My worst nightmare happened
My worst nightmare happened
My apologies for not posting in a while. My worst nightmare came to pass last month - my cat fell ill while I was away.
I’m going to keep this one short, because I’m trying very carefully not to reopen this wound while it’s just started healing a bit.
On March 27, my husband and I dropped off our cat, Poh, at my best friend’s home. He’d been staying there for a few months prior - he stayed with us while we were temporarily in the Netherlands during March. We left for LA, thinking he’d be fine.
He had a minor eye infection - nothing he hadn’t had before and usually it would resolve easily with some eye drops.
Yet in the week after we left, he swiftly got worse. The first vet diagnosed him with a random disease that we were sure wasn’t it. Meds didn’t help. Then he was diagnosed with a food allergy, because at this point he’d started struggling with food.
Anyway - my mom took over care of our cat while we were figuring out what was going on, and I was trying to stay composed while I was going about my meetings in LA.
The long and short of it is that he didn’t get better. One night, I had a horrible nightmare that I’ll keep to myself because it was so brutal - let’s just say it involved the steady beep of a heart monitor.
That day we got the news that they found masses in Poh’s liver. They said it didn’t mean it was cancer, they had to do a biopsy first. But that dream, man. I had a feeling. Two days later, they confirmed it was malignant and that it was a very aggressive type of lymphoma and he was deteriorating unusually fast.
We rushed back to the Netherlands to be with him. It had been three weeks since we left at this point. We were with him for 3.5 more days. He passed away on April 25.
Poh had been with us since we got him on Christmas day in 2011. He lived with us in The Netherlands, Australia, the US and on our sailboat in the Caribbean. I had just retired him from our crazy travels because I wanted to make sure he could chill.
I am beyond heartbroken - he was my best friend. He was there when I was at my loneliest in Australia after we had just moved there. When my dad died in 2015, he was a huge support. He was the little feline person that was always by my side. He and I had a very special, very tight bond. Even though I was alone a lot, I never felt lonely. I'm truly very grateful for the time we were able to spend together.
Him passing away (inevitably) was something I was dreading horribly anyway, but my worst nightmare was always for it to happen while we were abroad, once I had taken that decision not to take him with us anymore. I never thought it would happen so soon.
Anyway. We were supposed to go to St Lucia to visit our friends here when this all went down. We did end up going - albeit a week later, and with a Poh-sized hole in my heart. He is resting in my mother’s backyard now, which is something I haven’t quite made sense of in my head or heart yet. I am glad we did still go to St Lucia - it has been very good and healing to be here, and to take a bit of a break from whatever constitutes “real life”.
There’s some exciting stuff happening. We have finally started to record our Women of Color Unite podcast, which is coming soon. I’ll be back in Los Angeles from the 14th, and will be there for a few more weeks before heading to Europe for summer.
That’s where I’m at right now. I’ll try to get back at my regular posting soon.
In the meantime, thanks for your patience. Much love.