What We Leave Behind

Annag, our 19-year-old tortoiseshell cat, died unexpectedly yesterday evening.

I drove her to the emergency vets in Harrogate at 1900, where she was admitted for observation and tests. I stroked her head as she was carried off to a holding room. Driving home ten minutes later I received the call which told me she was dead. Only an hour previously she had been purring as I readied her for travel. Incomprehensible.

Early this morning I walked around the house, looking at her stuff. Various sachets and tins of food. Her last meal, untouched. Her litter tray, used. Her favourite cardigan on which she loved to snooze. The brush with which I groomed her every night. A couple of long-ago catnip mice. Not much for 19 years.

Later today I shall have to decide what is to be done with her remains. We have nowhere to bury her, unlike at her birthplace, itself now gone. I expect there will be another box with an engraved nameplate on the windowsill by Monday.

No doubt well-wishers will encourage us to accentuate the positive: remember what a good, long and happy life she led with us, how many people loved her, etc., etc. I suppose we should be relieved that she slipped away so quickly and painlessly. We should feel grateful that she was with us from the day she was born. For now, Mrs D is inconsolable and I am angry and bitter at Death.

Presumably, things will get better in time.