Mourning animals

Our elderly cat India passed away today. She died in her sleep overnight, in her cozy cat bed.

It was not unexpected. She had been declining in recent weeks, and especially in the last week had stopped eating. I held her on my lap last night, to help her drink a little water, before putting her back in her cat bed, and turned up the heater nearby to try to keep her warm.

A lovely vet who makes house calls came to take her body today. The place on the floor, by the kitchen windows, where her cat  bed had been all those months of her recent decline, now empty, makes me quite sad.

We have had quite a year of loss. That is just how it has worked out. I lost my beloved father in May, after he suffered many years with dementia.

Our lovebug eight year old golden retriever, Parker, my daily companion, who wanted only to be with us every second, died rather suddenly in October. Losing him was like having an organ yanked out. Grieved him and still grieving him, and woke up for weeks still expecting him to be around the corner, my whole being was used to his being being nearby.

I will not forget the day we met India. I had taken our daughter Zoe, then 3 or 4, to a dance class in Bethesda, Maryland. There was a mobile pet adoption center van in the parking lot. I asked them, do you have a cat who is good with kids. They introduced us to a pretty orange female cat, named India, who apparently had been given up by her previous family, who had named her. She was full grown, gentle, and good with kids. We were all animal lovers, especially Zoe.

The Maryland pet rescue people came to our home to make sure we would be a good family. And she has been a part of our lives ever since. Later joined by our younger daughter, Abby, and the dog.

We were never sure exactly how old India was, except the calculus was [Zoe’s current age – 3] +  at least 1 for India having been full grown when we got her.

Zoe is now 21 and at college.

So India was about 20.

Losing an animal is partly, one learns, about realizing the passage of time.

Our busy family lives coincide and intertwine with the animal’s life. Losing them, one experiences in a new way the years that have gone by, the beginning point when the animal joined the family, and an end point when the animal died, and one sees the years that have gone by mostly in a blur of busy preoccupied mostly happy business.

RIP, India. RIP Parker.

We loved them, and we miss them.