A Smattering of Ignorance

I haven't even been able to bring myself to post about it until now, but last week, I lost my beloved kitty Morpheus. It was completely unexpected, which has made it ten times worse for me. One moment he was fine, and the next, he had a sudden blood clot that blocked his back legs and left him in excruciating pain. I rushed him to the emergency vet, but apparently in cases like this, there's almost nothing to be done. They gave him a strong pain killer and just let me hold him and hold him until it was time. Even though he was scared and drugged and in pain, he only wanted to be in my arms. I held him all the way through to the end. I've been completely lost ever since.

I rescued him as a kitten when he was only 8 weeks old. It was the summer before me senior year of university, and my roommates and I were grilling in our front yard. He was a stray little thing in all sorts of distress, and he was so hungry, he attacked our grill. I scooped him up, and even though I was a big, strange human, he cuddled right into me. For eleven years, he was the world to me. He was one of the sweetest, most affectionate cats I have ever met in my life. He loved people, he loved to socialize, and he loved to cuddle. He slept with me at night and hung out on my lap constantly. He loved nothing more than to be held like a baby, or sandwiched between two people who were both snuggling him. He was a cat that managed to win the hearts of even non-cat lovers. He was a talker, meowing at me all the time, often in hilarious ways. And he had a completely bizarre habit of humping a stuffed dog whenever he got really worked up, even though he was fixed as a kitten.

My friends have been super supportive, my roommate was with me the whole time it happened, and even my coworkers have mostly been extremely kind to me. But the last couple days have been extremely difficult. There all these giant holes in my life where he used to be. It's hard to sleep without him, and the house feels very empty all the time. He used to always come running to meet me at the door when I got home, so every time I have to walk in that door now, it hurts. If nothing else, he was certainly a cat who knew that he was loved, but right now, it's hard not to spend all my time curled up crying.

This is probably my all-time favorite picture of him. He was curled up on my bed next to me making this sweet face, and I actually manged to get a good shot (hard to do with black cats sometimes).