June 17, 2007
Beloved companion
That was the phrase that made me cry when I picked up her ashes. We had to put Belle to sleep on June 4. She would have been 16 in early August.
A few weeks ago she started coughing. At first we thought it was just hairballs, but after a week or so we noticed she wasn't coughing anything up. Then we noticed she wasn't eating. I pet her and could feel her ribs. When I weighed her she had lost 2 pounds. The end of a long story of visits to the vet was that Belle had cancer in her lungs, spreading into her abdomen. She was struggling so hard to breath, continued to lose weight, wasn't even keeping herself clean. So we decided it was best to stop her suffering.
Now we are a house without a cat, though that will be temporary. I picked up some of my winter knitting - an alpaca blend sweater - just to have something warm and soft in my hands. And when I picked up her ashes from the vet I read that phrase on the certificate from the crematorium and cried again in the car. We're planning a small ceremony to bury her in the garden under the lilac bush where she liked to sleep on warm summer days.
I've stopped expecting her to greet me at the door, but I do miss her company when I'm home. Now when I talk to myself there's no one here to listen. She slept in the girls' cribs when they were babies, and in their beds as they grew up. She could tell when you were upset or sad and would come sit with you for company. She meowed a 'bless you' when I sneezed. She was a member of the family - has been with me and Tim since before we were married. We all miss her very much.
