I watch my orange cat, just home from 3 days of hospital. She's celebrated her arrival with sleeps, purrs, wobbly stalking up and down the passage, and suet pudding-like slumbers on my lap.
She has chronic renal failure, and I've been trying to tumble the reality of that around my head. Right now, she's home and so happy to be so. Three days ago, she was limp and refusing to eat...and the reality is that a cycle with a specific outcome has now begun.
Tears rained all Saturday before and after leaving her at hospital. A morning eyebrow grooming appointment ill-timed just as I got the news that she needed urgent treatment turned into a surreal experience of physical pain from the tweezering and an awkward silence as she worked quickly around a grief-taut brow and quiet tears streaming.
The hospital let me visit regularly. Some visits were sitting by her cage, cuddling her while trying not to dismantle the drip as other shaven and listless cats looked on uncuriously. Others, they unhooked her and let me sit in a consultation room - for an hour on Sunday night even - letting her settle onto my lap and fall asleep after she made sure she was heavily wedged into the crook of my arm, my other hand heavy and unmoving against her flank.
She is a loving, living creature. I've been there for her all of her life bar the first 4 months. She's been there for me for the last 15 years of my adult life. She's eccentric, playful, perverse, understanding and undemanding.
After the tears comes determination. To give her the best life I can, right to the end.
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