They don't teach this...
People are hard for me. Pets are not. I can't offend my pets with the stupid things that I say or do. Pets are happy to see me no matter what. I feel like I shouldn't be this sad for a cat. Like more than I am when a human is sick and dies. I feel stupid because I can't stop crying. I feel stupid that my stomach hurts. I feel stupid because I'm about to write a long blog about my cat. But that's the thing about a pet. They don't now that I'm stupid. They don't know that feelings are confusing to me. They are basic like me. They don't know what's normal, so they are fine either way. So, I'll just ramble for a bit. I apologize. Maybe this will make me feel better. Maybe worse. I don't know. I just don't now what else to do with this.
I don't know where to start...
So I guess I'll start from the beginning. I want to get this down while it's fresh. While I still remember. My memory is sketchy at best, so it's best to get it down.
12 years of Morpheus has seen: 6 boyfriends (1 became my husband), 3 step-minions, 5 houses. 6 other pets (all still alive!), 2 family deaths, 7 jobs, the end of my 20s, the entirety of my 30s, and the start of my 40s.
I got Morpheus when he was only a few weeks old. He was a barn kitten that a friend gave to a boyfriend of mine, who in turn gave him to me. He was the first of my "menagerie". The original gangster.
He was so tiny. He couldn't do much yet. I had to feed him kitten formula with a syringe and wipe his little butt with wet paper towel to make him go potty. Like his mom would. I know that sounds gross, but it was what it was. He was so tiny. Those giant blue eyes where just...too much.
The thing about Morpheus, is he was so...him.
He knew his name and would come when you said it...sometimes. When he was younger, he would sit on counters and wait for you to walk by so he could swipe at you. For the first few years I had him, he never made a sound, until one day I opened a can of wet food for the first time and he started meowing. He only meowed for wet food. Otherwise he was silent. When I first got Dakota, he would pee in her crate every night until I also let him sleep in the bedroom. He always wanted to be in the same room as you but didn't want you to hold him. He took every move in stride. He hated New Jersey, because he was such a cranky bastard when I lived there but once I moved to Indiana, he turned all nice (ok, more like not as much of a bastard). He loved Brian. I didn't think he could purr until I met Brian when Morpheus was 4. For brian, he became a lap cat. He just started jumping up on Brian's lap and purring. He never did that before.
He didn't catch mice. He would sit on the top of his cat tower and watch Fat Cat catch mice. Like he was too good for that peasant stuff. Let others catch his mice for him. He would run out the front door, run down the driveway, and then just roll and purr on the sidewalk. It was one of his favorite "games". Mostly at night, when he blended into the dark. Mostly when you couldn't find your shoes nearby. He occasionally would try to murder me by getting under my feet. He spent 10 years trying to escape, until he was finally successful in January of 2016. He'd only got away one other time right after I had moved to Indy, but that was only for a couple of days. That January, he was gone for 3 weeks. And then he just turned up one day, skinny and sniffling, but otherwise just fine. From then on, he was a much nicer cat. He snuggled more and purred more. He must have seen things in that 3 weeks that let him know that his life could be worse then living with us.
Since we got Queso, Morph jumped onto the bed every morning to purr and snuggle with the dog. It was the strangest friendship, but it worked. If he wanted to be fed in the rmorning, he would paw everything off my nightstand until I woke up. At night, he would sit in front of the TV and block it if he wanted food. He liked to sit in the highest spots in the house. His spots. The other cats seem to avoid those spots.
Now I'm just listing stuff he did because I don't want to forget him. How grumpy he always seemed. How he purred so loudly in the morning, it would wake you up. How he would lick my arm until there was a rug burn like wound. How green his eyes where. They were blue when he was a baby. They became green as he grew up. So green.
I wish...
I wish that I had know that last time he snuggled the puppy, that it was the last time. Or the last time that I fed him and he came running at the sound that it was the last time. Or the last time he meowed that it was the last time. I wish I had known he was sick. I wish that he could have told me. I wish that there was something I could have done about it.
Morpheus was the first pet in my "menagerie". He's the first that was mine. He is the first that I've had to lose in my adult life. He's the first I had to decide to send to the farm. He's the longest I've had a pet. 12 years. 30% of my life. That's a lot longer than most people I've known.
I know I did the right thing today. There might have been other things that we could have done to extend his life, but those would have been for us, not him. He wasn't eating, wasn't going to the bathroom, barely moving and coughing up stuff. I got to be with him when he went to sleep for the last time. I got to pet him and hold him. He was so soft. He was always so soft. He was purring. I hope because he knew that we were there and we loved him and because he wasn't hurting.
Today is not my favorite.
