It is done

Well I feel like crying
but you know the tears won’t come down.

That’s from a wonderful Muddy Waters song (“My home is the delta”), but it smells like an old blues couplet to me. Regardless of its origin, it says a lot about the last few days.

As mentioned earlier, Turq’s time had come, and Wednesday the three of us went to the vet’s together and had him put to sleep. It was pretty rough, and it’s been hard for me to write about it after the fact. It was easy enough to write about it before hand, but much harder after it actually happened.

Well my old shoes are layin’ on the floor
’cause I ain’t gonna wear ’em no more.
They took me many miles down many hard roads
but that’s what shoes are for.
— The Flatlanders, “One road more”

I took several pictures of him the night before and on the day just before we left; several have been posted on Flickr. Taking the photos was somehow important to me – part of showing how much he’d meant to me (and us all). I don’t cry well, so I take pictures instead. Weird.

I actually had my camera in my pocket at the vet’s, but I never took it out. Couldn’t really see imposing myself that way (another reason I’ll never become a photojournalist). But I can remember pictures that I didn’t take, which is wonderful in its own way.

I was particularly impressed with how Sub-Evil Boy handled it. He’d never been that close to death before, and he responded in a way that was a combination of empathy, sadness, maturity, and curiosity. As a parent you have these odd moments where you get a little glimpse of what your child is going to become. This was one of those moments; you could really see the wonderful adult that is the (not so distant) future of our wonderful child.

I’ve never seen a night so long
when time just crawls on by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide his face and cry.
— Hank Williams, “I’m so lonesome I could cry”

So far Portia doesn’t seem too stressed by his absence. She acted a little odd right after we came home (including sitting in the cupboard under the kitchen sink!), but I’m sure she could pick up on the general level of emotion in the house. She has, however, definitely enjoyed being able to come join us in bed at night. (We’d kept the cats out of the bedroom because of his rather disgusting chronic sinus infections. The idea of him sneezing in your hair in the wee hours wasn’t entirely appealing.) She’s still pulling out little tufts of hair, but we’re hoping that going outside as the weather warms will improve this.

There have been a number of really nice comments and tributes to Turq here and elsewhere. WeatherGirl wrote a very nice tribute on her blog, and Sub-Evil also paid tribute. There were a number of nice comments from New Kid and her LDH on my earlier post; I particularly love LDH’s Valhalla story:

Turq’s had a timeshare condo near Valhalla for years and years, and it’s a good thing that he’ll finally get to use it. And, doubtless, a fine place at the table will have been set for him when he arrives

Turq was indeed a Valhalla kind of cat, and we can only hope that there’s lots of sunshine and slow, stupid birds in that happy place.

I’ve also been really honored by the kind words from various folks over at Flickr in response to the photos I posted there. One could easily decide that all these photos of a (now dead) cat was a bit gratuitous (esp. since they’re not the greatest of images in the grand scheme of things). But there have been lots of nice comments. Some of these come from people we know in “real life” (e.g., KnittySara and folks at Monkey River Town), but most are from what are essentially complete strangers. It’s pretty wonderful to receive support from people who you know only through their images and occassional comments.

Lastly, I want to thank my sister and parents for their support and love at this difficult time. They’ve all gone through this more than once as well, and their support was really wonderful as we made this difficult decision. Love to you all!

Raise a glass – Turq will definitely be missed.

(And it probably says something about something that at a time like this the songs that come to mind are mostly the old ones. But I’ll leave that discussion to another day.)

Well, I walked up close
looked down in her face.
Guess my good old gal got to lay there
’till judgement day.
— Son House, “Death letter blues”

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