Its been a very eventful weekend with a very unfortunate end, I hope to post about everything else that happened soon, but tonight's events seem to take precedence right now.

February 29th 2004

It is 10:30pm right now as I write this, our cat, Lucy, died less than 3 hours ago. I must’ve said this already to Rhiannon a hundred times, but it literally is the weirdest thing ever, it doesn’t seem real. It definitely hasn’t set in yet that she actually died. The house seems like its missing something already.

I woke up from a nap a few hours ago; the whole family was all recovering from a long weekend together upstairs. Rhiannon ad I next to each other in bed, Landon in his bassinet, Dakota under the bed, and Lucy curled up in a ball on my feet. I scratched the dog for a few minutes, and then went over to the computer. A short while later, I watched Lucy, lying on her side at the edge of our bed, lazily start to roll over. She rolled right off the bed and landed on the floor on her back, the drop is maybe three feet long. I must admit that I laughed a little at her fall, it seemed innocently comical initially. She bounced up, flopped around violently under the computer desk for a few seconds and then lay awkwardly on the floor. I scooped her up and gently set her on the bed, Rhiannon at this point was awake from all of the commotion, and Dakota had become quite interested as well. Lying on the bed her rear leg jutted out at a weird angle, she uttered a few pathetic cries, exhaled twice over a tongue that lay halfway out of her mouth, and died. She died there, with Rhiannon and me petting her, thinking maybe she hurt her leg, or was just scared from the fall. The whole sequence of events took no more than 30 seconds. It was awful, I don’t know how else to describe it. I even tried performing CPR on her.

I should preface all of his by stating that when it comes to being a dog or a cat person, I definitely lean far more on the side of the slobbery, tail wagging canines. Lucy was an exception; she was a very unique cat. Lucy was a small grey tabby, without a spot of white on her, she looked a lot like a wild cat might. She was tiny , I doubt she weighed much more than five or six pounds, even though we did jokingly refer to her as gato gordo (fat cat) over the past few months since it looked like she had gained a little extra weight. She was a young cat, she was only five and a half year’s old, I bought her as a present for Rhiannon’s 22nd birthday. To state it clearly, Lucy was the coolest cat ever. I don’t think I’ll want another cat again simply because they won’t be Lucy.

Lucy loved to play fetch. She would chase gum wrappers, wads of paper, plastic rings, and of course her little mouse that would always end up in the strangest places around the house. Every night, Lucy would crawl under the covers, and fall asleep in the crook of my arm. She kept the cricket population way down inside our house. She was an extremely shy cat, most people never saw her and got to experience how much fun she really was. When we went on vacation last year, our neighbor said the only way she new we had a cat was that the food in her bowl would disappear.

I’ve never watched a pet die before my eyes, and never thought something like this could occur so rapidly and unexpectedly. Lucy was a very healthy cat, for all that I can figure she probably had a heart attack when she hit the ground, either that or she broke her neck, although the latter seems unlikely since she was still moving some muscles as she passed. Whatever happened - happened quickly.

I have so many different thoughts right now. I’m sad that Landon will never get to play with her, she would’ve been a great cat for him to snuggle with. I’m upset that she died so unexpectedly and so stupidly – who dies from falling off of a bed?! I’m comforted by the fact that she didn’t die alone, but I wonder what those last few moments must’ve been like for her. Another part of me is frustrated that I had to watch the whole thing; it is a very disturbing final memory to have of such a good friend.

The other thing that this has done is bring into too clear of focus just how fragile life is. I can’t believe that a limber, energetic cat could die in such a manner. It freaks me out to look at Landon and realize how tremendously delicate and defenseless he is. All night I have been holding him a little tighter, listening to his breathing patterns so intently.