A Rough Week in Review

It started out bad since I knew I had surgery coming up on the 12th. I knew it was going to be horrible when the kitty my husband and I have had for the past 14 years was actively dying. When she died on the morning of my surgery and we buried her before we went to the hospital, it was just plain awful.

It's been about 48 hours post-op now and I'm still very sore. It's getting better. I can walk around and even manage to get myself up and down out of bed now. I walked around the house and yard for a good long while yesterday and today, and Dave hasn't needed to help steady me as much. I stopped the Percocet the night I came home. (I took one before bed just because of the awful pains in my back and not being able to get comfortable). Since then I've been able to manage with nothing but Tylenol. Which is good. I don't like the muddle-headedness of the Percocet. I like to be able to think.

I have to admit to being a little bored in my recovery. I want to be able to do things and move and go and be able to sit in a chair, or the couch or somewhere for longer than ten minutes without getting uncomfortable. I have a couple of contests I really wanted to enter and haven't been getting anything accomplished towards them and the deadlines are looming. Ughhhhh....

And then there's the grief. I knew Kittygirl was getting up there in age. She was 16, which I'm told for Persians is still kind of young since they can live to be 19-20. I think in this last year she had been in some pain with her joints - not moving around as well as she had been before. But hey, I don't get around as much as I once did either, so I thought...just a part of aging. I don't know...I guess I thought she'd live forever.

It's odd but I keep expecting to see her in my office when I sit here, or laying in front of her bowl when I go in to get something to drink. The worst part is seeing her little empty bed. Since Dave's been taking care of me the last few days the only thing he's managed to do is take her litterbox away. Even the place where we kept that in the bathroom looks really empty.

She was such a good little kitty. Never jumped up on the counters. Only scratched in one specific location. Loved to come and sit with us in the evenings to just be with her mom and dad. She was a love.

I guess she planned to die that day. At least it feels that way to me. I had a sixth sense about it. Even told my friends at work that I had the feeling she was going to wait until the day I had surgery to pass away. I think maybe it was he last act of kindness to me. She knew if I was thinking about her instead of concentrating on my surgery, I wouldn't be as scared by it. And you know what? She was right. I had my mind on her and not what I was going through.

We buried her in the backyard, in a nice bit of shade. Built up a little cairn and placed a standing stone for a marker. It's a good spot for her. Ironic though, since she'd only been outside once in her life and had no idea what grass even was. I'll never forget that. We took her with us on vacation and took her out of her transport cage at a rest stop and let her sit in the grass. She had no idea what to do and looked up at us with such panic on her little face. We laughed so hard. She couldn't wait to get back up in my arms. At the time I had no idea that cats needed long adjustment periods to new spaces. I thought they were like dogs in that wherever they were was where they were supposed to be. Felt kind of bad about that in retrospect.

Anyhoo. I must move on now. I've been sitting in this chair for about twenty minutes and that's about all I can stand these last few days.