R.I.P., Kitty

Last Friday our little cat—the tiny black and white one we called “Kitty”—died suddenly. The circumstances of her death were sad and strange.

As you may remember, we had taken her to the vet to get spayed about a month ago, only to find that she was already pregnant. She was also quite sick, and with the medicine and other vaccinations, her litter of kittens didn’t survive. She was mopey and seemed depressed for a bit, but a month after she lost the kittens, we once again took her to the vet to get her spayed once and for all.

Apparently, during the surgery, she had a sort of heart attack or seizure, or else her body just stopped working. The vet was alarmed, so she performed an autopsy, only to find that Kitty barely had had any lungs (apparently they were about the size of a dime), and that she also had no diaphragm. The vet said she’d never seen anything like it in her years of practice and surgery, and that the fact that Kitty had even been alive in the first place was a sort of little miracle. In fact, the vet said Kitty didn’t even have the necessary organs to be alive. So, it also explained why the cat always had such trouble breathing, and why she remained stationary most of the time. In any case, the vet was very considerate and compassionate, and explained the surgery and autopsy photos to Angela, who had gone to pick up Kitty and was somewhat in shock.

So, we were a bit down this past weekend. It’s surprising that despite the fact we had had Kitty for a very short time, we had grown to care for her very much. She was an incredibly sweet little thing, and she only seemed interested in giving and receiving a bit of love here and there. If you sat on the steps, she’d come and collapse into your lap, and just stay there till you made her get off. She also had a penchant for trying to fight with our other cat Cucho (see picture above), which, given her medical condition, age, size, and gender, seemed quite strange, but we didn’t mind since Cucho’s haughtiness probably could have done with an occasional ass-kicking by a sick, little girl cat.

Kitty’s life was quite intense, now that I think of it. She seemed to have been sent to us in order to “live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory,” in the words of the Faron Young song. Angela and I are certainly sad that she’s gone, but we also now consider her stay here to have been a sort of test. Maybe we’re given chances in life to see how we treat the most feeble, weak, and desperate creatures, to understand what our moral fiber is made of. Perhaps Kitty knew she was not meant to be on this world for more than a few months, and maybe she was sent to us or came to us instinctively, hoping to find someone nice to take care of her in a sea of hostility, in a mean world. We also hope that we passed that test.

So, Kitty, hopefully you’re in cat heaven with my old cat Pussypie, playing together with a catnip mouse, or maybe just casually kicking his ass a little bit.

Either way, we’ll miss you.

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