beaxbee

thank you marty. i appreciate your kind words more than i can express. i love what you said about “grief overload”. i am also mourning the loss of a grandfather that passed about a month ago, and while his passing was expected and i made peace with it a while ago, i think i am experiencing some of the grief of his passing with my little lola and the rest of my babies. i have painted little portraits of both darla and dexter when they passed, and i know that once i have the strength to i can paint one of my lola.

at this time last year, i had 3 pets. a dog named darla, and two cats named dexter and lola. we adopted them all in 2008. dexter and lola came first. darla then came along a few months later. darla was diagnosed with diabetes on 2015. we had a few close calls but with regular insulin shots and the right food, she was happy. the diabetes did start taking a toll on her small body slowly- as she started to go blind and had the occasional rare seizure, and finally last september her body couldn’t take it anymore and we had to make the difficult decision to put her down at the age of 11. at the time i felt very guilty, but overtime i felt happy that we kept her happy and healthy for the five years she had diabetes. i grieved so heavy though, we had just moved into a new apartment and i felt all the stress and the grief come together. i had just hoped that this was the last time in a while that i would feel this way. i still had my beautiful cats to give me comfort. dexter would not leave me alone as i cried. demanding pets and making sure i was ok. i felt so lucky to have him. dexter started to lose weight a couple of years earlier, and started peeing on furniture, which concerned us. but after a few vet visits and the addition of a new litter box, dexter returned to normal. fast forward to april 2020. we notice that he’s looking very shaggy, is very lethargic, and losing more weight. we took him to the vet, and after a few tests they find cancer in his stomach. after he came home from the vet, suddenly he just deteriorated. he still ate but would throw up, couldnt stand up for more than a minute, and started peeing everywhere bc he couldnt make it to his litterbox. the day after we found out that there was nothing we could do, we let him sleep. he was 12- going on 13. it hurt but i knew it was time for him. i was just grateful to still have my lola. lola was my baby, she and i were bonded. lola was happy and didn’t seem to notice that her brother was gone. she was a little more clingy and would want to be around everyone- especially if they were in the kitchen and would probably give her some treats. a little unlike her as she was always overshadowed in personality by her brother dexter and liked to keep to herself. we chalked this change up to her just being alone for the first time in her life. then about a week ago she started showing signs of nausea. she was also bloated and didn’t poop very much. we just thought she was backed up and took her to the vet, thinking it was nothing too crazy. my sister sent me a text that she had a mass near her bladder, that was growing quickly. when i got that text, the room spun. i collapsed on the floor. i was not expecting it and it was the biggest blow i ever got. i really thought nothing was wrong and she was just having some age related bathroom issues. much like dexter, lola deteriorated after she came home from the vet. she was different from dexter in that she was still using her litterbox, but she stopped eating and hid from us. at first we thought it was just her being grumpy from going to the vet, but after the second day of her not eating and hiding, we knew we might have to say goodbye to her sooner than we hoped. she started constantly throwing up. she seemed interested in food but then would not take it after she sniffed it. it was heartbreaking to see her not eat when i know she really wanted to. yesterday she could barely walk because she was so weak, and we decided we couldn’t prolong this anymore. we had to say goodbye,4 months to the day we said goodbye to her brother. i was in complete denial. i convinced myself that if she just ate she would feel so much better and that if we put her down we would just never know. but the mass in her stomach was not letting her. i am especially devastated by this loss because i can’t help feeling like there was more we could do. could we have maybe tried a little harder to make her eat? it’s just insane to me that this time last week i had what i thought was a happy healthy kitty and now she’s just gone. now the house feels so empty without my babies. i’m experiencing heartbreak like i never had before. was this all bad luck or something we did wrong? these thoughts are really driving me insane and i can’t find relief.