I am no Tennyson, but I feel it is my moral duty to at least attempt a eulogy for the departed.
So my cat died yesterday. Shocking? hardly....try earth-shattering. My cat was named Prince and he was 15 years old. My family got this cat when he was just a few weeks old and we had just moved from Lancaster, PA to Knoxville, TN. It was 1995 and I was 7 years old. I am a 21 year old senior in college now. I grew up with this cat. He accompanied me thru grade school, middle school, and high school and almost all the way through college. Some people would look down on my for being so heartbroken over a cat. " Noelle, it's just a cat", they say. Well, I say they can cram it with walnuts. Prince was a family member. He shared birthdays and holidays with us. He even disappeared in 2001 for 7 months only to return to us from his weary travels. It was a miracle. He was definitely a unique cat. He even had an astonishingly one of a kind personality. He would sleep at the foot of my bed when I was sick. If I was sitting on the couch with a blanket in the lap trying to get work done...Prince just wouldnt have it. He had to jump up in my lap, make himself comfortable and go to sleep, completely thumbing his nose up to whatever work I was trying to get down. He would drool on us as well. He had this bizarre talent for drooling like a dog whenever he was happy and purring. Sometimes we believed that he wanted to be a dog. I had never heard of a drooling cat before Prince. He also has this peculiar habit of drinking out of our toliets when we let him inside. Like I said....he wanted to be a dog. In December 2009, he had been diagnosed with the first stage of renal failure. My uncle on my dad's side is a vet and he provided us with the appropriate diet and medicine and told us that it would help slow the kidney failure for several months. We resigned ourselves to Prince's eventual death, but were at least assured of a few more months with him. That is why, not even two months later, I was no where near prepared for the news I received yesterday. Prince had died, not from his failing kidneys, but from a glitch in the garage door due to a bad windstorm. For all 15 years of his living with us, Prince had always skirted under the garage door and it would automatically go back up, no harm done. Well, this time, the wind threw off the sensors and..well, Prince didnt make it in time. My mom found him the next morning with his neck broken from the door. I cry as I write this. I get angry as I write this. I don't know how to feel. For something that has always been there, to not be there anymore when I go home, my home already doesnt feel like my home anymore. No more drooling, no more cuddling, no more toliet water drinking.....nothing can replace this loss. I just nod my head and smile at people's sympathies. I know they are trying to comfort me and be nice. But they really have no idea how this feels unless they have personally gone through it. Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe I dont care. This is my first experience with a family member dying and I think I am damn well allowed to feel what I feel. So, Prince, you were the best cat a family could ask for. It was unfair the way you died, but maybe God chose this way so you wouldnt suffer down the road. I miss you and love you. You will forever be my first cat. Go well into the night, Young Turk.
