this day.

This day, with its sunshine and bird song and warm breezes, is a lovely one.  This day is an unexpected Monday at home with the family for The Mister.  This day began with mediocre coffee and chattering babies and the regular foot-stomping about the regular things.

This day finds us with one less family member.  And I cringe as I am typing, because I never thought of myself as one of Those People who would be crying about a pet.  It's embarrassing, in a way, but more than that, I'm embarrassed that I'm embarrassed.  

We have three cats.  Well, now we have two cats, and one buried beneath the apple tree.  Two were mine, that I brought here when I moved home from Ohio.  They were brothers, I found them at the animal shelter, curled up in a tight ball in the corner of their litter pan.  How could I have adopted just one of them?  I couldn't.  I didn't.

We called him Fat Jake.  Once, Miss O wanted me to draw pictures of the cats with sidewalk chalk, and write their names.  So I did, in HUGE.BLOCK.LETTERS.  Sully.  Sebastian.  Fat Jake.  A neighbor walked by and her eyes practically bulged out of her head when she saw the ginormous FAT JAKE on the sidewalk, because another of our neighbors was, coincidentally, both named Jake, and rather obese.  Anyway.

He had been losing weight, and was sleeping all the time.  We tried to help him feel better, gain weight, stop vomiting.  But he wasted away.  And this day was the day.  This day he is buried under the boughs of the apple tree, the place where he would spend every pleasant afternoon.

My babies' hearts broke in a million gazillion pieces.  I don't want my kitty to die!  I want him to be with me!  I hate vets!  I want the vet to die!  And the tears, and the red cheeks and the puffy eyes and the sad.  Oh, the sad.  The saddest of sads.

I want Jake to stay.  I wish he could stay.  Why did he have to get sick?  Why did he have to die?  I really want my kitty.   But I don't want him to die.  I really want kitty.  I didn't want him to die.  I don't want him to die.  I want my kitty back.

Me too, baby, me too.