Goodbye to my friend, Z

Approximately 24 hours ago I said goodbye to a dear little friend. Small, clipped ear, skiddish, she was unlikely in many ways. Somehow, in the span of a couple of years, Z and I made a very real connection; somehow, she decided that I was important, and that in fact she desired nothing so much as to lay on my chest (me reclined on the couch) and rub her small head on my face: connection. By all observations - for some reason - she simply adored me. There were a number of other amusing things she would do, but those I won't leave here.

I work at home, and so she was a constant presence - and had had a difficult medical situation (an attack [male cat]) to survive just last year - so I confess wholly that she stole my heart. Now she has broken it by the void of her absence. She is in the corner of my eye. She is anticipated by my ears. We buried her at dusk today, after the pain of having to deliberately end her life last night; Z was attacked by two dogs - one bite puncturing her spinal cord leaving her to crawl under a trailer parked on the road in front of our house. There, in shock and paralyzed, she laid softly calling for help. I had been whistling for her, as the passing hurricane had it wet out and it was unusual for her to stay out long in such conditions. I finally detected her call from the road under the trailer, and with Diana's help got her out. We saw her x-ray.

Today we drove to my brother's land to bury her, and the sky offered a visual spectacle as the dissipating hurricane allowed rays of streaming light before us worthy of something profound - followed by a blue moon. Nature is both beautiful and cruel: dogs chase cats, cats chase lizards, lizards chase bugs - but Z, timid and small, didn't deserve this. I miss that little cat dearly. My heart is broken in two. We will get another playmate for Doodlebug in time, but will not encounter another Z - nor for me - experience such an unlikely connection. There is no point to this other than my need to tell it to no one in particular; that's all I really want to say to the cosmos at this moment.

Diana, of course, shared this difficult experience, but I write this down as a singular creature of this planet who was so taken with another.