October 6th, 2005
My cat Astrid is dead.
She's always been kind of sick—even in those first days when I got her home from the SPCA. But the last few weeks she has had many problems, accelerating in the last few days until today, laid out on newspapers on our living room floor, she quietly died in her sleep.
When we came home from a painting course last night, we thought she was already dead: It was a shocking appearance that greeted us when we came through the door. There she was. Stretched out and unmoving, lying in a scattering of kibbles from her knocked-over food bowl. So shocking to see something you only think of as animated and with a personality suddenly lifeless and unnaturally quiet. A stark reminder that we will all some day lie in our own stretched out ways, lifeless and unmoving. And then she ever-so-feebly rolled her eyes to look at me, without recognition. I knew that, alive though she was, she would not be for long.
Last night she lay across my lap too weak to move more than her head—and even then only occasionally—and I watched her laboured breathing wondering how long something so sick could last. Well, until today.
You know, I've lost others before: Grandparents and other family, and friends. But it is different for a pet: You are so important to them. You are their protector, their mother, their food supply, and chief source of love and attention. You are the one who terrorizes them with trips to the vet and chastizes them for destruction of property. You are the one that oversees their health and happiness. And when they die it is a strange sense of responsibility that washes over you. It breaks your heart and you feel so sad for them. Sad that they have to die, and tragic that you can do nothing to stop it.
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