Eulogy to a cat.

Amber,

My sweet baby. I miss you so much it physically hurts. My stomach feels like an empty pit, my heart aches, my eyes are burning and swollen, I am a complete and total mess. There are moments that I feel like it's going to be okay, and where I am just grateful for having been part of your life, and then there are moments like this. Heart-wrenching sickening sadness. Desperation. Panic. Guilt. Could we have done anything? Were you in pain and couldn't tell us? I am sorry if you were hurting. I never thought losing a pet could feel like this. I always feared that it would be excruciating, but I never imagined it would feel like this. I just don't want it to be true. I feel a panic, a desperate panic that I need you back. I miss you so much. I didn't want it to end. I thought we had a few more years with you, and even then I wished for more.

You made us feel like a family. Without you we are just two married people. It doesn't feel like a household, like a family. It feels empty. I hate being here. Hate it, but then I hate not being here. All I want to do all day is come home and be here, where you used to be, but then I get here and want to leave. I am already worried that when we move someday it will feel like we are leaving you behind. I know that we can take your ashes in a box and we can take our love for you in our hearts, but nothing will change the fact that we moved here with you and will leave without you someday.

I miss mornings and nights where we would all lay in bed together. We were grateful and knew how special that time was, even while it was happening. The last few years we started to face that you wouldn't be around forever. Instead of getting frustrated or annoyed when you were being bothersome, we would stop and say that we know that someday you wouldn't be here and we would wish you were here to wake us up at 5am. I am so glad that we knew that and that we spent so much time loving you. We used to joke that your Daddy's part-time job was petting you. He loved you more that I have ever seen a man love anything. You weren't just a cat to us. You were our baby, you were the focus of our household. We would be out with friends or on vacation and your Daddy would say, "I wonder what Amber is doing right now?" I started to not want to go out of town because leaving you would make me so sad that I felt like I didn't want to do it very often as long as you were still here. Maybe I knew, we knew, that we were getting to the end of the road. We knew that our time with you was slipping away. Your Daddy used to comment on how gray your little paws were getting and I would tell him to not say that because I didn't want to think about you getting older.

I miss that you aren't on the bed when I get home. I want to walk into the bedroom and see you curled up and say, "Hi Miss Kitty!" and have you meow back in response. I used to kiss you on your little head. Constantly. You probably hated it but you let me do it. I miss you hopping up into bed at night when your Daddy called you. I miss the morning times when you'd come in and meow that you were hungry and we'd feed you and then you'd come back and jump up on us and harass us to pet you. You didn't take no for an answer. You'd take one little paw and tap our faces or arms with it until we paid attention to you. It was the cutest thing. If I tried to hide my head or turn away you learned to touch my arm with your wet little kitty nose and it would drive me crazy and I'd finally give in. I miss how you would sit on our heads, chests, anywhere on top of us in the mornings. It was so funny and we'd always crack up. I hate that I can close the bedroom door now. I never could do that before because within 5 minutes you'd want in or out. I miss that your Daddy and I would playfully "fight" over you, both of us trying to get your attention and seeing who would win. It was him most of the time, you loved your Daddy more than me, that was no question. It's okay, I understood and thought it was so special the way you two were together.

Thank you for teaching me a tiny bit of what I will need someday to be a Mommy. No matter how sick I was, how tired, how much pain I was in, how stressed out or irritable I was, I would get up to take care of you, I'd feed you and pet you and do whatever you needed. Sometimes it was hard to love you. You were temperamental and would hiss or swat at me for no reason and it would really hurt my feelings. It taught me to love unconditionally. I loved you more that I thought was possible to love a pet. I wonder how I will ever get over this loss. I know I will, but I also know that because you were so special to us we will always have a little kitty shaped hole in our hearts. You gave us such comfort when life was tough, you would curl up with us and then everything seemed okay.

I can't stop crying. We are supposed to pick up your ashes today. I hate it. When I found you all I could say was "my sweet baby, no no no no, my sweet baby" over and over. That is all that runs through my head. All day. My sweet baby.

I don't want to say goodbye to you, I am not ready, not even close to ready, but you are already gone. My sweet baby. I love you.