León And 'hensley The Cat' Options

[Diana]

Hi,

I am new here; and, unfortunately, my being here is not exactly a case of joy (wish it would be - but that's not the subject of this Forum anyway).
I am here because my tom cat León has done what 'Hensley the cat' did - ran off, and was found by me three days later by the roadside, having been hit by a car apparently.
It was a shock I haven't been able to overcome for two weeks now. It was so sudden and unexpected. He was one who enjoyed his freedom and liked to roam. He stayed out two days and nights in a row sometimes. But when three days had gone past I went in search for him - that was on Dec. 27th - and found him dead ....
He had been lying there for a day already, I was told by neighbours, so it must have happened on the night of Dec. 25./26. I reproach myself for not having reacted sooner .. but, used as I was by then to his outings I told myself not to overreact and wait (I am usually the kind that always fears the worst when my furkids don't stick to their 'times'). As it turned out I was right to worry.
León had come to me from a shelter in Spain, the only survivor of a litter of 4 - his siblings having been put down some time early last year due to an outbreak of FIV at the shelter. He was only one year old.
He's the second cat I loose at such a young age within the space of 2 years, and it is causing me considerable emotional problems. I have such trouble coping.
I stand in the garden every night now (where we buried him) and talk to a heap of earth; I think 'My God - he must be cold down there in this wet hole' and I want him back so desperately I try to bargain with whatever power is above.
I am not, I have to admit, a religious person - so I have no real faith to help me here. I struggle, I lash out at others, I cry. I have heard nothing but platitudes since that day - even the people closest to me seem reluctant to tackle the issue and people tell me 'it's two weeks now that you're grieving for an animal - it is about time you came off it'.
What can I do ?
I'm told I MUST let go; and yet it seems so wrong to commit him to memory and 'get on with it'. The thought of how I found him, a stiff and cold corpse with one eyeball out of its socket - I can't rid myself of it. It's imprinted on my mind and it overlays everything else. Every happy thought or emotion flees screaming before my bad conscience that tells me I am basically 'laughing at a funeral'.
Has anyone here got any advice for me ? I am at my wits', and my energy's end.

Thank you,
Diana

[Diana]

What a beautiful, beautiful boy!!!!! He is absolutely striking.

Yes, he 'was'.
All black, apart from a few individual white hairs on his chest. In Europe (where I am), they say, there are no complete black cats left (except for special breeds) since the Middle Ages when people in their ignorance rounded up black cats (thinking them linked to witches and the devil) and burnt them wholesale, literally. So the (regular domestic short hair) black cats these days all have a little white left. Apparently that saved them, in times past, the cruel death on the stake.
And all current black cats are therefore descendants of these few lucky ones.
I am glad, that in this respect at least, Human society has moved on. In most places, not all though ...

Jennifer, I am so sorry to hear about all your losses in 2003. What year it has been for you. Although it seems that all who died in your family were of an age that would perhaps make it a little easier to bear than losing a young individual, a (fur-)child, say. But it's never easy ...

My best wishes to you,
Diana