On Saturday, we went from having a cat who wasn't feeling well to no longer having a cat. Lewis took her to the vet at 9 a.m., and by 10 a.m. he called to tell me that her kidneys were failing and that we needed to put her down. I got the kids dressed, tried to explain to Sophie what was going on, and we all went to say goodbye to Harley.
I haven't said much about Harley on this blog. That's because Harley and I weren't close. Harley was rescued from an alley as a kitten and never really shed her wild alley-catness. This came to a head several years ago when she bit me pretty bad (actually very bad) on my hand. She was in attack mode because another cat was in our front yard, and my hand was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a non-cat person to begin with, I didn't really trust her from that moment on.
Sophie also learned to keep her distance from Harley. Her latest scratch came just a couple of weeks ago.
She was a great mouser when we lived in Sweden, but not a cuddler.
She was the bully of the house. Just ask Tilly.
And, yet, despite all this, I'm feeling very sad about her departure from our lives.
It's funny, I used to curse about how much noise she made in the house at night (on the wood floors above our room). A few weeks ago, I could have killed her for dumping a huge vase of flowers — and water — onto my laptop at 2 in the morning.
Now the house feels too quiet. She was a tiny cat. And, at almost 14 years old, she pretty much just chilled out during the day. But we can feel that she's gone. And it's not a good feeling.
The transition from life to death is freaking me out. The uncertainty of life is freaking me out ... that our lives changed in the span of a couple of hours. The coldness of saying goodbye in a vet office. It's all freaking me out.
But perhaps what's freaking me out the most is how much I miss her.