A Cat Shaped Hole

Emma, my cat, died on Tuesday. This wasn't entirely unexpected as she was very old and had been ill for a while with renal failure. She was diagnosed with this 18 months ago and had responded well to treatment but it doesn't cure the condition, only relieves the symptoms for a while. She became noticeably more ill at the weekend and woke me up scrabbling at the door on Tuesday morning. At first I thought she was trying to get into the bedroom but I found her having some kind of fit on the floor. We took her to the vets in the morning and decided that the kindest thing to do was to put her to sleep.

In the last couple of weeks I had come across a website Tanya's guide to Chronic Renal Failure in Cats  (In fact Tanya is the cat - the lady that runs the site is called Helen). It was very helpful and contained lots of useful information regarding Emma's condition. At least, it gave me some sort of idea of what to expect and let me know that we were doing the right thing. I wish I had found this earlier. It's one of the great things with the internet that someone can put together a resource like this that covers one very specific subject in great detail. It also provides the information from the perspective of someone like myself, a cat owner, rather than the viewpoint a veterinarian or research student.

I'm not entirely sure how old Emma was. I'd had her since 1993 but she wasn't a kitten then, so I am guessing that she was at least 19 years old. It's one of the inevitable things with companion animals that they age more quickly than us. The comedian Julian Clary picked up on this when he was on the celebrity bugbear chat show, Room 101. He was very attached to his pet dog, Fanny the Wonder Dog, who featured in his original stand-up show and found it very hard to cope with her aging. I can sympathise with this and it is very distressing to see a pet going from being a lively young animal to an old age pensioner within a few years.

I now have no cats in the house - really for the first time in about 30 years. It's quite odd as I still think she is floating about somewhere. It's almost as if I am being haunted: not by a presence, but by an absence. The cat flap doesn't periodically click open, there are no mysterious thumpings in the middle of the night as she jumps onto furniture, I keep think she is sitting on top of the TV until I look properly - I suppose it's some sort of pareidolia. Most odd is that I can now sit and type at a computer without a feline presence jumping on my knee and pressing buttons. She used to do the same when I was at a piano keyboard. I never really found out what the attraction was but she would occasionally send out nonsensical emails to people.

I'm not planning on getting another cat any time soon. We are planning on moving house shortly and I don't think cats are particularly ideal pets to have with small children in the home. I never had a problem with our kids other than with them rubbing Emma's fur up the wrong way, but it is only a matter of time before a cat will end up dressed in doll's clothes or have an impromptu bath. However, the experience of not having a cat around will take some getting used to. At the moment, I just feel that I have a cat shaped hole in my life.