Why time is like ICE

Last year I adopted a little eleven year old black female cat. She was a tiny little thing, very shy and afraid of everyone and everything. Her owner had died of cancer and the hospice workers were desperate to find her a new home. The children of the deceased woman had suggested they have the cat put down as neither one wanted their mother's old cat. I heard about this cat from an acquaintance via Facebook.

I had to "put down" my cat of 19 years about 6 months earlier. Her name was Shrimpy Doodle and she literally raised every dog or cat our family ever had during all those years because she had just been around so long. She was one of those little tuxedo cats, black with white markings in all the right places. She was diagnosed with early stages of kidney failure in January of '09 and hung on until suffering what appeared to be a seizure about 10 1/2 months later, and it was all downhill from there.

After Shrimpy was gone my twelve year old male cat, Teddy, seemed very distraught, even though I had not observed him acting very fondly of Shrimpy before she died. But he began to follow me from room to room, head butting my legs if I sat down for any length of time, and was clearly not his usual nearly unapproachable self. I soon decided that he missed Shrimpy and needed his own "cat." So I considered adding another cat to the household. I love cats, but kittens, they are something else. Decided I really didn't want a kitten to have to deal with in order for Teddy to have "his own" cat. That was about the time I heard about this little black female cat that needed a new home. Long story shot, I ended up picking her up a few days later and brought her home. She was tiny and scared to death. I called her "Baby" because it just fit her.

The first two weeks you would never have known there was a second cat in the house. She hid under my bed and never came out. I put the cat litter box in my bedroom for her, along with her food & water. I would hear her eating and drinking in the middle of the night, scratching in the cat box while I was attempting to sleep. I just kept filling up her food & water and cleaning out the cat box, never really seeing a cat in my room. I didn't see her for two weeks unless I used a flashlight and looked under my bed to find her "hiding" under the headboard up against the wall. Then, one day, she wasn't under the bed when I took a look. I looked all over the house for her. No cat -- anywhere. At that point I was wondering if I had dreamed this little cat up or something.

Then, I found her. I don't even know why I looked on the side of the sink next to the bathtub in the first place. But there she was, all scrunched down, wedged in an area about 4-5" wide between the tub and the sink cabinet. I had to straddle the tub to reach her. She half hissed at me and I set her down on the floor as soon as I pulled her out of her tight quarters. I have no idea how long she had been there. She scampered back into my bedroom and under my bed. I decided it was time for things to change after that discovery. I moved the cat litter box out of the bedroom and into its normal spot. No problem. She found it and would run to use it and run right back into my bedroom glaring at Teddy if he was anywhere within view during her trips to the cat box. A week after that I moved her food out where Teddy's food was in the kitchen. If she could find the cat litter box, she could surely manage to find food, once she was hungry enough. No more sleepless nights hearing that little cat crunching cat food and endlessly lapping up her water and scratching litter all night long. But she still took regular refuge under my bed.

After another week, she became a bit more casual in leaving the bedroom, walking stealthily around the house, instead of running to get something to eat and running right back under my bed. This went on for about two more weeks. Then she began to act like she owned the whole house and regularly gave Teddy the "what for" if he even looked at her. She soon learned that if she sat by me on the couch I would pet her and her purr motor would start running at high speed and she vocalized her purring. What a little lover she had morphed into after so much time hiding. She needed another few weeks before she decided that Teddy was not her mortal enemy. Eventually she would jump up on my bed when I would lay down for the night, purring and purring as I pet her tiny head and we would talk about our day. She did this every night. It became our regular routine. She literally purred me to sleep every night. I could find her laying on the foot of my bed in the morning, ready to start all over. She was happy. I was happy. Teddy accepted that his little black cat liked me a whole lot more than she liked him, but he didn't mind too much. But she was not meant to be with us for a long time.

She and Teddy would go outside into the fenced back yard several times throughout the day when I was home, but they both always stayed inside the house at night. Last Friday night she didn't come to the door to come inside for the night. But no Baby cat. I called her many times out both the front door and the back door. I went to bed pretty sad, wondering where she could be and hoping I would hear her scratching at the door in the middle of the night so I could let her back inside. But no scratching. Just morning. And still no Baby cat on the deck. I finally went out into the backyard to walk around and see if she was hiding. It had been 24 degrees that night...very very cold. As I walked around the small green house I saw her. I couldn't believe my eyes.

She was frozen solid into the little pond, her tiny head and shoulder above the ice, face & rest of her body below the ice. She was dead. It was very hard to find her like that. I had no idea how this could happen. I couldn't even get her out of the pond because she was literally one with the frozen pond until it thawed. Eventually it warmed up outside and I was able to pull her partially loose from the pond. The ice was about 3/4" thick. I believe the pond must have been covered with a fairly thin coat of ice; she likely stepped or jumped on it; the thin ice probably broke and she fell in. It appeared she had tried to get out and grabbed the short wire fencing around the pond because her head, right shoulder and front leg were through some of the wire fencing, but the rest of her body that was under the ice was not. She had instead pulled the fencing on top of her, basically trapping her in the pond. Both of her eyes were wide open. She was frozen solid. I cried like an eight year old child standing alone in my backyard. I could hardly breathe.

What a horrible way for this precious little creature who had brought me such unexpected comfort and company to die. She certainly deserved much better. She was 11 1/2 years old. I had no idea she was in the pond Friday night. I didn't hear any screams for help, but I didn't go outside that night since it was so cold. The thought never crossed my mind that she could be stuck in the pond. I just figured she was hiding under the house somewhere and didn't want to move. I wonder if Teddy went to her or knew what had happened to her and I just wasn't able to "read" it from him if he did. I felt so bad. I know it wasn't my fault, but still...it was horrible. My oldest daughter came over on Sunday and helped me get her out of the pond and get all the ice off of her body. We put her in a plastic bag and put her in the garden shed, planning to bury her on Monday.

I had someone willing to help me bury her on Monday but it rained all day long. So I decided she probably deserved better than that and took her to the pet crematorium on Tuesday morning. She'll come home later this week in a pretty little tin container with red rose buds painted on the outside. She'll go in my china cabinet along with the two other decorated floral tins containing the remains of Shrimpy and Dillon, our 13-year old German Shepherd who died 2 1/2 years ago. Perhaps it seems strange, but at least it's some form of closure.

I learned why time is like ICE.

It

Changes

Everything

Did I SWIM here? Perhaps not well enough to make the outcome any different than it is right now. Am I still sad? Very much so. Tears have been messing up my glasses as I struggled to write this tonight. But I needed to get this out and share what I learned.

I've heard it said that nature abhors a vacuum, thus we have this cycle of life, death, and eventual decay. The one constant thing about nature is that it is always changing. Surely, an oxymoron unto its own definition.

So, in time, this pain I feel in my head and heart for this little black cat that shared her life with us for a short while will dissipate. Time. But I still miss her.