Kitties!

So this weeks Blogenning theme is on pets. Easy one for me. Since I was… born we have been owned by cats. Usually a lot of cats. I think we have had 13 at one time when we were living in New York. Insanity! We currently have five. Mew, Beast, Morgwen, Mr. Mistopheles, and Max (yeah… we like “M” names). But, obviously, not all of those cats were mine. My cat is the venerable Mew. Or Mu, depending on my mood. Mew was a cat that we rescued when my grandfathers neighbors called him after they have moved and said “By the way, the cat is still in the house, will you take him to the SPCA for us?” Yeah… fuck you tools. My grandfather called us, and we came and got the poor guy, scared and confused… And I he quickly became his my cat. I say my cat because he follows me around constantly, acts almost exactly like me… and is, in general, a prick (like me). So I’m he’s definitely his my human cat… He’s also the oldest cat we own currently.

Mew: "Okay, what do YOU want?"

I say this because we recently lost our “first” cat, and my mom’s baby, Mim. Short for Mad Madam Mim, and boy did she fit that name. “Oh, you’re petting me. That’s nice, I like that… Nevermind. *sounds of clawing and screams of pain*” She was feisty. And she was also over 20, which is pretty old for a cat – their average lifespan is only 12-16. We’ve always been very attached to our animals, so any passing is particularly difficult, but Mim’s was the worst of them all. We had belonged to her for over 20 years. That’s the majority of my life, and almost half of my mothers. I dare say that Mim’s passing hit us even harder than the passing of our Chow “Drusilla” several years ago (though, I was living in Boston for that luckily, so it didn’t hit me quite as hard as it did my mother).

Mim: "We are not amused."

If we discover the key to immortality I am entirely in favor of granting it to our pets before ourselves… Trust me, when Mew goes I will not be… happy for quite some time.

One thing that has always stuck me particularly interesting though is the grieving period. We grieve differently for animals than we do for humans. Personally I grieve longer. I’ve always felt a closer connection with my pets than with most of the people that have come in and out of my life. Obviously, none of my immediate family or friends have passed, so this is difficult to gauge, but I’ve always been particularly susceptible to my pets. So it’s interesting to observe other people grieving for their pets, and when they hit the point that they are able to be enslaved by a new master pet. Is there a proper period? Does it differ between different type of pets? People tend to be “closer” to dogs and cats than other animals, but does that change anything? It’s a very interesting phenomenon to observe…

Ahhhh but this is depressing, so I leave you with a pallet cleanser to lift your mood. Face-melting cuteness!

That's right... try and escape this black hole of cute.

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