Tuesday, January 15, 2008

In Memory of Marmers

Last year, I introduced you to 'my girls' - my two beloved ginger cats in Albany who are longtime family pets. You can read all about them here.

Sadly last Thursday, two became one.

Marmers's health has been deteriorating for some time now and so I made the decision to put her down. My parents were in full agreement with this but I wanted to have the final decision since she was originally my cat.

It wasn't a hard decision and it was motivated by my desire to see her released from her suffering. We were quite sure she was in pain. In the end, Dad ended up taking her to the vet for the final time as Mum just couldn't bring herself to do it. Dad is NOT an animal person but I think even he was sad, just a little bit.

Duncan thought she looked so decrepit and I couldn't help but agree. It's sad watching a body decay whether it be of a human or an animal. She was beautiful once. I can see why the loss of a pet grieves some people so much, particularly the lonely. For some, that pet was their only friend.

We've had Marmers and Ellie for 11 years. They're part of the family and they've been around during some of the most significant changes in my life. One of the greatest things about pets, is that they don't judge you...well not verbally, anyway.

Ellie is a very independent cat and we were wondering if she'd even care that Marmers was gone. But she seems to be fretting, wandering around meowing as if to say, "Where's my sister?" and wanting lots of affection. This is the first time they've been apart in sixteen years.

I want to remember Marmers the way she was when she was young and well.

It was time to put her to sleep. She was a good friend.


Marmers in 1998

2 comments:

bek said...

It's soo sad losing a family pet. i nearly didn't get jet because I didn't want him to die (i still don't want him to).

so sad...I hope you and your fam are ok!

Sarah said...

Thank yeah we're fine. She had a good innings and it helps knowing that we were going to put her down because then we could say goodbye. It'd be far worse if she'd died young by being hit by a car or something like that.