Is there life after cats?

It feels like the death of cats is something I can never get over.

Life has completely changed. The cats' passing is visible in all my everyday activities, in all my routines.

I don't have to worry that Tabitha will snot on the bed or somewhere else. Or that Kali will try to shit on the bed, or Olivia will have diarrhea there or on the floor, or wipe her ass on the sheets. In the morning I don't have to worry about whether Olivia peed on the toilet mat.

In general, I can sleep more. The cats don't wake me up anymore, and I don't have to plan everything around their meal times.

I can hang the laundry to dry so that the lines hang down, there's no longer Olivia tearing them apart. No one is shoving themselves into the wardrobe or dressing room. No one comes in front of my computer screen to "disturb" my "important" activities. When I file my nails, no one will wonder what the suspicious noise is coming from, and want to use the file as a toy. I can take a shower without worrying that Olivia will have diarrhea while I'm there. When I'm walking around the room in the dark, I don't have to worry about running over some cat. I can leave my food on the table freely, no one will try to eat it. I don't have to be hysterical about every piece of dental floss or string. I can even leave a plastic bag on the floor without worrying that someone will choke on it. And Olivia isn't licking all kinds of plastic. I no longer have to wash socks because stepping on vomit or shit. The kitchen and wardrobe cupboards are empty of cat food, I suppose I could put something else in them. But what?

At one time, I had a routine with Tabitha that every time I boiled water for tea, Tabitha would come into the kitchen to be petted. I even tried to trick Tabitha with it when I changed the sheets. To get Tabitha out of the bedsheets, I boiled water for tea to trick her into going to the kitchen.

In the previous apartment, Tabitha had a nasty habit. Almost every night when we went to bed, Tabitha would pick up her ball and start shouting "throw me the ball NOW". Never in that situation was the ball thrown to her at night, but she still continued that habit for a long time. I thought that the neighbors probably didn't like it...

 

 

 

I try to keep Olivia's meow on my mind all the time. She had a unique meow, and I wouldn't want to forget it. I should have videotaped more cats, although the videos from my digital camera are of such poor quality that I didn't use it much for videos.

It's Olivia who I'm most upset about. I feel like I let Olivia down. Olivia's death came as a complete surprise. Although in retrospect, all the signs were visible. And I just laughed when Olivia, who had moved to live on the kitchen rug, sometimes couldn't even move off the rug when I was vacuuming. I just thought she was lazy. And when she lost weight and ate less and was constantly begging for food, I just thought she was picky. And when Olivia's chronic diarrhea turned into constipation, I just thought it was due to kidney failure. Why didn't it even occur to me that Olivia might have an intestinal tumor? It did occur to me when Kali stopped eating because of constipation the other Christmas.

 

Dreams of cats

I had a dream about Olivia, and this time it was the "real" Olivia. She came home many months after her death, looking healthy and even a little overweight. I wondered how she could be alive. When she was supposed to be dead, she was supposed to have colon cancer and a blocked intestine. I didn't get any answers to my questions in the dream.

In another dream, all the cats came home healthy. I thought it had to be a dream, and I tried to wake myself up by pinching myself, but it didn't work. Then I had to start thinking about what to do when there are three cats at home and not a drop of cat food. Finally, I looked into Olivia's eyes, and I started crying when I realized that the cat wasn't Olivia. The real Olivia had unique, different eyes. And that dream wasn't the only one, I had a similar dream again and again I recognized Olivia as fake based on her eyes.

In one dream, I had taken photos of cat ghosts. Something other than the supernatural was still wrong, there was more than one Olivia in the pictures.

In another dream, there were two Olivias. And then there was Tabitha attacking my food, just when I was bragging that I wouldn't have to be afraid of it anymore.

 

 

We don't have to buy anything for cats anymore. It's a shame that there are cat ads on my Facebook and YouTube, for example, and cat food in my personal K-plus offers.

Everything is used less now. After the cats died, water consumption has dropped by about 75%!! Toilet paper, kitchen paper. I used to use one freezer bag a day. Now I don't know how I could end use those bags used for food. I don't even use cotton pads anymore. I could use them several times a day to wipe Tabitha's nose, and I often bought them from bundle offers.

There is so damn little waste. I used to have to take out the mixed waste every other day, mainly because of Olivia's waste. Now there is very little of it, like everything else. Bio and metal.

 

Cat hair. They are no longer everywhere, like on my own face. Whenever I find a white cat hair on my face, I just think that this is one of the last ones. And that it could be from any of the three cats, you can never know whose.

I cry every time I vacuum. It is so unnaturally clean here, there is no cat hair or litter. Before, I had to vacuum twice a week, now there would be little need for it. And the vacuum cleaner started acting up even before the cats died. It started when I hit a plug while vacuuming, and the vacuum cleaner stopped working. Since that time, the vacuum cleaner has not always worked. I have to try many different sockets, and place the plug in the socket in a special way before the vacuum cleaner agrees to work. It has also turned off in the middle of vacuuming, for example because the vacuum cleaner has run over the cord.

It has been months since I put the last dust bag full of cat hair in the trash. But even then, all that was visible on top of it was dust. :(

 

 

Today, I would like to give advice to all cat owners that it is always a good idea to have an abdominal ultrasound done for older cats when they visit the vet. Some vets even include it in their senior cat health check-ups, and for a good reason. An abdominal ultrasound would have revealed things in all three of my cats. The biggest regret is that it wasn't done for Olivia in April, when she was at the vet again due to chronic diarrhea. And at the time, I didn't realize or know that I could have asked for an ultrasound.

Death has been a problem for me ever since I realized as a child that nothing in this life changes the fact that one day I too will lie in a coffin and be put on the ground to be eaten by worms. Other people seem to be able to shut the existence of death out of their consciousness better than I am. And now death has been shoved right in my face, and I can't stand it. If I stop for a moment to think about the cats' absence, it makes me cry.