Yup.  It’s official.  It happened.

After 19 years of my little 4-legged sidekick softly padding around next to me, I find myself flying solo.  My first “baby”, my confidante, my furry friend who’s unconditional love for me brought me so much comfort and happiness has been called to Kitty Heaven.

And my heart is heavy.

It’s been a day.

And yet, as much as it pained me, what was so important about today was setting aside how I felt and trying to gently explain to my innocent 4 year old why her beloved kitty was dying.

Gosh that was hard.  But, you know, it went so much more smoothly than I ever thought it could.  And I believe it has everything to do with the fact that Mama & Daddy were truthful about the entire thing and kept her in the loop.

We told her that the kitty was very old and that we thought she was very sick.  We told her that Daddy would take her to the vet so that the doctor could decide if the kitty was ok to come home or if she was in too much pain.

When Daddy came home without her, we explained that the vet gave her some medicine to help her sleep and that she died in her sleep and that she was gone to Kitty Heaven.  We explained that God would make sure that her older sister, who was already up there and bullied her here on earth, would be extremely nice to her in heaven.

We told her that the kitty’s body would be put into the ground.  We showed her the kitty’s coffin and Mama watched with her as Daddy lowered her into the hole in the backyard by the Raspberry & Blackberry bushes.  We placed her special “card” that she’d colored for the kitty to take to the hospital with her on top of the kitty’s coffin, secured it with a rock and Daddy filled the hole.  We tried our best to explain how the kitty’s body would be in the ground while her spirit, who she was inside, would be playing and eating brie & popcorn & chasing mice in heaven.

And after kitty was buried and Mama shed quite a few tears over her little grave, we had to tell her that now was not the appropriate time to request that we get her another kitty for her to play with.

And as if God was watching over our sad little scenario in the backyard and decided to lighten things up a bit, he sent over the neighbor’s cat to come looking for a little attention from his small friend.