It’s been a few weeks since Sadie passed away, so it’s past time for an update.
Sadie was the bedtime enforcer, so we went to bed late for a few nights after she passed. Simon is also highly interested in bedtime, but he passively-aggressively heads upstairs and waits for us, which doesn’t help at all.
We’ve been trying to give extra attention to her brother Jackson, and it seems to be going well. Of course you never know whether cats know what happened when one of them passes: We’ve never had a cat pass away at home, so it’s not like any of them experienced it directly. Maybe they know the other cat wasn’t feeling well, but maybe the other cat just disappears and doesn’t come back one day. I don’t know. Jackson and Sadie never appeared to be especially close, partly because Jackson is a jerk and something of a bully, but again, who knows what was going through their heads.
But surely he knows that something is different, and probably he recognized that we were sad. So we’ve been giving him extra pets – he enjoys getting pets while we go up the stairs – and trying to give him some extra play time. The best play time has turned out to involve a cheap cube we bought a few months ago. I can play with him with a mouse toy and he’ll go to town in it, especially if I rustle the other side of the fabric. And after a little while the other cats will come over and try playing with him. He plays a little too hard for them, though Simon is game to keep trying for a while. Eventually he runs out of gas and often just curls up in the cube for a while. But it seems like the game that makes him the happiest.
Simon and Edison have been more resilient, since they’re both young and have just had a lot of change in their short lives already, so who knows what they think of as normal. Edison went around for a few days looking for Sadie, because I think he liked to hang out near here while he was trying to win her over. And he’s also started sleeping with us from time to time. But those are the main changes. I think Simon wasn’t as affected because he’s so attached to Jackson.
As for us, it’s been a sad time. Sadie is the first cat we’ve owned who lived her whole life since adoption in one house, so the house is full of memories of her, including recent ones since she went so quickly. Debbi misses having her girl kitties in this house which is now full of boys. But she’s been enjoying having Jackson snooze near her during the work day.
I still look a him sometimes and wonder what he’s thinking.
