I didn't grow up with them around and didn't actually own any until just before Mandy and I got married in 1985. Two cats, sisters, acquired from my soon-to-be-Brother-in-Law. Deferred children, right?
They moved with us from London to Hove in 1990. We had our children and they grew up with cats around. Inevitably one cat disappeared one Bonfire Night and the other got old and had to be put down a few years later.
We got two more cats. Natasha and Sam got to choose and name them - Rocky and Pepper.
In 2014, the very weekend that Mandy and I decided we wanted to move and put our house onto the market, Rocky disappeared. We just thought he'd gone walkabout. Turned out he got run down and killed locally and his remains picked up and disposed of by the Council (no collar, no chip).
Pepper moved with us to Worthing in 2014. And she got old. In the Autumn of last year, at the age of 16, she developed symptoms which were identified as hyperthyrodism. Long story short, we were persuaded to go for the "99% success rate" cure of radiation therapy.
She was the 1%.
Within two weeks of the treatment, Pepper died in my arms, struggling for breath, as Sam and I were getting ready to take her to the emergency vets.
I've lost friends and close family. I've been to many funerals; more so now as I get older. I thought I'd kinda got the death/loss thing squared. I hadn't. I hadn't been there at the moment of their passing.This time, I watched the light in Pepper's eyes disappear as she gave up whatever the fight was she was having and she became still. She'd gone. Whatever suffering she'd been experiencing had stopped. So had she. Although 'just' a family pet, I was profoundly moved to witness such a fundamental transition from life to death.
We had Pepper cremated and, this afternoon, we mixed her ashes with garden soil and compost and planted a rose bush with and for her in the garden.
I'm pretty unsentimental about pets.
I miss her.
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