Inwardly grieving Salty

We deal with loss in many different ways and sometimes it’s even different from the type of loss we feel.  For instance, last year when I lost Tigger I cried all the time and it was hard to be home because he left such an impression with his strong personality.  I had to get out … go hiking, go to the beach, something.  This year, Salty passed away and I felt like staying home and putting my energy into the project of building onto our deck in an effort to keep my mind off of the loss.

It’s been a little over two weeks since we said goodbye to Salty and it was different than Tigger in that it was a little bit expected.  Although he declined quickly, he had always been a little sickly and it was always in the back of our minds that we might have to say goodbye to him sooner rather than later.  I still miss him terribly and I still look for him often.  I catch myself continuing to add him to my mental list of kitties as I did this morning when I thought he and Cringer were probably hungry.

I’ve thought a lot since losing Salty about how I’m grieving him.  When Tigger passed, I wrote a blog post like this soon after and it was more of a tribute to him.  With Salty, it’s been hard to put fingers to keyboard to share what I’m feeling and as you can see, it’s really more about loss:  how we experience it and how it can be different each time.­­

The thing is, I don’t really know what to say to convey what’s going on in my head and my heart.  My feelings and thoughts swing like a pendulum from day-to-day and even minute-to-minute.  It feels too soon to have lost him, but he’s in a better place living pain-free and I know it was the right thing to let him go.  I just miss him.  His beautiful flame-point coat, his Siamese “get off my lawn” yowl, the way he made kneading look like a job, how he’d walk around the house with a catnip pillow stuck in his mouth while he muffled out his Siamese meow, the fast “mall-walker” gait he had when his arthritis wasn’t bothering him, the way he’d rub his face on you to claim you as his person…

So, here I am grieving his loss internally all the while thinking about how Salty gave us many memories that we will cherish and laugh about.  I’m not sure how I’ll grieve the loss of my other fur-babies (and honestly, I don’t want to think about it), but I’m sure it will be in different ways unique to each one.  And that’s okay … more than okay because it will be special.