Life After Voodoo

 

Taking care of a pet when they’re sick or dying isn’t much fun.  Some days it feels like a lot of work.  It can be physically and emotionally draining.

 

Our cat Voodoo had kidney disease for several years and yesterday, it finally took her.

 

Today, the day after, it’s raining out and that matches my mood.  Overcast, dark, quiet with a background of a moderately soaking rain.  My heart sucked up all the emotion it could and now, what emotion is left, is just run-off.  I’m saturated with her absence, left wondering how it all turned around and went downhill so quickly.

 

My life will appear easier now, from the physical standpoint.  No more feeding her every day, filling her treat bowl several times a day, and putting ice in her water.

 

No more cleaning the litter box, cleaning up the places she blepped (our word for throwing up) on the carpet.  No more trips to the vet, trips to the store for more litter or food, or treats.

 

No more worry.

 

No more stools here and there to help her get up on the bed, on the coffee table, on the couch.  I came so close to planting my face on the bedroom floor in the middle of the night more than once, tripping over the stool at the bottom of the bed.

 

The last several months, Voodoo would lay on the floor next to the door to the kitchen and when we’d come into the house, she wouldn’t move.  Not for Michael and his walker, not for me and the twelve bags of groceries I’d be carrying.  She’d just lay there and look at us like she was saying, “Tough beans, I was here first.”

 

As the disease progressed, her world got smaller.  She got to come in my office if I was in here working, but otherwise, the door stayed closed.

 

After she pooped on the bed a few times, the bedroom door stayed closed during the day.   I don’t like surprises of the smelly variety and especially ones that cause me to have to remove and wash all the bedding and then make the bed again.

 

She’s family though, so you make it work.  We’ve loved her all these years and she’s loved us back and brought us so much joy.  In the end, it’s the depth of that love that sees us through.

 

Just like with people.

 

Once the shock of losing her wears off, there is a relief that we no longer have the burden of care-taking on our shoulders.

 

In time, we see it was not really a burden after all.  It was work, yes.  But it was work that said ‘I love you’ in the most beautiful way.  It was work that said ‘you matter to me’ in the kindest way.  It was time and effort well spent.

 

Just like with people.

 

We loved our little Voodoo and took care of her just like we hope we’ll be loved and taken care of when our time comes.

 

While we no longer have the ‘burden’ of taking care of her, we also don’t have kitty kisses anymore.  No more teepees on the couch. (I’d put a blanket over the back of the couch and drape it to the front like a tent.  Voodoo would come up under it and curl up next to my leg and sleep)

 

No more nudging me awake so I’d let her under the covers on a chilly night.

 

No more having a buddy to share a glass of iced tea with.

 

And now when I make tuna sandwiches, I’ll just have to throw the tuna water away.  🙁

 

It’s been a week and a half now (sometimes it takes a week or two for me to finish a piece) and I still look for her when I come into the house, wait for her to hop up on the coffee table to get a drink of tea while I’m eating lunch.  I miss her being there, the sounds of her prowling around in places she shouldn’t be, and just her presence in the house, in our life.

 

Just like with people.

 

She lived a good, long life for a cat-seventeen years which is roughly eighty-five in human years.  She’s now up in heaven with my mom and dad who kept her and her sister Syracuse for a couple years before we got them.  My mother loved those cats and would always ask about them whenever I called.

 

There is life after Voodoo, it’s just less sparkly.

 

 

 

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