Of all the unfair things that this world gives us, it's the fact that our pets don't live as long as we do.
I spent my bedtime last night crying and shaking because I know that my cat has to die. She is not the happiest of campers and spends too much time just staying very still. She'll eat chicken hearts with gusto, but that seems to be all the gusto that she has left.
She can't clean herself. She's taken to soiling wherever she rests, if it's soft enough to "leave a deposit" in. It's become so bad that she naps in the litter tray. Her largest amount of activity is to come from the dining room to the TV room so she can camp on my lap and rest there.
We're feeding her nothing but chicken hearts, because we've run out of the wet food packets, and because they're a treat that she loves. And I plan to be her personal butt warmer for a majority of the evening.
Because tomorrow afternoon, the odds are high that she's going to die.
And it's demented that, because of the way things are, that we will have to pay for someone to kill her. And I know it's a mercy because I can tell that she's suffering, but... I dunno. Death should be free. I'm already having a bad enough time contemplating her inevitable demise. Sticking a bill on top of that feels like insult on injury on insult on more injury.
I expect to be an absolute mess by tomorrow. But I have to keep doing the things that need doing. They need to be done, and I'm the only me I have to see it through. Nobody else will do laundry. Nobody else will do the dishes. Nobody else will chase my little darlings to pick up after themselves and... when tomorrow comes... nobody else will see everything through.
I'm giving myself a healthy amount of time to cry about it, after it's over.
And I still have to haul myself through everything when it's done. Even when it feels like a herculean effort just to pull air into my lungs.
It's got to be done.
I've got to do it.
Even when it hurts.