30 Days of Haiga 2017: Day 8: Little Lost Loves

Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

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Notes:

Lafayette was born July 17, 2009, according to the Adams County Animal Shelter, which is where I adopted him from in March of 2010. He was eight months old when I adopted him and had spent all but one month of his life in a kennel at the shelter. 

He was initially terrified and for the first week he lived with me, he hid under the printer table and slipped out at night to attack my hand while I was sleeping. He wasn’t being aggressive, he was a big kitten who hadn’t been properly socialized. The vet trimmed his claws and I taught him to play with soft paws. My arm and hand were no longer shredded after the first week.

I lost Lafayette on his sixth birthday, July 17, 2015. He was in chronic kidney failure which had been going on for some time but I wasn’t aware of it until he started losing weight. I thought he might be having trouble eating because his feline stomatitis had returned and his remaining teeth would have to be removed. I wish that had been the case. It was one of the worst days of my life. I have never gotten over it.

Trinity was a dump-off. I’m not sure of her exact age, but she was less than a year old when she wandered up to my porch, crying, in the summer of 2006. I thought she was pregnant. Evidently, her asshole former owners did too as they left her behind when they moved. It turned out she was a cat who had false pregnancies when she went into heat. After she was spayed, the problem was solved. 

When I took her to the vet to be spayed, she was terrified and leaped up onto the window screen. After I brought her home, she was furious with me and gave me dirty looks for a week afterward. Normally she was a very affectionate cat. Luckily she eventually forgave me. 

I lost Trinity on November 9, 2016. She had brain and lung cancer. She was a big girl who suddenly lost a great deal of weight within the space of a month and she started staggering when she walked. Sometimes she would take deep, sighing breaths. Scans revealed that she had a lot of fluid in her lungs. My son and I knew that it would be for the best to let her go.

I don’t think I will ever have any more cats after the ones I still have pass from this world. It’s too heartbreaking. I plan to get rid of a lot of things and move to a much smaller place. I don’t see a bright future for myself. If it weren’t for my connection to my son and my obligation to my remaining cats, I would already have taken the exit option.

For the love of anything that might be holy, don’t cheapen my pain by telling me to “seek counseling” or “get on meds.” Having lived with the roller coaster of type 2 bipolar disorder since I hit puberty but not being properly diagnosed until I was nearly 40, having had a life that is far from a fairy tale dream, and having left youth and innocence in the dust many, many years ago, I most certainly know about the existence of those things. Lithium helps a little bit, nothing else really does. 

If you know of a counselor who has an open-minded, esoteric approach to things and whose services don’t cost an arm and a leg, I might consider employing zir. Otherwise, I will just keep walking down this rocky road, wondering where my life is leading, rolling on to the bitter end until I can be reunited with my friends again.

~Cie~

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