Wednesday After

Months later, I'm finally able to arrange my thoughts from the week that Penny died. I wrote things down as a big blob from day to day just so I wouldn't forget, but couldn't bear to actually write anything. Here are my thoughts from Wednesday, April 3 (the day after):

I got to work at 10ish. I sort of wasn't there most of the day because I was in my head. It felt like I was in a dream, still consumed with sadness. I couldn't talk to anyone about what had happened...too soon. When I got home I crashed on couch. Arthur joined me and was very clingy and seemed super sad, confused, and lonely. He pressed himself into me, melting into my side and nestling himself under my arm. He kneaded me like a kitten and put his head on my shoulder so his little heart was against mine.

Neil and I both bought flowers independently of each other -- I bought white lilies, Neil pink roses.

We watched an old video of Pen as kitten...meeting Arthur (maybe for the first time), jumping onto the bathroom counter and discovering her reflection in the mirror, wildly chasing her favorite feather toy, etc. It was quite helpful to see her again, and to remember what she was like before her arthritis kept her from jumping and chasing, and long before the tumor was there. Arthur seemed to see her on the screen...he never watches tv, but he did watch her. It seemed to make him sad...I don't know why I think that...his eyes just looked empty somehow.

Arthur has no interest in leaving the northern half of the apartment (the farthest distance from where she died and from our bedroom, which had really become Penny's territory). He goes to our bedroom to use litter box, but otherwise stays out of her spots entirely.

Today was a day for guilt. Guilt over the thought that we might have been able to prevent this whole thing had we done a real biopsy in 2008 like the surgeon in Louisville suggested, even if it wasn't the radical surgery. If it wasn't actually cancer until more recently, as the surgeon in Indy suspected, we might have prevented it. Though, the mammary tumor might have still appeared and who knows how quickly that may have spread before we even found it. I wished I had saved some of her beautiful, soft fur. I wish I hadn't tried to move her into the sunbeam -- she never liked being picked up, and me picking her up made her needlessly and horrifically sick -- but at the same time, that told us that there was no turning back. That was clearly the turning point, and it was a horrible, tragic moment I made her go through, despite my best intentions.

The outside world is slowly creeping back in, and this, too, makes me feel guilty. I don't want the pain to end, but I am looking forward to the joy I know will eventually come. The joy from having known this beautiful little friend.