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sabotabbyMarinetti is missing and in all likelihood dead.
Last night at around 12, I went to bed and he curled up beside me. This morning, when I woke up to give him his 8 am meds, he was gone. I've been searching the neighbourhood, putting up signs, calling Toronto Animal Services and the Humane Society, but there's no sign of him. He's never been farther than my backyard on a leash and under the porch once when he ran outside, so I doubt he even knows which house is his if he's wandered off.
It is, of course, my fault. I left the kitchen window above the sink open a crack. My arthritic, 14-year-old cat is, in theory, capable of jumping up on the counter, walking over to the sink, and squeezing through the gap in the window.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chickenfeet2003 and lemur_catta, who were over all day helping me look for him, thought that it was highly improbable that he could get through there, but it was absolutely the only way out of the house (and definitely if he's in the house, he's dead. But he's not in the house.).
I failed the one creature that I love most in the world. I was supposed to keep him safe. He trusted me completely. And now he's gone, because I just wasn't careful enough.
It's morbid, but me being the person I am, I envisioned losing him, writing this final entry, in a number of ways. I imagined him getting so sick that I'd have no choice but to put him down. I imagined waking up and finding him dead (in fact, the older and sicker he got, the more frequently I'd find him sleeping and check, my breath held, that he was breathing). I never thought that I'd lose him to a gigantic question mark, that he'd be out there, dying, alone, without me. I thought at least we'd have a goodbye.
I thought I was broken as much as a person could be broken, but apparently there are much greater depths of grief than I could ever envision.
Last night at around 12, I went to bed and he curled up beside me. This morning, when I woke up to give him his 8 am meds, he was gone. I've been searching the neighbourhood, putting up signs, calling Toronto Animal Services and the Humane Society, but there's no sign of him. He's never been farther than my backyard on a leash and under the porch once when he ran outside, so I doubt he even knows which house is his if he's wandered off.
It is, of course, my fault. I left the kitchen window above the sink open a crack. My arthritic, 14-year-old cat is, in theory, capable of jumping up on the counter, walking over to the sink, and squeezing through the gap in the window.
chickenfeet2003 and lemur_catta, who were over all day helping me look for him, thought that it was highly improbable that he could get through there, but it was absolutely the only way out of the house (and definitely if he's in the house, he's dead. But he's not in the house.). I failed the one creature that I love most in the world. I was supposed to keep him safe. He trusted me completely. And now he's gone, because I just wasn't careful enough.
It's morbid, but me being the person I am, I envisioned losing him, writing this final entry, in a number of ways. I imagined him getting so sick that I'd have no choice but to put him down. I imagined waking up and finding him dead (in fact, the older and sicker he got, the more frequently I'd find him sleeping and check, my breath held, that he was breathing). I never thought that I'd lose him to a gigantic question mark, that he'd be out there, dying, alone, without me. I thought at least we'd have a goodbye.
I thought I was broken as much as a person could be broken, but apparently there are much greater depths of grief than I could ever envision.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-18 03:37 am (UTC)And if not, you have to be kinder to yourself. I actually did cause the death of one of my beloved rats--which no matter what, you did not, because in this situation you can't ignore the agency of your cat. I expressed an abscess in his cheek, which I had done before with only healthful consequences, and he aspirated the pus and died. The end. Completely my fault.
But you know, whether it's pets, or other loved ones, or ourselves, we only do the best we can, by definition. If we didn't mean any harm, and we learn from the experience, we just have to go forward.
*hugs*