Goodbye Mimi.

Today, at 3:20, Amy and I took Mimi to the vet, and had her put down.

It’s really hard, and I’m finding that I have to kind of pull back from it for a while, or I’ld be totally bawling all the time I’m writing this.

She was cranky, rude, ill-tempered, and maybe a little mean (although never to me). But I did love her, and she really seemed to be getting worse, and not enjoying life anymore, and so I think that it is the right decision, hard though it is. Heck, just looking at her, sleeping on the sofa beside me last night, I could totally see that she wasn’t right. She was in pain, and wasn’t happy anymore, and didn’t have much of a prospect of getting better. (Certainly not while we weren’t willing to spend $1000’s of dollars treating cancer. Chemotherapy seems like a cruel thing to put a cat through.) She’s also the first pet I’ve ever had to put down. I was sad when the rats died, but this feels totally different, probably because we’re doing it by choice, instead of it happening on its own time. I guess I just figured that she would disappear one night, and I could delude myself into thinking that she found another home, but it’s probably better this way. More of a sense of closure, and all that...

She went really quickly, (really really quickly,) which was a blessing, and the vet agreed that she was on her way out, and that we probably did the right thing at the right time.

I can also see why people believe in God and Heaven and stuff. I would kind of like to believe that Mimi has gone to some sort of better place, but I know in my heart that she hasn’t. That she’s just gone. And it sucks.

On a happier note, there are a lot of things I want to remember about her, both good and bad. The way her head smelled of ginger and cinnamon. The time she made Kathryn cry while she was babysitting for us. How loud and incessant her purr was. The way she would always hiss and swipe at Colin when we were all working in my living room. How soft she was under her chin. The way she let Amy (and only Amy) comfort her after spending a night at the vet. Heck, I even want to remember the way she would scratch her ass on the rug, and complain when I wanted to sit down on my couch. Damn stupid cat. I loved her.