Ambush’s ashes

I picked up Ambush’s ashes today: a little white box in a purple velvet bag that says “Until we meet again at the rainbow bridge.” My poor little buddy.

I held it together until the person at the clinic handed me the bag with Ambush’s ashes. I’ve cried almost every time I’ve seen something that reminds me of Ambush. Places where he used to sleep. Clothes coming out of the dryer still covered in his hair. His favorite toys scattered around the house. His box of ashes was small: tiny compared to his once 18-pound marshmallow form. The tininess of the box seemed symbolic of how much weight he had lost (9 pounds) and how, in the space of a few weeks, he had become a shell of his former self.

After you lose a pet, you catch glimpses of them in places where they used to sleep, where they used to eat, where you used to trip over them. I’ve caught glimpses of Ambush’s shadow in the kitchen sleeping on his back and on the bed in the morning. Stella and Kiesha are still wandering around at night meowing, but not as much. They seem to be adapting.

A friend asked me if I had brought Ambush’s body home to show the other kitties so they would understand that he had passed. No, I had not. It was everything I could do to stay with him as he was euthanized. I couldn’t bear the thought of bringing his body home to an apartment and then taking his body back. It was so hard to make the decision to put him down and spend those last moments with him. It’s been almost two weeks since he died and I can only just now look at his pictures without crying. (Writing this has me in tears.)

His ashes are up on the cabinet so he can watch everything going on. He’s there with Basette’s ashes. My poor two kitties who died from diabetes. (This blog was started in part to tell Basette’s and Isis’ stories.)

So Ambush is home and will stay with me in his little bag until I buy a permanent home, some place with a garden worthy of my two lost kitties.

Stella is in my lap meowing at me and pushing her face against my fingers as I try to type. There is a lightning storm outside: steady, constant rain punctuated by bursts of thunder. Fitting. Ambush would have been sleeping under my desk during a lightning storm. He never did like the noise.

Ambush, last day. Purring.

Ambush in TN just before the move to NC, 2007

Ambush had a plastic fetish. He would often pull out all of the plastic bags.

Ambush

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