For obvious reasons of preserving my self-image, there are no photos of my tearful goodbye.
I am seriously struggling with this loss. I know Coconut is with a couple who will love him like we did, that he will be in the country and can kill and maim in all the ways he likes, that he will have a larger dog to dominate and frighten. I know that (hopefully) I won't have to worry about Maya getting air into her lungs on a semi-annual basis.
Yet...I can't stop thinking about Ella and Coconut playing on the playset last year, him walking tightrope style across the railing of the walking bridge and her frolicking alongside him, cooing and praising him. I'm either a bigger softy than I thought or I am anthropomorphizing him to a painful degree, but all I can think is "what does he think happened? Does he wonder why he isn't with us anymore?"
I lay in bed at night and think, my cat is living at someone else's house. I have never lost a pet that was still alive and it feels, frankly, a bit like torture. To me he is a perfect cat, the kind of cat that even anti-cat people adored, and he always felt like a reward to all the complicated rescue dogs and cats over the years.
After putting the girls to an early and tired bed last night, I came downstairs to a puddle of dog urine and I wanted to scream about the unfairness of losing a perfect cat and keeping the ornery, spiteful dog (who peed and pooped in the house twice more today). A broken hearted person should never, under any circumstance, clean up dog urine. Frankly, I think Ella is handling this way better than I am and I am left wondering when this will stop being so painful. When she cried in my arms last night, after the let down of Easter and the sleepover, I stroked her head and assured her that in a few days it would feel easier and then in a week even better, that the heart has an amazing ability to heal from loss.
Now, if I could only take my own advice.
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