This is Nyx. She's feisty and I often refer to her as my little heinous bitch. She has all the boys under her control because she is the queen. It's that Tortitude, but that's what I love about her. And she's technically not my cat - she's really more my husband's. He's the one that attempted one winter evening to soothe a meowing outside cat with a box and a blanket only to return with her in arm. Suddenly, we had our first pet. Nyx and I bumped heads at first - a lot - but I love her with all my heart.
She was a fatal casualty of the horror that was 2012. Towards the end of a Halloween get-together I was having, I noticed Nyx was cuddling with Hermes, our white Siamese tomcat. While Hermes had always had a fondness for her, Nyx was always weary of him. It was a really unusual sight, so I was quite aware something was wrong. Since Monday of that week, she'd stopped eating dry food. She was still eating tuna when I'd open a can, so I assumed she was just being picky that we'd switched to diet food. Sitting there that Wednesday night, I was aware we needed to get her to a vet soon.
The next morning, Nyx slinked off the bed and gagged as though she was going to throw up for a good five minutes. That was it for me. Aaron, my husband, took off of work and we took her to our vet. They said that her liver was failing and that they needed to hold on to her for 24-48 hours to see if they could reverse the problem.
We called every day for almost four days but no change. I then took her home from our standard vet and took her to an emergency vet. They told us that she needed a feeding tube when they first found out her liver was failing, but now her body was too weak to sustain the anesthesia.
They recommended we put her to sleep.
It was an intense set of days. When we got home, I walked for an hour, then had to call Aaron because I had no idea how to get home. I'd blanked the whole time from grief. We'd only had her for two years, and she was only six years old - just a week or two from her seventh birthday and the anniversary of finding her. Nothing about it seemed fair and, on top of it, we now had $1000 in vet bills to pay.
And the worst part was, this was pretty typical of 2012.
My husband and I know we want to adopt again eventually. We actually decided to wait out the winter in case a cat showed up on our doorstep. I actually deeply hoped one would; it would at least make her death make a little cosmic sense. But here we are, three and a half months later and no cat. Not even one. Which is funny because we had, counting Nyx, three who all came from showing up on our doorstep.
There are a multitude of places I would be interested in one-time volunteering at, such as a soup kitchen or the North Kansas City Hospital around Christmas. But the research I want to do this month is looking into local pet shelters, entirely spurred by Nyx's passing. I would like to give my time sorting papers, cleaning kennels - whatever it is that they need me to do - to help out animals that they've pulled from the street for a better home.
Because, honestly, that's what my husband and I have done for the past two years.
Hermes and his sister were dumped in the mail room of our last apartment complex. We took them both in with the idea of adopting them off to caring people. His sister (on the right) did get adopted (and named Khione, Greek for snow).
We actually ended up adopting Hermes ourselves.
Zeus climbed out of a storm drain during a rainy day to grab my foot. "Please take me in." How could I say no?
I picked up Artemis from an owner who abused and neglected him - all because they didn't know how to properly potty train a dog.
And Nyx jumped into my husband's arms before an ice storm on a cold winter's night.
And maybe, just maybe, by volunteering at a pet shelter, I'll find a cat who melts my heart the way all of my pets did. Whose story and big eyes tell me that they're meant to be with me. And everything will make sense again.
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