A Girl Called Jeff: In Memoriam

I had to have my cat put down this past Friday. It was a really hard decision to make, but it was just her time. Actually, her time was Thursday night, but after an unfortunate encounter with those bastards at Co-op Taxi, her time was postponed.

I adopted Jeff in January of 2001. She was already 2 and a half years old and I was soon to learn, came with more baggage than middle-aged, divorced house-wife. She was skittish at first (who can forget the time she did a break-stand on MeatHead's foot?) but she sooned warmed up and became one of the most over-affectionate, annoyingly dependent cats of all time.

You have to remember that when Transfer, Crosswalk and I get together, it is literally the Special Olympics of pet euthanasia. Seriously, those who know us well know better than to ask about the passing of Molly the Mouse in 2001. And they also know to keep us the hell away from their own pets...but I digress. This should be all about Jeff.

As she learned how to love, she also began to get sick. A lot. She was originally diagnosed as having irritated bowel, but as we soon learned her sickness could come on at anytime. We also discovered that she took a perverse pleasure in making herself sick. With plastic. You could put a plastic bag on the kitchen table, leave the room for a minute and come back to find Jeff sprawled out on the groceries, hauling on that plastic like nothing else. She would then wander off and throw up within a matter of minutes. And she did this daily. Sometimes twice a day. We tried our best to get all of the plastic away from her, but she was incredibly clever. The only reason we knew her vomit was still being brought on by plastic licking was because the dyes would color her bile.

I never loved her any less. Even when she threw up on my bed every day for a couple of weeks. She was still my darling. This month she had licked all of the hair off of her stomach and was starting on her tail. She was sluggish and listless, she could no longer keep any food down and she was rapidly losing weight. It broke my heart, but I knew it was time.

Jeff, you were too beautiful for this world. xoxo