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The Chumblekitty

Anniversary

Today is the one-year anniversary of my coming to the Bridge.

Momma was surprised at my death. I don’t know why. I’d had medical crises, one after the other, for as long as she knew me. In fact, what killed me was an attempt to avert another medical crisis. I wasn’t absorbing my food as well as I should, and they thought it was due to a specific vitamin deficiency. So they had given me vitamin shots over the course of a few weeks, and I had always tolerated them well. A year ago, though, I felt woozy right after the shot. I wobbled around for a few minutes, and I am embarrassed to say that I lost control of my bladder and then my bowels. Right as the lights went out, I yelled for my Mom and reached for her.

Momma remembers that as the last time I spoke to her on earth.

Momma left me in the v#t’s care, and the v#t lady took me to her house overnight. When the v#t lady checked on me late Saturday night, I was alert and sitting on top of my carrier. When she found me very early Sunday morning, I had passed away. The whole time I knew my v#ts, I had confounded them with one medical puzzle after another, and this was one final hairball for them.

My favorite place in the whole world was lying next to Momma on her pillow at night, next to her face. Momma still keeps my ashes at the head of her bed, as close to her pillow as possible.

~

What have I learned in a year at the Bridge? I have learned that there really are butterfly trees, where butterflies come from. They are wonderful to watch. The birdies here come down and flit right in front of your face, but it’s just a game they’re playing with you. It’s fun for the kitties and for the birdies.

There are fields and fields of catnip here, inhabited by mouses who scamper just out of reach. Have you ever heard a mouse giggle?

Oh! I learned that I got my sight and my hearing back at the Bridge. I feel like a kitten again. I play, and climb trees, and there are lovely long naps in the sun. There is a milky stream by which a group of girl kitties and I sleep in a pile every day, in the cool shade of a good climbing tree. I always did like the ladies. Sometimes I wake up a little, and someone is washing my ears, and then sometimes I wake up and wash another kitty’s face. It really is lovely.

I learned, to my Mom’s great sorrow, that Catster doesn’t keep P-mails forever. We no longer have the P-mails that I wrote when I sang “Give Peeing a Chance”, or the day that they gave me too much pain medication, so was drunk, or even the day that I told everyone that I had gone to the Bridge.

I have come to realize how lucky my Mom and I were to have had each other for the brief time that we did. I know now how short life is, especially for us kitties. I am proud of the way that I loved her while I was on earth, and I am proud of the way that she loved and took care of me.

Please, kitties, love your Mommas and Daddies and famblies. And Mommas and Daddies, of course, love your kitties back. I wish I could say more, but there are things that you will know only when you have lived them: like the true joy of love, and the desolate pain of loss. God bless.