Thursday Adams wakes up to find her in the litter box. She's just lying there. He feeds her and gives her water. We both go to work. I'm the first to get back home. I look for her and she's behind the TV where she can get away from the other cats. I go change clothes and come out to the sound of the litter box. It's her. She goes from the litter box to the water bowl and actually drink on her own. As she finishing up Adams comes home. From the water bowl she goes back to the litter box. This is where the loop begins. She will go from the litter box to the living room and back again. She must have done it a dozen times. I check the mail and she follows me outside to do the same. We go back inside and into the dining room where the food bowls are and she makes to get something to eat but instead hovers on the bowl like it were a litter box. Adams calls the vet office to try to get a doctor. He calls back eventually to tell us that Nitrogen has built up from her kidneys and that is what's clouding her brain. He says it won't be too long now.
Half of me is still in denial waiting for a miracle but the other logical half is remembering the good times and thankful that we had her this long. She is only the 2nd pet that I've had to prove mortality, but the 1st to be mine independent of my family. She was completely wild when Adams' sister-in-law dropped her off. She had been found on the side of the road not too far from where I grew up and went to high school and had lived with a family with a baby (I don't understand how) till it became too much. Adams spent so much time with her till eventually he could hold her in his lap and pet her. He had her spayed and took her on a roadtrip to Florida. She spent the drive in his lap and that month at a friend's apartment with him. Shortly after that Adams, those friends, their dog, her and I moved into a two bedroom apartment in Aiken. It was a tight fit and she gave that dog (which was so sweet) and the roommates HELL. After a year, Adams, Audrey and I moved into my Papa's old house. Soon after we got the boys, Winston and Linus. It took some getting used to on her part, but eventually she accepted them almost like a step-mom. She even groomed them. Unfortunately they had a flea problem and she ended up ingesting flea poison. That was her first medical ordeal. We were lucky we didn't lose her then. The house was on a half acre on a dead end street so we thought it might be good to let her out now and again. She had never been so happy. My parents fell in love with her even though they never got to pet her. The downside was a group of feral cats that lived in the neighborhood. One in particular singled her out. She was tough, but still tiny and however large her ego it couldn't win a fight for her. Fights led to abscesses and more trips to the vet. After three years we moved to where we are now, a busier street, and let her out less and less, but not without more fights with that neighborhood's strays. We been here almost 2 years in August.
For the short amount of time that she's been on this Earth and in our family, I will miss her greatly. We have a stockpile of good memories to pull from to get us through this transition. I love you, Audrey II.
