{"id":13,"date":"2008-01-02T17:10:48","date_gmt":"2008-01-03T00:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2016-02-13T00:34:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T07:34:01","slug":"a-cat-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"“A cat has died.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tabla<\/p>\n

That’s what my son said as we laid our old cat’s body into the ground, wrapped in a towel. \u00c2\u00a0My son is always conducting these role-playing games, where he tells you what to say and what the scenario is. He’s just 5 years old, \u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0didn’t want to see Tabla’s body. \u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t want to know that Tabla had died. \u00c2\u00a0When we told him, he ran away and said “Why did you tell me that?”. \u00c2\u00a0I can relate. \u00c2\u00a0I didn’t want to think too much about it either — it reminded me very surely that I will die one day, and my son will most likely have to deal with it. \u00c2\u00a0I watched Tabla slowly get old and feeble, eventually toothless, incontinent and deaf. \u00c2\u00a0His former self diminished. \u00c2\u00a0Will I be like that? \u00c2\u00a0I’d like to think that I’ll be a sprightly old codger, but considering the abuse my body has recieved, courtesy of myself, I wonder. \u00c2\u00a0 Hold me over the litterbox — I gotta go.<\/p>\n

We all knew it was coming. We were lucky, as he (the cat) had gone missing a few weeks ago, and we found him. \u00c2\u00a0He knew that his time was coming to an end, but I don’t think he wanted to go. \u00c2\u00a0He tried to rally. \u00c2\u00a0We had a few nights where he was perky and he even seemed to enjoy a salmon dinner we shared with him (his favorite food). \u00c2\u00a0But in the end, he couldn’t walk or get up, and eventually lay there on the couch, just breathing. \u00c2\u00a0I knew it was his last night, and stayed with him for a while.. \u00c2\u00a0When I woke the following morning, our other cat, mostly feral, was sitting with Tabla’s body, and let me pet him for a while. \u00c2\u00a0I know he’ll miss his friend too.<\/p>\n

We buried him with rosemary and lavender flowers, on the hill behind our house. Saying goodbye as the sun went down in the ocean.\u00c2\u00a0That night, as I lay in bed, I imagined Tabla stretching out and into the sky. \u00c2\u00a0A cat-shaped outline filled with cat joys, like fresh green spring oaxalis, fish and mice, sunshine and warm fur. \u00c2\u00a0His spirit released, becoming once again the wild, bright shining Cat that he was. \u00c2\u00a0Expanding …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s what my son said as we laid our old cat’s body into the ground, wrapped in a towel. \u00c2\u00a0My son is always conducting these role-playing games, where he tells you what to say and what the scenario is. He’s just 5 years old, \u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0didn’t want to see Tabla’s body. \u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.alienoverlord.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}