So, I had this cat, Sammy I called her, short for Samantha. She was given to me by Tracey Metzger, a girl that I knew. I guess we just hit it off, and she decided to give me a kitten (1994) because, hell I don’t know, she liked me. I had just moved into my first New York City apartment after getting out of a really bad relationship with a real cunt of a woman, as I was later to find out. But that is beside the point. The point is, I loved Sammy so much, but I got laid off and had to move in with my brother and sister in law, and they let me bring Sammy along. But then I met a woman and moved in with her, and my parents took Sammy because my new found love wouldn’t have a cat in their house.
Ok, this is really boring, I am sure, but the point is, that there were so many nights that my Sammy was the only friend I had in the world, and then I’m talking to my mother the other day, and she tells me that Sammy had died. She got sick, and they took her to the vet. She recovered a bit from the medicine they gave her, but then she just up and died.
I loved Sammy so much and had accepted the fact that she died too young. But then what the fuck happens? I have a dream and Sammy is right there in front of me, but she doesn’t know me at first. She comes up to me and smells me and doesn’t know who the fuck I am. And then, she realizes who I am, and I touch her and then what the fuck happens? I wake the fuck up.
When cat got sick for the first time, I started talking to 24 hour & emergency vets for the first time, and was floored by the numbers they were throwing around. I didn’t have that kind of money on me, and wouldn’t for at least a week. I talked to one I could see the next day that was within my means, who listened to the symptoms and said that next day should be ok. I had a dream that night that instead of taking him to the vet, I drove my cat out to the woods and kicked him out of the car. The dream went on for a bit, and at the end I saw my cat again. He was really beaten up, fur patches gone, one ear notched, limping, tail bent, etc. He limped up to me, looked up, and just meowed. And then fell over dead. I woke up with tears streaming down my face, and had to run into the bathroom to see my cat. It sucked.
It’s weird how pets get into your head. I’ve lost a couple cats over the last couple years and each time I dreamed about them every night for at least a month before the dreams finally started coming less and less frequently. The dreams were always of a “oh my gosh, you’re here! You aren’t really gone!” type.
Even weirder is when my mom died I was sad, but don’t recall dreaming about her that often.
So sorry to hear about Sammy. Right now the SO and I are looking at a situation where her (and now my) 22 year old cat probably won’t see 23 and we almost thought we’d lost him last week. It’s hard no matter what the circumstances are, no matter how old the pet is or how it happened. My sympathies.
But maybe in a while, your dreams about Sammy will be bittersweet instead of just bitter. It hurt me a lot when I first dreamed about Cinnamon and Mocha after their deaths, but later on I sort of liked the dreams because for a few minutes it was like seeing them again which was good, as sad as it made me when I woke up and remembered that they were still gone.
I decided our family dog had been visiting my dreams too much so one time I said to her “Star, you shouldn’t be here. You’re dead.” She looked at me, turned around, and trotted off.
She still visits my dreams but nowhere near as frequently now.
Your dream reminded me of the poet John Milton, dreaming of his first wife, who had died young. (Bear in mind that Milton was blind, it’s important for the understanding of his poem.)
I always find that last line heartbreaking. My condolences to you on your beloved pet.
I love cats and get very sad when my cats die, but that Simpsons episode where Lisa find Snowball III floating face-down in the aquarium kills me every time.
