Coping With Pet Loss

I was still grieving over the death of one of my young cats who had been run over the month before. It was the 19th of June when I kept hearing what sounded like a kitten crying outside. I looked out but couldn’t see anything. A few minutes later my husband was going outside and called me to come and see something.

When I went out there was nothing there and he said that it must have gone under the deck. I went down the steps and started looking and there was this little face looking out at me. I called to it and it came straight to me and let me pick it up. It, was a sweet little tortoise shell kitten, about 7-8 weeks old as far as I could tell. It purred and purred as I brought it into the house. Turned out it was a little female and my granddaughter wanted to call her Miss. Bigglesworth so that is what her name became.

A day or so later my husband was at Wal-Mart and rescued a lovely little black and white kitten about the same age that was running around the parking lot and nearly being run over. The end half of its tail was skinned raw and bloody. We called her sweet pea. The two kittens became fast friends through time and played and fought as only they could.

Six months later Biggles became sick, I didn’t realize at first but it finally became obvious. Sweet Pea insisted on being with her most of the time, she would wash her, love on her and curl up around her and sleep with her. It was Christmas time and I had to wait till the day after before I could get her to the vet and she took one look and said, “Oh my GOD, she has a disease.” After examining her she said that it was FIP which I had never heard of before. She then explained what it was and I was shocked, her little tummy had always been sort of bloated and she always had a smell of feces about her even her breath but I thought that maybe it was becuase of her long hair and using the litter box, getting some on her and cleaning herself afterwards.

The vet gave her antibiotics and vitamins and told me to bring her back in a week. That night she started breathing very harshly so I called the vet and was told to bring her in the next morning. The vet said that she could keep her and treat her and hope that she would improve. I became really sick myself and couldn’t go back to see her and she was there for six days.

My husband went down and checked on her and she was so bad off that he said he didn’t want her to suffer any more so they euthanized her. It broke my heart she was so happy and special. All you had to do was reach your hand towards her and she would purr so loud and so long. She was mischievious, loving and playful. When she jumped and ran it was like a combination of a squirrel, rabbit and cat. She would go with a hop, skip and a jump and would lie on the arm of my chair, turn her head, look at me, roll over and plop down either into my lap or beside me.

She would let others pet her but would be watching me all the time and as soon as she could she would come right to me and snuggle up to me. If she was doing something wrong and I would clap my hands and say, ah, ah, ah. Then she would drop down onto the floor, put her head down and cover her face with her paws. It was so cute and she seemed to be so knowing for such a little thing. Needless to say, I really miss that little kitten. She healed my heart when my Cosco was run over, then she stole my heart and broke it again when she left.