Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A home for scared people

As I sit here and think about it, I don't really live in fear of much. Yeah I get scared when certain things happen, such as when I'm camping several miles form the road, and it's late at night when a hiker walks up to my campsite and flashes his flashlight at my tent. That was pretty scary, and yes, I did pull out my swiss army knife and await my role in a slasher film. But I'm not really living in fear of that happening again.

But I am living in fear of one thing, and terrified of it. I'm scared of my cat.

Specifically, I live in fear of coming home or waking up, and Willy is just dead with no warning(well, other than his existing health problem). When I came home from work this morning I fed the animals, did my timesheet, and went to bed. The cats tend to sleep on the bed when I am, so they both followed me in. When I woke up in the afternoon(a family moved into the second floor and they tend to have visitors that just honk the car horns outside the building. I'll let you guess the ethnicity) Willy was completely still. Wasn't reacting to me getting up and moving, and as far as I could tell, wasn't breathing. I started to shake him going "Willy! Willy!" and, thank goodness, he jerked awake. He rarely goes into a deep sleep, so it scared the hell out of me. My heart was racing.

(Mary, by contrast, could sleep through a nuclear attack)

I worry that this makes me sound like an asshole, but I hope that when it is Willys time there'll be some kind of warning so I can take him to the vet. I honestly don't know what I would do otherwise.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

A very reasonable fear. And your last comment doesn't make you an asshole. It's hard to know what to do at the end. But pets are very in tune with their bodies and how their life is headed; much more in tune than humans are. From my own experience and from stories I've heard from friends, I think pets usually give their owners a signal that they have had enough so that the owner can take them to the vet at the right time.

GruntyGinMan said...

I hope you're right, and although while I think I could handle taking him him to get his marching papers better than just coming home/waking up and finding him dead...I'm not sure how much better.

I've been feeling morbid lately. Must be the weather.