There are times in everyone’s life when something happens that marks a boundary…when things will never be as they were; when things are going to be different. They can be joyous or sad. At those boundary points, I’ve noticed something…. …when they happen to me, I’ve found myself completely present. ‘Life’ stops and everything is accentuated and clear. Blue skies, the mortar in the brickwork, the cobwebs, the coldness of the floor tiles, the sound of the sway of the branches of the trees, the chattering neighbours, the buzzing of the bluebottles. I can hear and see everything. None of these things know what’s happening…none of them know that Troy the cat is about to die…Troy does not know…only I know.
Troy is not concerned with what is going to happen, nor what has happened – he’s always in the present. I will be concerned with not having his warm body to cuddle, his soft black fur to stroke, his conversation; grooming him at his ‘brushing station’ (my desk). I will be remembering the big kitten playing hide and seek with me, chasing up and down the garden, his company wherever we are in the house or garden, finding him asleep outside our bedroom; being woken by him trying to turn the handle of the bedroom door; me closing the front entrance door after finding he had opened it…
Troy is only in the now…where I am now. We are together… and I can attend to him and try to comfort him. I can clean his rheumy eyes and shade him from the sun…as he has dragged himself to the coir mat at the back door and lain down outside (as dying cats seem to do). And with the occasional weak and plaintive mew, we are waiting.
Troy: 1.6.96 – 20.7.17
jx
‘Fat Boy’ Troy 2009 – flattering ‘over-the-shoulder’ pose
Troy’s garden and burial place
Ain't we got it made? 
What a beautiful post about your sweet kitty. So sorry for your loss.
Thank you Janis.