Summertime Sadness

   

   

  The long-standing joke in my family is that I'm a cat lady, which is rooted back in my second or third year of life. The farm where my dad grew up was the place where I was first around animals and cats in particular. My sister and I rather creatively named several of the cats Lovey, Maddy and Scared-y, based on their temperaments. At that age, I was scared of dogs, but I ended up loving cats. In preschool, I came home with drawings I'd done of yellow cats with purple collars.

At the farm with Lovey, Emily and Maddy in 1993

     One day when I was five, my mom and I somehow ended up at the Animal Humane Society looking at cats. I was smitten with a tiny kitten, but Mom had her eyes on an almost full-grown cat with a "raccoon tail" who was said to be good with children. We went home that night to discuss getting this cat and by the next day, my infamously good convincing skills worked- we were getting a cat! Finally!

     The four of us brought her home the next night in a cardboard box. In the car, Emily and I dangled our hair in the air holes and giggled as the cat batted it around. Name suggestions ranged from Sassy (My suggestion since the only cat I could think of was Sassy from Homeward Bound.) to Tiger (Emily's suggestion). My dad quietly suggested 'Ribbons' since she had stripes like ribbons. We got our name.

The story of bringing her home "rittin"  in probably 1997

Her first full day at home after a bath.

Easter 2013

     Over the years, Ribby and I grew up together and I let her occupy a bigger piece of my heart than anyone else in the family did. She became my little shadow in the house, following me everywhere and waiting outside my bedroom door in the morning. Whenever I was sad, I think she understood because she always came to me, looked me in the eyes and stayed.

    I always felt that people who say they hate cats would have had a hard time hating Ribby. She was an anomaly to the hissing, attacking, reclusive archetype that gives them a bad reputation. She only hissed once in front of me and it was pretty pathetic (When getting her temperature taken at the vet). She was also a lap addict. Her favorite thing to do was to fall asleep on one of us. All she ever wanted to do was eat, purr and snuggle. She was my living, breathing stuffed animal.

     Unfortunately chronic kidney disease in cats isn't really something a cat can just live with forever; it will eventually kill them. She was diagnosed in June 2012 while I was in Italy and the vet told my dad that she had about two years left in her. Life went on and she was fine. On July 24, 2013, I found her with severe dehydration and diarrhea in the basement and we rushed her to the hospital. We opted to not euthanize her and instead get her treated and back home the next day. We weren't ready for goodbye and also, what about that two-year estimate? It had only been about a year. On August 9th, I realized that we'd been in denial about her health. I noticed she was walking funny and she eventually stopped walking altogether. She stopped eating. She stopped purring. She stopped looking at me in the eyes when I was sad. So I made the decision to let her go. On the night of August 13th, I tucked her in and told her the story of when we got her all those years ago. The next day, we wrapped my little girl in a towel and took her out of our house for the last time. I held her paw and her fur looked so soft and we kept saying through tears how cute she still was. "You all are making me cry," said the vet. The end was peaceful and it broke my heart. The last thing I said to her was "I'll love you forever" and I tucked her tail around her.

     Losing a pet is harder than a lot of people give you credit for because they probably haven't been lucky enough to have one of their own. They don't get it and that's fine. Though she wasn't conscious of it, Ribby taught me how to love and how to be responsible. She provided so much comfort from hard days in Kindergarten to the stresses of junior high to preparing this summer for graduate school in Paris. She was patient with me when my five-year-old self tried putting her in a dress. She stayed calm when Emily and I took her for joy rides in the car in high school. She constantly warmed our hearts and made us smile and laugh and forget about our problems.

     It's sad that I know that specific details about her will start to go soft in my mind over time and I can't do Ribby justice in all the ways that she impacted my life for the last seventeen years. I know she was just one out of millions of cats, but she mattered to me.

I'll love you forever.