SPCA

I was looking through my old books and I found this entry I wrote about SPCA. If you've not been told, SPCA's a stray that I used to feed. We took her home after she was sick and for a while she's been living at my place. However due to complications, we had to put her down.

This is she.



And this is my entry.


My First Cat

A final sweep with the mop, and I've erased all traces of her from the room. Dettol, a mop and two pails of water.

Her bed was empty - a thick towel lay on top of the cushion so she could keep warm after her last shower. The play pad I bought for her sat unused in the middle of the room.

I'm wrong. She's used it twice. Two little holes indicated where she's placed her scrawny paws. Two nostalgic, tear-jerking, heart-warming holes.

On the antique table, the white comforter now reigns, and Rory was quick to usurp the Shrew. The clothes line replaces the play pad, and the two find new home at the trash bin downstairs because god forbid the disease spread.

Her scent too was gone, and the seven were quick to ravage her makeshift home, sniffing the air searching for the grumpy feline matriarch.

Two weeks ago that same cat was lying on my bed. I remember telling Magdalene that I wanted to keep her food bowl, but I knew that I had to clear the room sooner or later. I dread returning home; everything's in the exact place I've left it - touched by the gratitude of a stray.

She found a home under the TV set, and when she emerged she would move encouragingly to the food bowl. She'd eat from it. She'd drink from it.

She also found time to rub my face with hers.

The one night she spent in my room, I told her with a smile, "Welcome home SPCA."

She took to lying with me on my bed the next day. Seven years, and this may be the only bed she's ever laid on.

No amount of tears will bring her back, and nothing can ever compare to the compassion she's shown me the last few hours. I can still her her cry out as she explored her new home.

Even now I sit silently in her room, wishing she would visit me and give one last meow.

I know she's in a better place. Her disease caught up to her frail old self and she was suffering. It must be great in Kitty Heaven and she'd better be happy if not they'll have to answer to me.

When we used to feed her downstairs I would call out to her and she would run towards us with the most grateful meow, tail held high. As I watched her eat I would scold myself for falling in love with a cat.

Now I meow at the same styrofoam box she would sleep in every night. She would never meow back again.

It was August 1, 2007. SPCA was put down at Mount Pleasant Animal Hospital at Sunset Way. I remember when I returned home and Magdalene opened the door. I've never cried so hard before, not for an animal, not for anything else. I stood at the door and cried my lungs out.

I'm still crying, and I don't think I can stop yet.

Here's to the Shrew who stole my heart. I love you. Thank you for all the fond memories.

Goodbye, my dear SPCA.



I still have her foodbowl in my room, sitting near the TV where she would like to lie. I brought her home despite my parents' violent rejection, and I never regretted it.

I guess I'm like this - once I fall in love I stay in love, and when that love leaves it takes a big part of me with it, and from time to time I look back at things I wrote - because I love to write things - and cry.

Dear SPCA, it's been too long. I'm sorry you had to leave the way you did. Know that I still love you, and if I think hard I still can feel your face against mine.

Meow.