Goodbye Tajai

Mike and I had a cat named Tajai. We got him about 15 years ago, and was Mike's very first real pet, ever. He had geckos and snakes and lizards, but never a fuzzy pet. And those are the ones that count.

Anyway, so Tajai and Mike were very close. When Mike made the drive from Illinois to Washington to get on the ferry (he he, I typed fairy first. Um, he better not have been doing THAT in Washington), he had Tajai (and my cat) in the car with him the whole drive. With a litter box on the floor of the passenger's side. In the middle of summer. Now that's love.

This cat went to the village of 80 people in the middle of Alaska where Mike taught for a year. He was a good friend for a long time. And then he got sick. We finally make the decision to put him down, and together take him in to the vet.

As we are all in the room (after the catheter) was in his leg, the vet does the injection. Mike sat holding Taj as he took his last breath and closed his eyes. And as his eyes closed, there sat my husband, with big fat tears filling his eyes, and finally spilling over onto the laminate floor with audible plunks. The vet slips out of the room to give us some time together. Mike sat holding Taj, I sat holding Mike, both of us crying.

And then Tajai's bladder cuts loose all over Mike. His one last fuck you for killing me. And was exactly how that little shit would choose to go out, cause he was a bad ass like that. And there we were, laughing our asses off, holding our dead cat, in the vets office, where I KNOW they thought we were either heartless or insane. But it made an impossible situation, bearable. And if I had an actual picture of him on our computer, I would post it.