Still no Twink. I know there will be much harder losses in all our lives but that doesn't make anything feel less uncomfortable. Our routines are out of whack - even the routines we didn't know we had... And all these little mannerisms we've acquired over the years - like keeping the laundry room door closed, topping off her water, not leaving food unattended, etc... At what point do we stop thinking about those things? Does the routine eventually dull until we actually need to remember it again? This morning I gave Buster the rest of Twinkie's open can of cat food.
I got Twinkie first semester of my freshman year at KU in the fall of '89. She was so small I could completely hide her between my two cupped hands. I have no idea why I decided to call her "Twinkie" - she was ginger colored, not yellow. Maybe it was a thinly veiled rebellion from my mother's health food fanaticism.
Together Twinkie and I moved 7 different times, and went through graduations, weddings, babies, funerals, surgeries and sicknesses, sunshine and snow fall, all the life that happened in between.
She'd lost quite a bit of her peripheral vision & was deaf - she'd spook if she didn't see you come up next to her. And, she was intimidated by the chickens. None the less, she was robust, and made a daily habit of climbing onto the kitchen table and jumping across 4 feet to the counter just to snoop around. If she was feeling especially evil she'd pee on clean laundry - otherwise she's just pee on whatever'd been left on the bathroom floor. (Once upon a time she'd had the courtesy to pee in the bathtub but last winter the bathtub was occupied by a large painted turtle.)
Except in the heat of the summer, Twinkie snuggled under my covers and put her head next to mine on the pillow every single night. This is what I miss the most. She snuggled me when I was sick and I snuggled her when she was sick. She watched over my girls when they were sick and would check on them throughout the night. She even used to snuggle up against them when they were just my baby bumps. This winter it'll be hard to fall asleep without her stretched out next to me.
However, in the last few weeks, she'd taken to following me everywhere and and had gotten to be pretty much relentless about trying to be on me somehow. She'd climb my leg and still on my shoulder. She'd even jump into the bathroom sink when I'd brushed my teeth. If I laid down, she'd start pulling on my hair. If I closed her out of the bedroom, she'd fuss. If I fed her, she'd fuss. But, she'd settle down if I was alone with her during the day so I kind of wrote her behavior off as acute senility.
A few months ago she started having these odd dizzy spells every now & then. She'd try to stand up but instead end up turning in circles, yowling. I was seeing these seizures about once a week but then I realized she was having them more like every day. I did a bunch of online reading and came to the conclusion that these were such nebulous symptoms that effectively treating them would require a lot of testing that may or may not actually resolve what were seeming more and more like signs of being a ancient cat.
In the back of my mind I figured she wouldn't make it through another winter. I'd hear her scrambling to stand and I'd rush to soothe her, afraid she would get so panick'd I wouldn't be able to hold her.
So here I am - I've decided that I'm not going to have my cat put down- she's not in pain, she's just daft. I'm going to deal with death as part of natural life, and somehow this is a rite of passage - a passing of the torch. So on and so forth and then.... silence. Twinkie's gone. Nowhere to be found.
ARRRGGGGHHHH! I don't even know what happened - only what I imagine. I didn't get to be there when she died, to soothe her, and to hold her.
Mackie wants to bury an empty box if we don't find Twinkie soon. Maybe.
