Life and Death

I miss my cat.

Its been about a week now since she passed, and now I'm starting to come to terms with it. We all deal with death at some point of our lives; my grandfathers, rest their souls, are long buried. But a pet, why is it that a pet can make me miss it more than I miss my own flesh and blood?

Well, I've always been close to my cat, Tigger, than I was with my grandparents. While I had trouble communicating to my grandfathers due to the language barrier, my cat and I seemed to have no difficulty in relating our feelings to one another. She listened tentaviley to my thoughts, my dreams and my problems, and all she asked in return was a rub. I would understand when she was hungry, scared, or just wanted to play.

Yet death is expected. As children we eventually clue on to this horrible fact, our first experience usually coming by a pet's death. Yet I seemed to bypass this stage, and only now do I have this childlike sadness over her death. Sure, I have pets die on me. Our first pet, a dog named Sheba, was put down when I was three; though I was too young to even remember her. Then there was our pet canary my grandfather gave us, which, ironically enough, was eaten by said cat.

Tigger wasn't, by all example, the most perfect pet; in fact she wasn't really mine to begin with in the first place. She was a neighbourhood stray who took shelter at our house one day and found my father's pity. But like any other pet we have, she had a personality. She was tough in her young age, a warrior soul who wouldn't back down from a fight. I remember the old battle wounds; the time she was hit by a car, yet still limped on, the time a possum clawed off her nose, bone clearly to be seen, and a few months ago, her latest battle leaving her temporarily blind in one eye. She was lazy on a good day, energetic at night, and cared mostly about food.

I'm going to miss coming home late from school, work, or a big night out and finding her waiting by the back door.

I'm going to miss scratching her ears in greeting when I entered inside.

I'm going to miss waking up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and finding her on the kitchen sill window.

I'm going to miss her infernal meows when she was hungry, and the purrs she gave when I caved in and fed her something on the side.

I'm going to miss summer days when I would wake up in the morning, go to the toilet and nearly trip over the blasted thing.

It's like the lyric to the 'Big Yellow Taxi' Song 'Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone.'

I'm going to miss that cat.