dixie

I knew this day would come but I didn't realise it would be this hard.

Today is the day we put my cat down.

For all intensive purposes, she is already dead. We didn't think (and secretly hoped) that she would make it through the night, but there she is, wrapped up in a blanket, in a box, on my couch, with her eyes open, a little drop of spit at the corner of her mouth, her chest rising and falling rather quickly, with each shallow breath, and her little heart just won't stop beating. There is nothing there though. Her brain is gone. She didn't close her eyes all night. I don't think she can. She's gone, but her body just won't give up.

I can't stop crying.

We got Dixie when I was eight. My dad loaded my brother and I into the car to go to "GBS" (Gibsons Building Supplies), but that was just a cover up. He drove us up a little dirt road to a building I had never seen before.
"Where are we daddy?", we asked as he told us to get out of the car.
"Just go inside.", he replied and pushed us through the door.

Our jaws dropped as we walked into a room filled with cats. One of these was going to be ours! I walked right away to the kittens. One in particular who was black and white named Rascal. I thought it was adorable. Rascal. I wanted to take him home.
"Hold on Mikhaila. Lets look around a little bit first." Dad said, and that's when Dixie caught his eye. Or his sweater rather. She reached right out of her cage and latched her claws onto his arm. You could practically see the sparks.

She was a one year old tabby and from the moment we took her home, she was my dad's cat.

You couldn't have given my family a better cat. She never peed anywhere, never had a bad case of fleas, she rarely used her kitty litter instead prefering to use the outdoors. She never once left our property and spent all her years exploring on our land. We could leave her for weeks at a time, with a pile of food in the kitchen and her cat door unlocked, and she was fine. As she got a little older, she started puking occasionally. Usually on the stairs, or on the concrete basement floor. Once in my room. And she always has had runny eyes. But we still loved her. She never went senile. Up until friday night, she didn't even seem old. She was the perfect cat.

I've never had to do this before. She has been my one and only pet. Whenever I've had friends in this situation, I've never really had much sympathy, thinking to myself "it's just a cat.". But this is the saddest, hardest thing I've had to go through. Other than, of course, the loss of my grandmother. Although, my grandma died when I was 16, and we've had Dixie for just as long. She was almost more a part of my life than my Grandmother was. It's strange to think that an animal can become so much a part of your family.

One of the things I look forward to most about coming home, is walking up to my house from the bus, back pack in hand, and seeing Dixie rolling around on the sand path that leads to our basement door. She did this, I think, to scratch her back, and she loved it. She would see me coming up the drive, and run towards me, meow, and rub against my leg. I'm going to miss that. I always worried that she would forget me when I moved out. But she never did. Even when I didn't see her for almost a year.

And so, on this beautiful summer's day, July 12th, 2009, we say goodbye to a member of the Searle-Mounsey clan.

Dixie Cat.

Age 17.

We love you, and you will be sorely missed.

Bye baby.