerpunks now. 

I can keep the door to the dining room open instead of closed. I don’t need to worry that she will go in and make a mess, though she never did make a mess in the dining room. 

I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and feel a heavy weight on my feet where she’s leaning against me, because she’s not there to sleep next to me. 

I don’t have to make sure I set aside evening time to play with her, and I don’t have to worry that I’ll fall over one of her little play balls. I don’t have to clean kitty fur from her favorite chair, which is also my favorite chair.

I could say that life is easier now with her gone. But, of course, life is harder and emptier. Before, it was full of love. Not to say people in my life don’t give me great love, which I give them in return. Not to say that I don’t love many other things about my life. But the little heart of my house is gone. It will be replaced in a few months, but never completely replaced because every cat — every animal — is special and unique.

Darned you, Myrla. You’re not here anymore to annoy me, which you never really did.

-- Momma

Postscript:

I wrote this after my vet found a chip in Myrla; I had adopted her from a friend five months earlier. Myrla had shown up on her doorstep, but Teresa already had four cats and couldn’t keep her. My friend took Myrla to her vet, but he did not find a chip. 

The staff immediately contacted Myrla’s original human family. I learned they had been searching for her for seven months. They had been good cat parents and desperately wanted her back. It was the fair thing to do.

Have you lost a beloved animal or had to give one up? How did it feel?