A Sad Blog

Hi All.

Today I am finally writing the blog that I have been putting off for almost two weeks now. As you may know, Hubby and I took a two week cruise to Alaska recently and left our two babies (Q-Tip and Miss Cleo, our kitties) in the very competent hands of two wonderful people. Our neighbor was taking the first shift of cat sitting with a good friend of mine taking the last four days - when Neighbor's vacation overlapped ours.

Both of these people have watched our kitties before with good results. The cats have always been happy and healthy when we returned home. True, the cats didn't always make appearances for the cat sitters but, they always came out the other end none the worse for wear.

This time, however, was a bit different.

This time, our beloved little boy, Q-Tip, not only didn't make an appearance, he died. Neighbor was in charge at the time and when she didn't see Q-Tip she went looking - as always. Normally he hunkers under our bed so she looked there first. She saw something she thought was the cat but it didn't move so . . . she thought she must be mistaken and kept looking.

After a thorough check of all the other hiding places, Neighbor returned again to the bed. This time she looked closer and yes, it was Q-Tip. And no, he wasn't moving. Being a real soft hearted woman, neighbor sort of freaked out. She waited until her husband came home and they investigated again.

Yes, our little boy had passed away.

Neighbor and her husband took care of things and took our baby to the vet's for safe keeping until we got home. They also emailed us to let us know what had happened. This was quite a shock to all of us as Q-Tip was only eight years old and in good health - as far as we knew. He had been to the vet not too long before our vacation and everything was fine.

Hubby and I had a really, really bad night on the cruise after reading that email. We are still having some bad times but are slowly getting better. We are spending a lot of time with Miss Cleo, our remaining kitty, who is missing her brother too.

It is really sad to write about my baby and to remember that he isn't here. I still look around the house at times expecting to see him sitting there watching me. Yesterday I worked upstairs on my podcasts and missed Q-Tip intensely. Normally he would have been right there on the desk next to me the whole time with his fuzzy little belly and insanely long whiskers.

We did talk to the vet when we returned from our cruise and he said that he wasn't sure what had happened. Nothing seemed wrong. He did say that it might have been heart problems. At least he assured us that Q-Tip didn't suffer and that he probably passed away quickly and quietly.

As I type this I find my eyes tearing up as I remember how funny and sweet Q-Tip was. He was our "gentle giant" and we will always remember him.

When does it stop hurting?

Trisha