Memory lane 1: Junior...

Junior
(From a diary:) "Junior died May 6, 2006. He was born about a year ago, and has a sister who is still alive and looks very much like him. He never played or even moved around much. His sister was always active and running around, but Junior (I called him so because he was as handsome as his dad, long legs and long tail, and beautiful golden eyes) would sit by himself and keep to himself. He and two other stray cats from the neighbourhood would come out of the shelter I made (a plastic garbage can put on its side with blankets) every morning and into my kitchen from the winter cold to sit in front of the stove for 5 or 10 minutes and warm up a bit. When I hadn’t seen him for a few days, I lifted up the blanket that covered the garbage can to check if he might be in there, and there he was, sitting in the corner. Till that time, I hadn’t been able to touch him at all, he would run away, but this time he let me pick him up and I put him in my kitchen. I made a basket with a blanket for him and he lay there and didn’t move. The next day I took him to a vet nearby. Without further and expensive tests the vet wouldn’t be sure, but he said it was probably feline leukemia or AIDS. I took him home and kept him in the kitchen for a few months, and he seemed to get a little better, but eating seemed to hurt him a lot. He had gum problems and maybe some growth in his throat. When even drinking water became painful for him he decided life wasn’t worth living anymore. He stopped eating completely. I live with a rabbit in a 2K apartment, so had kept Junior in the kitchen, apart from my rabbit. After he stopped eating, I closed the sliding door between my two rooms and let Junior sleep in the second room. I also started sleeping in that room to keep him company. He had always looked so lonely when I closed the door between the one room and the kitchen, wondering, I think, why he couldn’t go and see the rest of the apartment. 12 days after he stopped eating he died at night with me beside him. I was happy I could be with him and very relieved that his suffering was finally over - the last two weeks had been terrible for him. Often he would cry in pain, I would come home from work and he would be all dirty, lying in his own pee, it was horrible. Junior was a lovely little guy, who lived only one year. I’ll miss him..."