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Goodbye, Horace
Jan. 10th, 2017 08:42 pmHorace died today. I came home from work and found him lying on the floor in the living room behind the couch (it's not against a wall, so I didn't find him in a weird hidden place or anything). I could tell as soon as I saw him. There's so much I'd want to say right now that it's difficult to say any of it. How much I love him. How much I know he loved me. How thankful I am for the nearly a year of life and quality time I got with him after he started getting sick. The past couple days his health has seemed just a little bit worse, but it hasn't been very long and he didn't seem terribly bad off. So I don't think his downturn was as bad as it could have been. I hope it wasn't. I hope he went peacefully. Mary Beth said he was very cuddly in the morning. If I had known he was going to die today, of course I would have wanted to spend more time with him last night, but I've spent a lot of time with him...most of the time, for all these days and months and years. But even though you know he's sick and towards the end, you still take it for granted that he'll just keep going. We wrapped him in a blanked he loved with a toy he loved (I guess, he never was as much into toys as Trudy is...but it was a little mouse and he'd usually kick it with his back paws if you dropped it on him) in a box he loved (I mean, I guess he loved all boxes being a cat and all).
The first awkward thing is that I had a deployment tonight. Less than an hour after I found him I had to be on a call for work. At least I had time to pull myself together to do what little I had to do for that. The second awkward thing is that I called the vet about taking his body to be disposed. I had googled the number (I should just have it saved on my phone, but I don't 'cuz I usually just google it) and pushed the call button and talked to someone and they said they just became an after-hours emergency clinic so I could drop him off and someone would call me in the morning about it. So after the work call, Mary Beth and I went up there and it was dark but I called and talked to someone to let them know we're there. And I waited and no one came out after a few minutes. And pulled up the search on my phone and realized I had called the wrong vet. I'd googled Grace but for some reason Central's number came up first in the search. Their greeting didn't sound quite right but I wasn't in the mindset to pay enough attention to notice. So they're not now an emergency clinic and we took him back home. I'll just have to go back in the morning. For now he's sitting by the window in the front porch, a place he definitely loved.
The first awkward thing is that I had a deployment tonight. Less than an hour after I found him I had to be on a call for work. At least I had time to pull myself together to do what little I had to do for that. The second awkward thing is that I called the vet about taking his body to be disposed. I had googled the number (I should just have it saved on my phone, but I don't 'cuz I usually just google it) and pushed the call button and talked to someone and they said they just became an after-hours emergency clinic so I could drop him off and someone would call me in the morning about it. So after the work call, Mary Beth and I went up there and it was dark but I called and talked to someone to let them know we're there. And I waited and no one came out after a few minutes. And pulled up the search on my phone and realized I had called the wrong vet. I'd googled Grace but for some reason Central's number came up first in the search. Their greeting didn't sound quite right but I wasn't in the mindset to pay enough attention to notice. So they're not now an emergency clinic and we took him back home. I'll just have to go back in the morning. For now he's sitting by the window in the front porch, a place he definitely loved.
