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[venusundae]

rest in peace my spooky lil baby ♡ you will always have a place in my heart

A post shared by sylvia (@venusundae) on Nov 20, 2017 at 2:19pm PST

My cat, Salem, died on November 20, 2017 at around 8:45 AM. I've been wanting to write about it but also been putting it off bc it's hard to face. I watched him die. I touched him one last time while his body was in the ground. I placed rocks atop his grave in our backyard. And I watched his brother age five years in a week at the realization that his lil twin wasn't coming home. So it's not like I have anything I can cling to to tell myself it's not real or didn't happen. It's just hard.

He got really sick really fast. He was definitely getting skinnier, and we all noticed and mentioned it. But he was still acting like himself. He still seemed friendly and happy. But suddenly he was moving slower and kind of isolating, so we took him into the animal hospital. There we found out he had what looked like a tooth infection, and the vet hypothesized either diabetes or kidney problems, the latter of which he has dealt w twice before. She told us they'd run some blood and urine tests and let us know for sure what it was in two days. And this whole time I was really holding out that he'd be perfectly fine. He'd been through worse before. He was a real trooper. But I guess somewhere in between taking him to wherever they drew his blood and back to the room we were waiting in the vet got a different idea, and she told us if he doesn't perk up in the next 24 hours to bring him in and they'll put him down for us.

I didn't want to accept that he had to die now. He was such a trooper! And he was still affectionate to me and responding like normal. I got him to get out of his little hiding spot from under a table in the living room and hang out on my bed with me and his brother Romeo, which we did all the time. It was our normal bonding time and I played "soothing music for cats" on youtube and just sat with him, listening to the music and petting him and talking to him for hours.

He was only visibly doing unwell for like, three or four days really? It happened very fast. The day before had been mildly worrying enough that I still had absolute hope he'd pull through. But by the next morning he was in very obvious pain. My dad and I woke up at 2AM bc Salem was outside my room crying super loud. When I opened the door he came in and so did his brother. Romeo came up on my bed where they both usually hang out but Salem I didn't see for a while.

I eventually found out he'd crawled under my bed. He was just far enough away that I couldn't reach him well enough to pull him out. And like every twenty minutes I'd go down to him and talk to him and pet his lil foot. He wasn't moving very much or reacting to me unless I did something that bothered him, like trying to move him, and even then he'd only let out a tiny hum. I cried a few times thinking he'd die right under me and I wouldn't even know it.

I begged him to please come be with me before he left me. I was so scared. And then I suddenly told myself "I've never been able to make this cat do anything." Which I've always known but I never heard it in the resounding string of words that it suddenly came to me in like that before. He was his own lil guy ya know. He did whatever he wanted. I was just lucky that throughout my life what he wanted was to hang out w me and be my friend.

The heater turned on and the vent was right by him which bothered him enough that he walked to be underneath the head of my bed, and then I could reach him and I pulled him up onto the bed w me. He cried, and I knew he was in a lot of pain. And he wouldn't look me in the eye ever and I was all paranoid he was mad at me and it freaked me out that my cat was probably going to die being upset that I'd manhandled him while he was hurting so much.

He tried to jump off my bed but it ended up being more like a fall, and then he took a few steps and collapsed. I was like bawling at this point, there had been virtually no warning that my cat was going to physically deteriorate this badly this quickly and it was just hard to sit w the idea that we were going to lose him and had no time to prepare.

He made his way to the living room while David got ready for school and we told him that Salem probably wouldn't be here when he got home. My dad took him to school, and then came back and we were going to take him back to the animal hospital to day goodbye. It happened in just a few days.

By the time my dad got back Salem had been crying for ages. He screamed when he'd try to walk. It was so hard to watch. He hates the cat carrier and he whined a lot while he was in there but by the time we got to the animal hospital we opened the door and he was still whining but he didn't come out. He just laid there. He was too tired.

I knew I wanted to be there when he went. It was hard but I didn't think it should be any other way. I said sorry to him so many times over those last few days. Every time he made a noise in pain I'd tell him I was so sorry that I didn't know what to do for him, sorry that he was hurting, sorry that this was happening to him. And my last words to him were that I was sorry and that I loved him. I watched his eyes glaze over, and his light little body just slowly slumped over and that was it. "He's gone" the doctor said.

He died on a blanket we'd brought for him. One we kept around him those past few days. It's still sitting there folded on the wood box and I look at it every day. We ungracefully scooped up the edges of the blanket to put him into a box they gave us to transport him home so we could bury him.

This part I think doesn't make sense. Like, as far as physics go or whatever. When we walked down to the hole in the backyard my dad had dug for him, and we opened up the box, he was curled so perfectly around himself. His head was tucked into himself, and he was a perfect little swirl. He looked the way he had always looked when he was sleeping on his chair. He wasn't the glassy eyed skeletal heap on the doctor's table that we'd seen only minutes ago. It was just my lil baby sleeping one last time.

He fit perfectly into the round hole that was dug for him.

I told my mom that later, and she said Melony did that for him. Melony was my mom's best friend who passed away two years ago. She told me she'd seen Melony twice that week, and hadn't known why. But then when Salem passed she said she realized she was here for him. She was always taking care of kitties. Even still.

I cried constantly for the next day. I would be absolutely weeping one second then completely calm. I would tell myself "I'm not even thinking about it" and feel so far away but my body would be a sobbing mess.

When David came home from school he came immediately to my room and he was already teary. He told me he'd cried twice at school. I took him down to see Salem's grave and we cried together and hugged and I explained to him that it was peaceful and at least he's not in pain anymore and like we baby David a lot but he's a mature kid actually and he got it ofc.

I've made sure to be with Romeo every second of the day since then. When I leave I make sure to say bye and that I'll be back soon. The first two days he was still himself and I felt happy that he was okay. But once I think it settled in that Salem was gone, he changed a bit. He's definitely getting skinnier. He's always been a lil chubster so it's not too concerning. But he just seems sadder. His eyes aren't as wide and curious as they used to be. He doesn't play around anymore. He is still as affectionate as ever though, and I'm hoping over time he feels better.

Only a few days in he started doing certain things that I'd only ever seen his brother do and it weirded me out a bit. Salem's lil fangs always stuck out of his mouth a teensy bit, like in the second video in the insta post I made of him. And occasionally when he was annoyed or like playing around he'd grin in this sarcastic way that would show off one of them. It's hard to explain, and I probably sound like a dweeb saying my cat ever did anything sarcastically, but if you know him it'd make sense. Romeo did that lil snarl thing the other day, and I even said to him "I've never seen you do that before, silly, what are you doing?"

He sat in Salem's chair for a while. Really it's just the rocking chair but somewhere along the lines Salem designated it his safe spot. If he did something dumb like eat one of the plants and my dad yelled at him he'd run away and sit on that chair and even though you were still right there yelling at him it was like his lil safe zone so it didn't matter.

It was like the Thursday or Friday after, and I was super sick. I thought maybe I had been half dreaming when this happened. But I heard this little chirping noise he used to make - I could tell apart his and Romeo's different voices - and I heard his little feet prance across my carpet. I was facing the wall, but I absolutely felt him jump up onto the bed and curl up in the curve of my back. He'd always find awkward places like that to fall asleep when I was lying down - in the crook of my knees or w his head resting on my elbow - so that I couldn't move without disturbing him. I talked to him, and fell asleep.

A few hours later that morning my dad came in and said he swore he felt a cat kneading his blanket last night but he knew it wasn't Romeo. Then I told him what I had thought was a dream last night, too. Sonya said later she thought she heard a cat crunching on food outside her door but when she looked none were there.

I cry less often now, but I always think about it. Sometimes I just stare off into space and my head is like "my cat is dead". Super cool and helpful to trying to live a normal life. Other times I totally think I'm getting over it but then something happens and I start absolutely bawling again. Thinking about moving out (I told my mom on the phone "I always told myself I couldn't move out bc I didn't want to be without my cat but I couldn't separate him from his brother"). The animal hospital sending us a sappy hand written note of condolences w a poem in in about our pet running around across the rainbow bridge in the afterlife or something. I honestly couldn't even get through the whole card. Writing this post. Shit like that.

I'm lucky that I have a few obligations that can keep me moving in life and feeling normal and not stuck sad in bed all day, but not so many that I don't have time to sit sad in bed for at least some of the day, ya know.

Life is going on. And I feel really lost right now. But I'm still moving w it and that's all I can really do.

I loved that cat and I always will.