Here I am, on another Friday afternoon mere minutes before I leave work and the weekend starts. I keep trying to find time to write and can never seem to find it these days as work has been pretty busy.
I have some pretty sad news to share. Last Wednesday night on February 1st, our family cat, Spooky, passed away. He was 13.5 years old and he had been on the decline for a while. He had lost a lot of weight and was practically just fur and bones, though his black fluffy fur disguised just how skinny he was. Petting him was like petting a skeleton. :(
The day he died, my mom had to babysit Max (her grandson, my nephew), so she let Spooky outside to enjoy the day as it was unseasonably warm and spring-like. My mom got home around 5 and called for him to come inside, and she said he let out a sad, desperate meow, indicating that he couldn't get up and that she needed to get him. Her heart dropped as she kind of knew this might be it as he had stopped eating the last couple of days. She got one of her fluffiest bathrobes and went outside and gathered him up in it. She sat with him petting him for a long time and he even purred for her. She let him know that it was going to be okay. She then put him in a box in her bathroom, still wrapped up in her bathrobe, to give him some space. She didn't know what he might do in his final moments as she had a childhood cat that lept straight in the air and yowled when it died. She went to check on Spooky a little bit later around 8:30 pm and he wasn't breathing. She covered him in her bathrobe and moved the box to one of the bedrooms as it was too dark and late to bury him outside.
The next day, my mom texted my brother-in-law, who immediately came over and buried Spooky. My mom wanted Spooky to keep her bathrobe, so my brother-in-law wrapped him up tight in some kind of military fold and buried him 4 feet down with a fake rose my mom found in the house. My mom then messaged us all on Facebook messenger that our beloved Spooky was gone. I was at work and immediately called her and began crying. We all loved Spooky. He was a great pet and will be greatly missed.
Even though I haven't lived with Spooky in a long time, he's been in all of our lives since 2009. We actually rescued Spooky twice. In July 2009, my mom and her friend were going through the CVS drive-thru when they heard a kitten meowing. My mom's friend jumped out of the car and pulled out baby kitten Spooky from under the air conditioning unit. Even though he was so little and cute, we couldn't keep him at the time as we already had a full-grown orange tabby cat, Smiley, who would not have taken kindly to a new kitten in his midst. My aunt Kathy's cat had just died, so we took baby kitty Spooky up to her to make her feel better. Then, in September 2010, my cat Smiley died and a week later in early October 2010, my aunt Kathy died. So, we were catless and Spooky was humanless, and that's how we came back together for the second time. He's been in our lives and our cat since October 2010. He was meant to be ours.
What's so strange is I visited my mom this past weekend right after Spooky passed and I was in the bathroom where Spooky died when a legit rainbow appeared on the floor in the exact spot he had died. Y'all have heard of the Rainbow Bridge, right? It's where all pets go when they pass and they wait for us when it's our turn to go. Seeing the rainbow was like a little message from Spooky saying that he was alright and that he had made it to the Rainbow Bridge. I told my mom and sisters that there was a rainbow on the floor where Spooky died and they ran to look. They both teared up and my mom said a rainbow has never appeared on the floor like that before.
My mom has especially taken Spooky's loss hard as they had spent all day, every day together from the time she retired in May 2016 until September 2022, when my mom began babysitting Max. They would have "cat and coffee" time in the morning and he would just sit in her lap all day. I know my mom will miss him a lot.
3:33 p.m. - Friday, Feb. 10, 2023