A Sweet Friend’s Final Wish

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.

– Luke 12:6

We had a cat pass away a couple of weeks ago.  The cat’s name was Trouble. This cat was named so appropriately.  I used to say, “No one knows the Trouble I’ve seen.” This cat was always getting into bad situations. It was doing things that we could never have predicted.  One time he was trying to catch a fly and jumped straight up and landed directly in the toilet.

Even though the cat was a lot of trouble, he was a very special cat.  He would lick you to death if you let him.  He was about as affectionate of an animal that we have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  He was abandoned when he was older when the family across the street moved and decided to leave him there. I suppose they thought that he was too old and too much trouble (no pun intended).

A couple of months ago we could tell that he was not doing well so we took him to the vet and the vet said that he had Feline Leukemia.  There was little we could do and so we took him home and babied him and made him as comfortable as possible.  We fed him his favorite (pulverized veal baby food).  Slowly but surely he stopped eating altogether and could hardly drink any water.  His fur started coming out by the handful.  We knew the time was growing close.

A strange thing happened that was both heartbreaking and endearing. The weaker he grew, the more he wanted to be close to us.  On the last night of his life, he would drag himself along the carpet just so that he could plop next to my foot. He would look at me with those big, beautiful eyes and almost seem to be saying, “What is happening to me?  Will I be alright?”  No matter what, he wanted to be laying right next to us. What a hard night that was. I loved this cat so much. He didn’t know what was happening.

The next day we had to take him to the vet to put him to sleep because we didn’t want him to suffer from pain or hunger since he couldn’t move or eat.  That was a hard day.  For about a week or more I grieved this cat.  Trouble was so special to us. I could not get his big, beautiful eyes staring at me out of my mind.  As you can probably tell, I am still not quite over it.  God must know that our pets are like family.  We miss him so much.  But we know that not a sparrow falls to the ground that God does not notice.  They may not seem valuable to anyone else…but to us, they are like family.  I believe God places these beloved pets into our family…to be part of our family.  And for that, I thank God.