Life after Tashi

I miss my little meeper so much.

I was just feeling like I was getting back in the saddle, and on the brink of being at a normal level of productivity and such.

Now I wake up at 4 or 5 am and cannot go back to sleep. Tashi would lay across my shins or feet, or between them all night long. When I wake up now, he isn’t there. Now Jaz isn’t sleeping down there either, so there are no cats at my feet to maneuver around. I am hopeful that Jaz or Snuggie will take over his spot in the bed.

Jaz has not gone to the bottom half of the bed since Tashi left us, and he used to spend his afternoons sleeping there as well as sleeping there at night, either with Tashi or on the other corner of the bed.

It is hard to take the absence of him at night, and then I cannot sleep, so I get up and lay on the loveseat for a few hours, unable to sleep there either. It takes hours for the sun to come in the windows, and those are long sad hours.

In fact, this morning, and yesterday morning , Jaz was meowing/yowling at the cat door to get out. He normally doesn’t go out for an hour or 2, or 3 after eating breakfast, but the last 2 mornings he went out immediately. Today he went straight for the Impenetrable Forest where Tashi spent most of every day. He stayed about 30 minutes and came back in, walked around meowed and then went back to the IF. They were very close.

Jaz has washed Tashi since he was a baby. In fact, on Monday night and Tuesday morning both, he was grooming Tashi on the bed. He used to let Tashi swipe soft food from his dish. It was so cute. Jaz would be eating and Tashi would slip a paw into Jaz’s dish and scoop up a little food and eat it off of his paw. He would do that over and over. Jaz would just lift his head from the bowl and let him do it each time, with no attempt to stop him or get upset.

Tashi was Snuggie’s playmate, they would jump on each other and wrestle and play chase. They would race around the house chasing each other, and lay in wait and pounce on each other in the yard. Snuggie spent an extra long time playing with the trackball toy this morning. It is a big plastic disk with a track in it and a ball that sits in the track. They take their paw and push the ball in circles around the track. The center of the disk has cardboard scratch material in it. Snuggie kept looking up for Tashi to arrive. He then started looking to the bedroom as though he was waiting for Tashi to run out from under the bed to play with him and the ball.

Tashi had energy to match Snuggie, and the loviness to match Jaz. He was special to each of us and filled a need in a special way.

Every time I would pet Tashi, or pick him up, I could feel my heart swell with happiness. There was just something special about him that brought pure joy to my soul.

It is hard to watch Snuggie and Jaz look for him. I am spending extra time with each of them, trying to pick up some of what he brought to their life. More loving for Jaz, and more time playing with Snuggie.

When I brought Tashi in the house on Tuesday, I laid him on my bed on a big blue bath towel. Jaz and Snuggie both got up on the bed and sniffed near him at least twice each. When I put him in his box, I sat on the living room floor with him and both came up to sniff. I then sat out on the porch with him for a few minutes before closing his box and both sniffed again. I don’t know if they understood anything from it or not. He had soiled himself in the accident and was bleeding from the mouth, so I don’t know if he smelled enough like Tashi for them to get the general idea. His external body was not damaged, so he looked like himself.

I buried him in the yard near the edge of the Impenetrable Forest, since he spent almost all his time in there. I can see his grave from the office, the living room and the porch.

I have been spending most of my time pacing from room to room and then looking out the windows. I know life will get back to pretty much the “usual” in the next days, but these early ones hurt like the dickens.

The daytime is easiest because Tashi was rarely in the house during the day. He would hang out on the porch in dad’s chair on some hot afternoons, but mostly I did not see him until about 7pm when he would come in and start meowing for dinner, which is at 8:30. He would rub against me and gently nip my legs if I was wearing shorts.

Oh how I miss him.