Sunday 31 May 2015

Fond Farewell to Freda Lavender

So I started to write this and didn't post it because it all seemed a bit lengthy for a cat, but I've written longer on other subjects. I've just re read the whole thing and it is important to post because because my memory is rubbish!
So this story starts on March 20th


I put the cat to sleep on Friday.

She was neglected in 2000, that summer we all watched the first Big Brother.
I'd leave the back door opened and by the end of Graham Norton she would make her way in for the night stinking of cigarette smoke.
I started to buy food for her, and on the day I realised I couldn't find her a new home and decided she was staying she slept at the end of the bed solidly for three days.

Pregnant with T, I'd come home from work at 3pm and lie on the bed in the summer sun and she would curl up on the bump at sleep there with me till 6.
Over the last 8 years she really has been T's cat as they have been friends from the off.

G adored her and when she was little try and stick her head in his mouth, because that is what you do when things are so cute.



This is what she looked like in the first year or so.

She didn't meow, she said, 'A!', as in apple and she liked to play a lot and nothing was more welcome than a brown paper shopping bag




This is T at about 7 months old
I was really obsessed by her fur and how young she has always looked.
It might be while before I can watch How To Train Your Dragon because the similarities are endless.




So I don't really know what happened, she started loosing weight and eating less and less despite appetite. The Mexican was here on the Wednesday and said how thin she was and thought she could feel a tummy lump and by Thursday afternoon she had wobbly back legs.
I thought that was it, but amazing Vets said could be something else treatable and took some blood with the advice to get food and water in her until the they phoned me with the results the the following afternoon.
She drank and ate, but the leg became more limp and she was hiding and sleeping in hard to reach places in the house.
South African amazing Vet spoke to me in the morning when I phoned for another appointment and said her results were good but it didn't explain why she looked so awful. We went up at lunch and did another thorough exam, and really long chat over all the options but ultimately with tears I looked at him and said today was the day and with tears he nodded because it could all go horribly wrong on the weekend especially as she was so dehydrated and not interested in water, the leg was painful, maybe it was some kind of kitty cancer but she was too weak to find out.
I sat on the exam table with her on my lap and off she went and I howled.




I don't even like cats and kittens are sweaty balls of fur.
Generally they don't pay you that much attention, so you'd think that it would be a blessed relief not to have to pay for all that food, vet and cattery bills.  Not have to clear up after them,  Flea treatment! Worming!

I miss the thump of her jumping down off the girls beds. I miss the warm fur, the tap at the back door window to let her in. Where she lays on floor where the radiator pipes were, where she would play in the garden if you were out there working.

T used to say, when Lala dies can we get a dog straight away.
She said to G she didn't want another cat, he asked her if it would be too painful to go through it again she replied no, because she would want it all to be exactly the same and it wouldn't

For years I have collected her whiskers and I keep them in a box, she would get excited when she sniffed them, I am about to hoover the house but I am checking every square inch for whiskers as I know that these will be the last ones.


I know that I have done the right thing, I know that she went before things got out of hand but I can't dry my eyes on this one.

I am devastated.

And reading this back two months on I still have a lump in my throat.

CM

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