I'm About to Depress the Hell out of Y'all.

My mom's cat is dead.

Taj has been very sick for a while. He's diabetic, and over 13 years old if I'm remembering correctly. Or he was. Shit. I'm not going to be able to get used to that.

We've had this cat for most of my life. Not as long as we've had Flounder, my baby, but nearly as long. I never really liked him. He's too friendly and fat and annoying. He's not a cat, he's a dog.

You see, my mother found him in the woods by where she worked. He was just a little kitten, all alone and starving. When she left out food for him, wild animals took it. Finally he was picked up by animal control, and my momma and I went to go adopt him. They tried to tell her that he was feral, and she couldn't adopt him. My mother, being the woman she is, stuck her hand in the cage, let Taj purr and love all on her hand, and said, "Does this look like a feral animal to you?"

It took some convincing, but we finally adopted him. He proved to be a lush of a cat. You touch him, and he just purrs and purrs and purrs. If you were sitting next to him and didn't pet him, he'd head-butt you until you did.

In recent years, with the new kids produced by my cousins, he's proved to be very sturdy. He let the kids pet him and shove him and tug on him.

Now, I loved him, but I didn't LIKE him. He meowed at all the wrong times, and got under everyone's feet, and threw up everywhere because he didn't believe in chewing his food. Occasionally, if I felt particularly nice that day, I'd pet him. Flounder never really liked that much, so I never did it when he was inside.

Anyway.

Tonight, while I was at dinner with Krystal after VBS, my momma texted me to find out where I was. I told her. She told me that she and daddy were going to the vet with Taj. He was unable to walk, meowing pitifully, had a really dangerous blood sugar level, and peeing uncontrollably.

When I got home, they were still gone. I settled in to watch River Monsters. My parents got home, and I looked over to ask how everything went. Everything just sort of froze when I saw that my mom was fighting back tears. I stood up, walked over to her, and asked what was wrong.

Apparently Taj ended up getting sicker and sicker. Soon he couldn't breathe. They could have kept him alive, sent him home, but he would have been suffering, and a lot. My family doesn't advocate making a pet suffer just because you don't want to lose them, so she did the only sensible, humane thing: she put him to sleep.

At this point, my momma was pretty much sobbing. Daddy and I hugged her, and that's all we really could do. She has to grieve.

Y'all already know that I'm not one for crying when people die. It seems the case is the same here. I just feel awful because I know that were it Flounder, I'd be weeping and turn into a big-old sack of pathetic uselessness. Just thinking about it makes me choke up.

Josh and Almost Boyfriend have been talking to me, and helping me through all this. They're both really great. I'm pretty lucky to have such great friends who will be there for me.

Sorry for all the sadness.