Random Blog - Donna

Watching Donna die was difficult. She had been slipping for a few weeks - wasting my petrol everytime I drove frantically home to check on her. And home is never on the way. She just looked at me in my panic and meowed.

Finally, after sucking all the juice out of every can of cat food in the house, she started to stop. I sat all huddled with her under the shelf, a place she had chosen to be her deathbed. I rubbed her furry little declawed paws - paws she would never let me touch before. Not my doing! She came to me at nine years old, after a family had a baby and didn't want her. She came declawed and bitter. I gave her the first glimpse of the outdoors. She loved it. She loved the sunshine on her silver fur.

"You meant something to me, you know," I said through a veil of endless tears. Just then, one quick clap of thunder from the storm outdoors and she was gone. It took her body a while to die and my lover managed to get me through the morbid moments by explaining every swallow, every twitch, jerk and seizure. "Her lungs are filling with fluid so she tries to swallow..."

The rain stopped and in a few minutes, her body did too. I examined her closely to "make sure". Tightly wrapped in my Pensecola beach towel, I walked with her close to me through the muddy lawn while my lover held the flashlight behind me. We travelled to the hole I had du several days early - in anticipation for this moment. The toil of slinging mucky mud on top of her, followed by large stones (to keep digging varmints away) ended with me on my knees, in sobs. For some damn cat. Some mean, bitch-slapping cat who meant something to me.