Post-Angst angst

I thought it was fitting to let Angst rule my blog for a week.

I miss him. It’s been really hard, especially at bedtime. Every night when I’d get into bed, he used to hop up on the bed and sit on Doc’s side, waiting for me to scratch his head. He could never get enough. I’d scratch and scratch and rub his ears and pat his butt, and sometimes he’d be so happy he’d just flop over on his side and let me scratch his tummy too. This was kind of a ritual for him and me. Doc and he had lots of rituals and special things, but this was really the only thing that he came to me for.

So now when I walk into the bedroom, I still half expect to see him on top of the cat tower or sleeping on the chair. Sometimes I see one of the dark throw pillows sitting on the chair and my heart gives a little jump. Last night I dreamed that a cat that looked just like him was in our house, and part of me knew that it couldn’t really be him, but I didn’t want to think that or say it because what if thinking it or saying it made it true? I kind of knew it was true but I didn’t want it to be, so I decided to live in the illusion that he’d come back or that he’d not died in the first place.

That phone call Monday morning was horrible. They’d called at 7:30 and left a message on my cell phone asking me to call back as soon as possible. I knew it wasn’t good news, because if it was just a status report they would have left more information on the message. I started shaking, walked into the bedroom, woke up Doc, told him the vet had called and that I was going to call them back.

Dr. Sue said “I have some bad news. Angst didn’t make it through the night.” I can’t remember what I said, probably something like “Oh no… no, no… really?” The rest of the conversation is kind of a blur, mostly because I was crying and not thinking straight. She asked what we wanted them to do with Angst, and I said we’d have to call her back.

I hung up and Doc and I cried for a couple of hours straight (I hope he’s not mad that I am telling the world that he was crying). As much as I’d tried to prepare myself that he might not make it, it still came as a shock. He’d seemed better when we visited him on Saturday, and even though I knew he was going downhill on Sunday I tried to make myself believe that he seemed even better. He didn’t. I didn’t see how in the world we were going to be able to bring him home on Monday, but I was hoping against hope.

Hope didn’t work this time. He knew it was his time, and he was right. I feel absolutely horrible that we didn’t take him in to the vet sooner. Maybe he could have recovered if we did. I was just thinking he’d get better on his own, because he’s always gone through periods where his sneezing and asthma is worse, but in hindsight I have no idea what I was thinking; why I didn’t notice how thin he’d gotten and how sad and final he looked; why I didn’t immediately interpret his hiding behaviour as bad news. The guilt is crushing. I could have saved him if I’d paid more attention.

Doc said that it didn’t feel right to let a stranger be the final caretaker of his body. Neither of us are against cremation but for Angst, it just didn’t feel like the right thing to do. And Doc needed to do one last thing for his buddy, to pay him the respect he deserved by taking care of him to the very end.

When a pet dies, you are not supposed to “dispose of the body” yourself (god, I hate that phrase… it sounds so… real). Something about the health department putting up a fuss; you’re supposed to have him cremated or I suppose put in a pet cemetery. Burying pets in the backyard is technically illegal. But our vet’s unofficial policy seems to be, if we don’t tell them what we’re going to do, they don’t ask. They get it.

Doc brought him home and then labored for over an hour digging a hole in our backyard. Our soil isn’t really soil; it’s thick gumbo clay and white chalk rock so this was incredibly difficult, but he worked and worked until it was ready. Each of us privately said our final goodbyes to him, and then Doc buried him. He covered the grave in some rocks that I’d gone and collected from the creek. Later, I picked all the purple irises out of the front flowerbed that Angst used to be able to see from the window, and laid them on top. Doc said that Angst didn’t care about the flowers (I was kind of hoping he’d think that it was a nice thing to do, but oh well).

I think that Doc needed this ceremony to be his… to be between him and his best friend. But I’m glad that I got to be a part of it with the rock collecting, and that I got to say my own goodbye to him.

I love our other three cats dearly in their own ways, but there will probably always be an Angst-shaped hole in me.

In other cat news, there’s a little gecko on the outside of my windowscreen. Neko and Loki are reeeeeeeally interested. They can’t figure out why they can’t smack it.