Said Goodbye To Our Sweet Reggie Today Options

[Aaron]

Our sweet Reggie lost his battle with liver illness this morning after being diagnosed Monday Oct 18 with fatty liver disease. He was able to pass in the comfort of his own home surrounded by my wife and me. This was rather unexpected as he had made good progress while at the hospital so that makes it hurt even more, although it always hurts to lose one of your best friends. It feels like the pain will never go away, but over time we will find peace.

Reggie "adopted me" back in Nov 2001 when he was just a kitten. I remember hearing a cat crying outside so I went out the backdoor of my townhome and looked around. I didn't see anything at first but then he spotted me looking around and dashed down to see me. He had a collar on, so I told him he needed to go home, but he knew where his new home was. He kept crying outside my back door so I let him in to hang out. And the rest, as they say, is history.

We bonded a few nights later when I laid on the couch and sat him on my chest and picked fleas off him, one by one. He sat there, patiently, with his eyes closed and let me remove fleas from him for what seemed like hours. From that point forward we were best friends until he left us today. I will always have a place in my heart for Reggie and will always remember the joy and happiness he brought into our home.

He was the sweetest cat I had ever known. He could be in a room with 50 people and would be hanging out like it was nothing. He was always there to greet us when we came home, which we will miss greatly. He was our best friend and we will try to take solace in the fact that he is no longer suffering. You will always be loved Reggie and you always be remembered. May you rest in peace, best friend.

[Aaron]

As much as I am trying to shed myself of the memories of that last day Reggie was with us, it is still difficult to not think about that day. Considering Reggie's entire life except for those last few days was a life of happiness and joy, you'd think I could somehow compartmentalize or minimize the pain and memories of that last day. But it's like a disease that I wish I could cut out of me and bury in a deep hole somewhere. From the point that I got home that Thursday evening and saw that he was not acting himself to waking up around 11:00 that evening to find him laying on the living room rug in obvious distress to hearing him tell me goodbye with his gentle meow as I stroked his head, it still haunts me. I don't want it to nor do I try to revisit those last days, but those memories will not stop haunting me.

I can't shake myself of the memory kneeling on the floor watching him pass away and hearing my wife ask if he was still breathing. I can still remember with painstaking clarity how my wife cried after we knew he had left us and how she was going through more pain than I have seen since she had to euthanize her cat Lodi in April 2002. I can remember building his coffin and lining it with a favorite blanket and placing him inside wrapped in the same towel he laid on when he came home from the vet. I am hoping that typing these memories here will help push them out of my head, or at least make them less prominent. I don't want to think about these brief, awful memories as they don't represent what Reggie's life was about. I don't know if I am subconsciously doing this to "punish" myself or what else is causing this to happen. I wish I could erase these memories from my brain like I can erase a file from a computer hard drive. The last days we spend with any loved one are rarely ever the best, but the are the most recent and unfortunately the most vivid.

I want to remember him waking me up at 10:30 at night for attention. I want to remember him following me into the kitchen after I got home for some loving. I want to remember how he loved for me to open the kitchen window on those perfect spring and fall days so he could sit on the sill and listen to the wind and the birds. I just have to try harder to focus on the countless happy memories he left us.