Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Day We Met

One of the most important memories I have of Kallie is the day I took her home. I was just eleven when I found her. I'd been asking for a cat for months but we had a dove. The deal was I had to find a home for the dove before I had a cat -which worked fine. We had a guy doing repairs on our house and he was in love with her anyway so voila. My mom lined up a breeder to get me a Himalayan, had first choice and everything. However, in April we saw an ad for free kittens and decided to take a look.


We drove to the guys house and in this man's garage was a bunch of little kittens roaming around. Not quite a safe environment for little kittens but that's where she was. This...little mite approached me and rubbed against my leg. She was cute, even with the small body and oversized ears (and I do mean oversized). I picked her up,our eyes met, she snuggled into me.


It was instant love. It was like at that moment our souls met and I knew we had to be together. I know it probably sounds strange but we connected from the moments her beautiful eyes met mine. Any thought of having a Himalayan left my head at that moment. I wanted her.


When we brought her home, I kept her in my room with me so we got to know each other better. I can remember patiently putting her back on my bed so she'd learn to sleep there, and I remember watching her play with our Yorkies (two hyper dogs plus one psycho kitten=lots of fun). She was just beautiful to me though some might have preferred the purebred. But then. she was mine, our souls were linked.

I'll be the first to admit my beliefs aren't orthodox. I'm not quite Christian but I don't know if I'm quite Pagan either. I believe in Jesus and his death on the cross for sin. But I also believe that we have spirit guides, that the world is nature balanced, that magic exists for the practitioner to handle. I believe Kallie was there to guide me, that time in my life and the years to follow were difficult for me. As a little girl, Kallie gave me the stability I didn't really have as my father had left us and only saw us occasionally (when it suited him.).  But it didn't matter, because at the end of the day I had my girl, when I felt lost, she found me. I never had to feel alone with her. I will swear to my dying day that the first day we met, and our souls connected she knew that I didn't just want her.

I needed her. 

I needed her like I needed my mom, my brother, my grandparents. The difference was that she could listen without interrupting, that she listened without doing anything but looking into my eyes patiently waiting for me to rub her ears or her chin.


The first few days together are forever in my memory, including when I put her in the laundry basket and frantically called my friends in off the street so they could look at her.  At the time I think I felt that I had gotten what I'd been begging for for months, but deep down, I knew I had found something much deeper. I had my best friend.

My girl.

An introduction

So hello to everyone who ends up reading this. As you can see from the title this is my blog about losing a pet. It isn't meant to be any sort of guide telling you how to deal with your loss or potential loss. I'm not going to make false promises or color anything over for anyone's sake. I didn't make this to help other people initially but in a way, I hope it will help someone who has or is going to lose a pet.

What this blog is, is a way for me to cope with losing my best friend. She died February 2010 after only 9 1/2 years together. I've cried more over her the last two months then the months after her death. Maybe grief kept me from crying-a sort of shock or denial. Maybe it wasn't real. Or maybe now the weight of it is so heavy on my soul that I'v realized how difficult life is without her. Whatever the reason is, this blog is for me to write my feelings and while I didn't make it to help other people, maybe it will. Maybe other people can read this and realize they aren't alone in their feelings. Some people I know just think "oh well it was only a cat."

only a cat.

Not just a cat though. My cat. My girl.

It's too hard to talk about losing her, I do better writing.

I suppose I'll say a little about me. I'm a university student, I'll be a teacher in a few years. I'm musically inclined and I speak French too.I own an online business with my mom and I have the best boyfriend in the world.  However, most importantly I'm an animal lover.

My best friend, Kallie, died in February from liver failure brought on by constant bouts of Cat Flu (which she initially caught at the vets when I went to give her her vaccinations to keep her healthy-how ironic). I will swear to my dying day their lack of care in the sanitary department is why she's gone now.  The grief of her loss has left an empty place in my soul which I hope to mend (at least a little) here.

So, without further rambling, I'll sign off for now and hope that this venture helps me and whomever ends up reading this.