Wyl Staedtler
Jul 31st, 2008, 08:31:41 PM
Last night we lost one of our furry family members. Those of you who know me know that I work with animals and have a compulsion to rescue them. We're not lacking pets - but Nox was my unequivocal favourite. He was just a plain old black tomcat but his personality was off the charts.
A lady found him near a bank ATM when he was a little under four weeks old, scrawny and anemic from fleas. She brought him into the clinic and I immediately volunteered to take him - something about his little face just wouldn't allow anything else. The vet said it was touch-and-go whether he'd live, being so young and sickly, but Nox turned out to be quite the little fighter.
Over the first month or so, he took over our hearts and made them his own personal playground. He was 10 parts play and 1 part sleep (that part, the sleeping part, always being done stretched out on his back with his paws in the air, or stretched along my chest, or flopped the page of whatever magazine I was trying to read.) He went from weighing next to nothing and fitting in the palm of my hand, to a twenty-five pound behemoth whose good moods were only seemingly bestowed on me (and Rhys, when he was born.) He had more-or-less become the heartbeat of our furry household by the time he died in my arms last night. It was an accident, and I'll just short out my laptop with tears if I try to tell you about it, so I'll leave it at that. But I'm dying a little here, and there's a Nox-shaped hole in my heart.
One thing for sure, Nox knew he was loved. I've never met a living creature so convinced that the world turned on a singular axis of him. He was indulged and pampered and spoiled in ways he repaid with hilarity and the kind of inviolable devotion only a trusting child can offer without expectation of due return. Even in death, he was the heart of us, and he knew it.
I buried him last night at the beach. It's a pretty spot, under some palm trees , and I suspect he is having far more fun somewhere safe from the fickle hand of freak accidents than he ever had here ... although how that rare, intrepid soul could possibly have more fun than he made of my life is one of those foundational disjunctions between hope and belief that defies the heart to reconcile.
His two feline-buddies, Morrissey and Yams, are grieving with the rest of us, uncertain what has become of their big leader and mercifully spared a full understanding of what happened and why. They only know he isn't here to pester them, and they miss him ... as do we all.
The universe seems like a dark place at the moment. :(
A lady found him near a bank ATM when he was a little under four weeks old, scrawny and anemic from fleas. She brought him into the clinic and I immediately volunteered to take him - something about his little face just wouldn't allow anything else. The vet said it was touch-and-go whether he'd live, being so young and sickly, but Nox turned out to be quite the little fighter.
Over the first month or so, he took over our hearts and made them his own personal playground. He was 10 parts play and 1 part sleep (that part, the sleeping part, always being done stretched out on his back with his paws in the air, or stretched along my chest, or flopped the page of whatever magazine I was trying to read.) He went from weighing next to nothing and fitting in the palm of my hand, to a twenty-five pound behemoth whose good moods were only seemingly bestowed on me (and Rhys, when he was born.) He had more-or-less become the heartbeat of our furry household by the time he died in my arms last night. It was an accident, and I'll just short out my laptop with tears if I try to tell you about it, so I'll leave it at that. But I'm dying a little here, and there's a Nox-shaped hole in my heart.
One thing for sure, Nox knew he was loved. I've never met a living creature so convinced that the world turned on a singular axis of him. He was indulged and pampered and spoiled in ways he repaid with hilarity and the kind of inviolable devotion only a trusting child can offer without expectation of due return. Even in death, he was the heart of us, and he knew it.
I buried him last night at the beach. It's a pretty spot, under some palm trees , and I suspect he is having far more fun somewhere safe from the fickle hand of freak accidents than he ever had here ... although how that rare, intrepid soul could possibly have more fun than he made of my life is one of those foundational disjunctions between hope and belief that defies the heart to reconcile.
His two feline-buddies, Morrissey and Yams, are grieving with the rest of us, uncertain what has become of their big leader and mercifully spared a full understanding of what happened and why. They only know he isn't here to pester them, and they miss him ... as do we all.
The universe seems like a dark place at the moment. :(