Some lemons won't ever make lemonade

There isn't really anything I can do to make light of the passing of my sweet baby kitty Autumn.  It would be slightly easier if it hadn't come so unexpectedly or if in some small way I didn't feel like it was preventable.  If only is a terrible way to feel.  If only I hadn't let her out, if only we had always stayed on top of her diabetes, if only she had stayed the night after her xray with the vet on Fri.   

If only she hadn't had diabetes, then maybe she wouldn't have lost her balance, fallen and broken her tail after being chased by the neighborhood bully cat.  Only then, would her intense pain not have prevented her from her favorite activity, eating.  If only she would have been able to eat her diabetes wouldn't have spiraled out of control.  Then, I wouldn't have had to carry her limp, lifeless body into the vet.  I hate death, really hate it.  I saw the look on the vet tech's face when I carried Autumn in on a blanket.  She was so lethargic I was able to pick her and the blanket she was laying on and place her on the front seat of the car.  She was so sick that she had even soiled herself and not moved.  The vet took one look at her and said oh shit.  You know that isn't good.

At first the question was can we afford it and will it work, but within twenty minutes, the vet realized what I already knew, there wasn't really even a glimmer of hope.  She was almost unconscious from the ketones slipping into her blood stream from the uncontrolled diabetes.  I'm grateful that in the end I didn't have to make a choice based on anything aside from was she suffering.  In that at least there is one thing to have praise over.

Autumn was an amazing cat.  My dad found her meowing her tiny little head off (literally, she looked like a bobble head, a loud one) along with her two brothers a VERY hot July 2, 2002.  Autumn was meowing like crazy, midnight had his head stuck in the fence and Don Juan was curled up hiding behind Autumn.  Oh the foreshadowing.  I learned right then and there that personality is 99% nature.  Autumn never stopped meowing (she would perpetually wake Sam up prematurely since he was born at the crack of dawn so she could eat), Midnight has always found himself in some sort of trouble and Donnie the runt passed away of a heart defect in 2004 a month after impregnating Autumn with what now is his clone, Romeo. 


Here are some pictures of her and her son Romeo:
She loved squeezing herself into places, and she loved her catnip:

I'll never forget her giving birth.  It took her 14 hours (marathon for a cat).  We even had to take her to the vet for a potential c-sec.  She was saved by pitocin.  Two of her five kittens died in the process. 

When I became a mother this year, I thought of her sacrfice.  I don't even think I saw her get up to eat or go to the bathroom for the first few days.  I have no idea how she did it.

She loved blankets and snuggling in the winter.

She used to snuggle with me every time I worked from home.

She always came to party.  Many a time we'd have dozens of people in the house and only a few chairs, but no one wanted to make her get up. 
 

I'm devastated to say the least that she won't be here to play with Sam as he grows up.  She loved him SO much.  She and Bailey had also developed quite the bond since his birth.  They commiserated together, begged for food together and snuggled when their parents were too busy to snuggle with them.

She knew how to get her way with men:

If only we could know the future, I'd have a warm cuddly kitty sitting with me, writing about how eight years ago yesterday she gave birth to Romeo.

That's the thing with life though, if we did control what happened in our lives good or bad, we have no idea what we are doing.  Bruce Almighty is right, that is what God is for.