Lulabelle

Friends, our beautiful, sweet, naughty six-toed Lulabelle has been in kidney failure all fall, and today we made the decision to let her go to kitty heaven. We got her when we were engaged, picked her because of her extra toes, and because when I took her out of her cage and made a kissing noise at her, she licked me right on the mouth. She was a spark of light in our tiny apartment when Tim was working 80 hours a week. She curled up next to me in the middle of the night when I was up feeding the kids. She came to the door to greet us when we walked in the house, and curled up in my lap anytime I spread a blanket for her to make a nest. When I sat down to eat lunch she shoved her face into whatever I was eating, and meowed for scraps when I was cooking. She's been with us our entire adult lives and the house already feels so empty.

One of the episodes of the Crown we watched last night was about QEII wondering if she’s middle aged. I told Tim this morning, we’ve had Lulu for our entire adult lives, having to put her to sleep makes us officially middle aged. We got her when I was 23 and he was almost 25 - I’m sure our parents thought we had no business getting a pet, considering we were in a tiny apartment, and we’d just had to borrow money to fix Tim’s car and also, we were your general idiots. But we’ve taken care of her and loved her through everything - remember in the beginning when she had to get her internal spaying stitches removed because her weird defective body had rejected them and pushed them through the skin on her abdomen? How she was allergic to everything and got little blisters on her face? And then all of her old age naughtiness - as much as I hated cleaning up after her, I knew that we were giving her a good life - so many others would have gotten rid of a cat like her. But she’s put up with us through all of it. From hating our kids to sleeping in bed with Ellie (so long as Ellie doesn’t try to touch her, of course.) 

Sorry to all of you whose arms she licked until the skin was raw, the kids she bit when they dared to come near her as she slept on the Lego table, the people who witnessed her pee on the carpet to show her displeasure with having guests arround, the allergic friends that she always sought out for a special cuddle. She was the worst, wasn't she? She was the best.