I have a small urn in my bedroom that contains the ashes of my 15 year old cat, Basho.
He seemed fine weeks before his death, but the end came suddenly and swooped in; after a couple nights at the vet hospital, well, during the second night, he died from kidney failure. Nothing could be done. It was a renal inevitability - the veterinarians can't currently do any thing about it.
It's 2 1/2 weeks since his passing, and the house doesn't feel as eerie or as empty as it supposedly should. I don't know if he was ever very comfortable here. He certainly was aloof, as cats should be, and feigned any sort of 'need' for us. Though I loved him, I feel like he was just making do with the current arrangements, a best as he could. I find prolonged emotions difficult to summon up now. I take medication, maybe that's the 'difficulty', as I put it. Maybe they block emotions, a common complaint amongst my fellow pill-poppers. Maybe it's just me.
I'm left here. But I plan on burying Basho soon. There's a tree in the woods with a marker on it, oddly enough - a metal cut-out of a running cat, nailed maybe 10 ft. up a maple. It looks like the fleeing ghost of a cat. I think it will suit him, and I'll bury him at the tree's base. I'll miss him. Hope his little white marker stays nailed where it is. I'd hate it to be taken away, and lose him out there.
