Sunday, April 9, 2017

Bella



Bella the cat passed away last night.  She was pretty old and had been feeling pretty bad for awhile.  I thought I was ready for the inevitable, but we are never ready for the inevitable.  She wanted to hang around with me yesterday morning.  She was sweet and sad.  In the afternoon, she lay on the porch.  Ili came home from a business trip late in the afternoon, and Bella was gone.  We sat on the deck and called for her.  Finally, she came around the corner of the house and looked at us with sad and tired eyes, then lay down in the jasmine where she stayed.  It did not look as if she would make it through the night.  We went to dinner and when we came home, she wasn't around.  She had done that thing that everyone has said to me that cats do.  She had gone away to die.

I stood on the deck and cried for about an hour, maybe longer, big giant waves of convulsions.  I just thought about her remembering everything.

When I got up this morning, of course, I went out to look for her, but she is really gone.  It saddens me to think of her lying on the ground somewhere.  I will look for her this morning, but from what I'm told, I probably won't find her.

The house seems different today, not as alive, just an inanimate structure.

I am different this morning, something more than sad.  It is beautiful outside.  I keep looking for her to walk onto the deck with that shithead look she had.

Fuck me.

1 comment:

  1. An old cats dying soliloquy

    Years saw me still Acasto’s mansion grace,
    The gentlest, fondest of the tabby race;
    Before him frisking through the garden glade,
    Or at his feet in quiet slumber laid;
    Praised for my glossy back of zebra streak,
    And wreaths of jet encircling round my neck;
    Soft paws that ne’er extend the clawing nail,
    The snowy whisker and the sinuous tail;
    Now feeble age each glazing eyeball dims,
    And pain has stiffened these once supple limbs;
    Fate of eight lives the forfeit gasp obtains,
    And e’en the ninth creeps languid through my veins.
    Much sure of good the future has in store,
    When on my master’s hearth I bask no more,
    In those blest climes, where fishes oft forsake
    The winding river and the glassy lake;
    There, as our silent-footed race behold
    The crimson spots and fins of lucid gold,
    Venturing without the shielding waves to play,
    They gasp on shelving banks, our easy prey:
    While birds unwinged hop careless o’er the ground,
    And the plump mouse incessant trots around,
    Near wells of cream that mortals never skim,
    Warm marum creeping round their shallow brim;
    Where green valerian tufts, luxuriant spread,
    Cleanse the sleek hide and form the fragrant bed.
    Yet, stern dispenser of the final blow,
    Before thou lay’st an aged grimalkin low,
    Bend to her last request a gracious ear,
    Some days, some few short days, to linger here;
    So to the guardian of his tabby’s weal
    Shall softest purrs these tender truths reveal:
    ‘Ne’er shall thy now expiring puss forget
    To thy kind care her long-enduring debt,
    Nor shall the joys that painless realms decree
    Efface the comforts once bestowed by thee;
    To countless mice thy chicken-bones preferred,
    Thy toast to golden fish and wingless bird;
    O’er marum borders and valerian bed
    Thy Selima shall bend her moping head,
    Sigh that no more she climbs, with grateful glee,
    Thy downy sofa and thy cradling knee;
    Nay, e’en at founts of cream shall sullen swear,
    Since thou, her more loved master, art not there.’

    RIP Bella

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