Appreciation (50) – Toots gone too soon

Torrey Orton
May 26, 2013

Honouring her…

 

Toots went out a few days ago and did not come back.  I didn’t know she wasn’t coming until I got a phone call from a vet up the road from us later that morning…not Toots’ vet. He announced, in the de rigeur, indirect way that’s common now, she had “passed away”. Toots was a two and a half year old, short-haired tortoise shell domestic with four white paws and a white chin, amplifying eyes and whiskers of unusual grandeur. She had encountered a car somewhere over the back fence from us, the vet imagined. Damage was slight and death was quick.

A woman had brought her in to the vet’s and left without leaving a name we would have liked to thank her for her effort. Strange what people don’t want to be involved with these days – the prospect they might be thanked which turns into a prospect they might be blamed for a samaritanism spontaneously provided. Let this be our thanks. Otherwise Toots might have been an Otty – our cat who disappeared a year ago and is a fate for us worse than death.

Toots seemed to be much more weighty dead than alive. Perhaps a feature of death that the loss of life weighs more with us, or its value is more present to us in some respects than life?? Presenting her to me for her last ride, the vet had wrapped her in a greenish towel and tied up her package with a length of light purple tape, topping it off with a note saying “Honour” - her original registered name they found from the micro-chip identity tag which had brought them to me a few hours earlier…

Toots started as of a few days ago to push up daisies in our garden along with many of her predecessors, under a rock or a bush as the habit of each epoch’s burial over our 40 years here assigned them. She will probably push more vigorously than some because she had a certain sparkling liveliness mixed with an intensity of gaze that commanded attention.

Toots was Lulu’s caretaker, to the last ensuring the younger, deeply traumatized long-haired owl-faced one was cleaned up on request and providing a pillow for most sleeps. There was occasional testing of the pride lines, mostly initiated by the junior who now still wonders at her senior’s absence, retreating to her earlier anxiety about the great outdoors of our garden, wandering forth with more cautious steps because Toots isn’t there to lead the way. They had shared a caged existence for 6 months in a local cat shelter before we found took them away with us 8 months ago.

We miss Toots lots…too short loved, too long gone. Lulu does, too.