Youth in Asia

I had to euthanize my cat Flicka this weekend. It’s hard to describe why I grieved her loss more severely than I have grieved in years.

I guess it’s because Flicka has been with me for so much of my life. I got her to me for my ninth birthday. She liked to sleep wrapped in my arms all night, we would toss and turn together like an old couple. She never got out of bed before me.

In the loneliness of my unplanned pregnancy, she seemed to know that I needed extra love. She selflessly napped three times as much as normal to keep up with my growing napping needs. Even as my belly grew, she cautiously wrapped her lithe body around the bulge.

The night I came home from the hospital without my baby, she seemed to know with a preternatural awareness that we were grieving. I don’t think she left my lap for a week.

On Saturday morning, I cried uncontrollably as I made my way to my parent’s St. Paul home to pick her up. Racked with guilt for leading my unsuspecting cat to her death, I could barely look into her curious eyes. Her boney body stuck out in odd angles through the blanket I wrapped her in. She hardly moved as the Veterinarian injected the drug. Almost instantly her head dropped limply on my arm.

On my way back to Minneapolis I began sobbing again. Then I thought of David Sedaris’s bit about Youth in Asia and my sobs turned to manic laughter. Then, slowly, I pulled myself together to go home and face my daughter, and give her her first lesson in grief and loss.