It was a rough day. It started out hard and just got harder as the day wore on.

Tiger had been sliding downhill for the past few days. We could tell her body was starting to shut down and she wasn’t eating or drinking. She wasn’t really moving that much at all. We found ourselves babying her even more than normal, and tiptoeing around her as she moved from corner to corner in the kitchen. The past two mornings I would wake up and start downstairs expecting the worst and ending up a little bit surprised that she was still hanging in here.

This morning however I could tell that it wouldn’t be much longer. She couldn’t really even stand or hold her head up for very long. So we made sure that everyone got a good cuddle, some kitty love, and to say goodbye. Needless to say everyone was sent off into their day in tears.

She slipped away while I was away running errands. I was incredibly surprised at how distraught I was when I found her especially since I had already said my goodbyes, I knew it was inevitable, “her time had come,” and all of those other cliches we tell people when they lose someone they love.

I was so grateful that J. jumped in his car and was here before the girls were even out of school to help me deal with both the kitty and telling the girls. To sit and try to comfort your poor devastated girls is probably even harder than saying goodbye to your cat that you have had for over 16 years.

Yeah, that is kinda how we feel about that. Psssthhhh…

But I told the girls the story of how we picked Tiger, or rather how she picked us, at the Santa Clara Human Society all those years ago. We had picked out a kitty playmate for Smokey and were going back to get the other gray kitty named Madison to bring home. While we were walking through the “holding area” for new pets, Tiger reached out, through the bars on the crate and touched J’s shoulder and just let out this little meee-ooow? We both literally stopped in our tracks. The Humane Society lady asked if we wanted to see her and when she let Tiger out of the cage, Tiger promptly climbed up onto J’s shoulder and wouldn’t stop purring. The lady was reading Tiger’s transcript to us and said she was all up to date on her shots, about 2 years old and they thought she was healthy, although every time they tried to listen to her heart they couldn’t hear through her incessant purring. (I went back several days later and the other kitty, Madison had also been adopted, otherwise we might have been a 3 cat household.) Tiger was just meant to be with us.

And she was such an sweet and loving kitty. And INCREDIBLY tolerant of Addie’s non-stop torture…I mean, loving. Addie is definitely taking it the hardest, as we suspected she would. But we buried Tiger in the flowerbed that I have been intending to redo anyhow. Now it is going to be our kitty garden and we are going to get some flowers and maybe even a birdbath this weekend to make it special. Addie spent nearly 40 minutes tonight “shopping” on Amazon and she found a cat memorial stone to put in the garden, too. I think that helped ease the pain a little bit for her.

As for me, I know in my head that she is in a much better place and it is so much better for her, but my heart is aching tonight.

It is just a little rough.