Why did Henry get so sick, so fast, when he's always been such a healthy cat?
Why were there so many things that happened over the past few months that gave me good reasons for Henry's changes in behavior? I moved one of the cat scratch posts from his favorite room, the front office, back to our bedroom. He seemed a little mad about it, and may have been at first. But then the reason he didn't climb to the top anymore was apparently because it was too hard physically. Also, I changed the cats' food a month ago, which is why I thought he was losing a little weight. I thought he was mad because I cut out the canned food altogether.
Why did I let myself get so busy that I didn't see how sick he was? Although Jav and I have figured out that he really only started to get really thin and slow down over the last three weeks, why didn't I take him in then?
Why didn't we read up on kidney removal to find that the kidney is one of the most delicate organs to remove due to all the attached blood vessels. Would this have made us decide to use a specialist instead of Dr. Norris? Jav and I both still think we would have wanted him to do the surgery. We know he would never have offered to do it if he felt he wasn't qualified, and that he feels just as awful about what happened as we do, and we wouldn't have gotten that empathy from a specialist.
So many questions, and it really doesn't matter what the answers are. Maybe that's just the way I am trying to deal with my loss. One of the only things I feel good about today is the fact that I decided to start letting Henry go back outside last year. He was allowed out at the old house, but when we moved here we decided to make him stay inside because he seemed to get obsessive about going out. After a year of living here, I just couldn't take his sulking anymore and started letting him out again. He truly was happiest in life when he was outside, and got to spend alot of time in the backyard. My last happy memory of him will be looking out my kitchen window and seeing him laying under our biggest oak tree Monday night, sniffing all the fun scents in the air and listening to the birds as they ate their evening meal. I really didn't want to bring him in that night, he looked so content.
I was just reading one of my Yoga Journal articles about dealing with grief, and I saw this passage that is helping me to feel a little better for the moment: "Every life has an arc - however prolonged or truncated - and every soul has a path." Henry seemed pretty happy until just recently, and his path was a rich and full one. And he made my path SO much better for having him in my life. That's what I'll have to think about to get me through this sadness.
1 comment:
Henry's life may have been short, but you made it so much better by taking him in than it could have been (and probably made it much longer simply because of that).
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