I buried our little cat, Wednesday, this morning.

She was a stray who found us on a Wednesday, crawling out from beneath our front porch one December evening as we took a break outside from watching “Wednesday” on Netflix – so naming her was easy. She was just a little, black kitten. We had to take her in.

She was an incredibly affectionate cat; she never tried to wiggle-out if you picked her up and she’d often sit directly at our feet, just touching us as if to be reassured we were still there.

I spent some time over the next few days looking for her owner on the local message boards and in the neighborhood but nobody claimed her – so we claimed her as our own. She would be our fifth pet of two dogs and three cats, our second rescue (the first being our cat, Jett).

So we took her to the vet and shelled out several hundred dollars to get her checked out, get all her shots, and get her spayed – which she took in stride. She wasn’t quite as playful but that was to be expected. At least those midnight mewlings were over.

At some point, after she went into heat but before we got her to the vet ,she developed several large, protruding lumps on her abdomen that were hard. The vet didn’t know what to make of them, but set the appointment for her spaying anyway, with the caveat that it might be much more expensive to treat her depending on what they found once inside. But the lumps just miraculously disappeared one day, which seemed really, really odd, but we were grateful nonetheless.

In the following months, Wednesday ate like a horse, yet never seemed to gain any weight or grow. She’d even follow me downstairs while I prepared my daily salad to be sure she’d get some scraps of chicken, bacon, and cheese – much to the chagrin of my dog, Copper, who’d been doing the same before she showed up. He doesn’t like sharing his food.

Then one day a couple weeks ago Wednesday developed a pretty serious vertigo of some kind. We looked up the symptoms and checked her for ear-mites but found nothing (she nearly always stayed indoors). We wondered if she’d fallen off the bed (she was always clumsy for a cat, which makes me wonder now).

We decided we’d keep an eye on her, which wasn’t too difficult as the vertigo kept her relatively stationary and sitting on a pillow. She did seem to start to come out of it in the last week but she was still somewhat unsteady. Our late cat Sylvia had a similar issue when we lived in another place, but she eventually came out of it. We’d hoped the same here.

Meanwhile, our aging chihuahua (13yrs old), Romeo, developed an impacted tooth, his jaw chattering from the intense pain. Cheryl was beside herself with worry. He already had several teeth removed and had another vet appt. coming up for his teeth but he was clearly in a lot of pain.

We almost took him to the closest actual 24hr vet hospital in the middle of the night (30 miles away) but some Benydryl that night helped him sleep and some doggy aspirin from the local pet store the next day seemed to get him through the worst of it Thankfully, yesterday, he seemed his old chipper self again. He came along on our walk and even ate some hard dog food. A good sign. His vet appt. will be today with oral surgery scheduled for the 14th.

Anyway, a couple days ago we noticed that Wednesday’s abdomen was severely bloated and she wasn’t eating. That night she projectile vomited all over our bedspread. The next day she was kind of listless and keeping to her pillow but we didn’t know what to make of it. Was it the kitty treats I gave her yesterday and today? That was the only change in her routine.

Finally, last night when Cheryl brought her to the bed, she projectile vomited again, this time on the kitty bed. We decided she had to get to the vet soon, regardless of Romeo’s pending appt. Cheryl made her a cozy spot in a bin at the foot of the bed and tucked her into a blanket. But at about 2:00am we awoke to hear her struggle. By the time i’d gotten up to turn on the light and see what was the matter, she was already lying in the doorway, lifeless.

Cheryl was beside herself, freaking out and repeatedly saying, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Eric, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” But there was nothing to be done by that point, so I brought her outside, gently wrapped in her blanket, and placed her on a seat cushion outside until I could bury her in the morning. Then I returned to console my wife who was never able to fall asleep after that.

She’s was wracked with guilt, feeling we should have got her to the very much sooner. Probably true, but realistically, vet appointments sometime takes weeks to get these days. The only option would have been the vet hospital thirty miles away (We used to have one only a few miles away but it recently closed). It can be terribly difficult sometimes to determine when a “wait and see” approach is warranted and when it’s a bonafide emergency that requires immediate attention.

We bet wrong.

I found a nice spot for her in the backyard by the tree-line plant bed where the soil was still loose enough to dig. She’ll join Kuzco, our late rabbit, who died of either a stroke or a seizure when he was nearing his life expectancy. But this, this poor little kitten. 😔

Rest in peace little one. I apologized to her as I lay her in the grave and filled it with soil.