Fizzball

Hello,

I'm new to using this online posting forum and blog type tool, but I am hoping I will figure out how to put up a photo of Fizzy one of these days. I've been looking into everyone's postings and words of comfort and support to each other, which has helped ease my own pain a bit over the last 6 weeks. I live in Northern California currently and have had no success in finding pet loss groups meeting in person, although there is one listed on several sites as taking place in Sacramento. A 4 hour roundtrip last week brought to my attention that it doesn't take place as indicated and it would seem to not have in perhaps years, as no one at the location(s) had heard of the group. So I am particularly grateful that there is this group of people meeting online at this site and that I am not alone in loving and missing a treasured animal companion. One so frequently gets responses that indicate a lack of understanding of how special, deep, and important the relationship with one's animal friend/family member/love can be to a person. Or, as in my case, I feel I have no one in my human social circle with the patience, interest or emotional capacity at this time to listen and share my grief. I am so grateful that my other cats, particularly Gustav, the eldest at this point, also missed Fizzy and obviously grieved his absence.

Fizzy, AKA Fizzball, there's so much I could write, so much I feel, although he graced our lives for such a short time. He wasn't very old, maybe 3 years old when he materialized in the neighborhood. He was such a sweet, affectionate, loving, cheerful, and patient boy-cat. Sometime in the late summer Gustav, his buddy, was diagnosed with kidney disease and hyperthyroid disease, so I was trying to deal with his care (getting past my needle phobia and learning to administer fluids on what turned into a daily basis), as well as numerous other major dis-stressors. When Fizz started getting sick mid- to late December 2008, I thought it might be because of ... there were numerous possibilities. He seemed to get ill at the beginning of a week, then things would start looking better and normal with him and I would put off a vet visit thinking it was the change in food or whatever. It all came to a crisis point January 13, 2009, however, and the vet told me Fizzy had a huge tumor and he was obviously in distress at that moment and she recommended euthanizing him.

It was an unexpected loss, having been going through anticipatory grief concerning Gustav's conditions, not having put together all the symptoms and concluded Fizzy was so terribly ill earlier, and having been expecting that after only 1 1/2 years he and I were just beginning to really settle in with each other and were going to be together for a lot longer.

I have all these emotions, I think everyone is familiar with them on this site, and today, having seen a photo at the vet's of a cat who looks incredibly like Fizzball, I'm crying for losing him, for not having been able to do more and give him more than I did, etc. I am trying to remember his love of life and joy and sweetness and how he is still near, even though I can't actually snuggle him. I am trying to remember all the reasons for my gratitude for his blessing us with his life, as short as our time was. But today the sorrow outweighs the rest of those feelings.

Thank you for letting me share.