Lament
Our beautiful baby girl left us this morning.
Her name is Li'l Bit, affectionately known as Lard Butt.
She had the silkiest fur I've ever touched.
She was a talker, too. She could say 'I love you', and 'Hello'. She talked all the time, but these were the phrases we were sure of. We always knew when she wanted something; she didn't stop talking until we got up to satisfy her demands.
She could climb chain-link fences. This is right outside of our office window. She had a little ledge where she could watch the birds at the feeders. She loved to come and go through the window there.
Here, she's shoulder deep in catnip & mums, and, as usual, on the alert.
One day I was showing a friend's 4-month-old baby the catnip, letting him smell and touch. Li'l Bit (who usually avoids strangers) came down from our Stardeck, came immediately to the catnip and started patrolling between the plant and the baby and me.
OK--it's her catnip. We got it.
Joel wrote some sweet words to our friends who knew her. I include them here.
"This morning Little Bit crawled up in between us, had a
heart attack and died. We have buried her at our friend Shaula’s on a
beautiful little hill where she can look down at our yard. We didn’t want to leave her here in case the new property owner began digging up the property. We buried her with her toys, in several of her little towels that she would lie on throughout the house. Our hearts are broken and neither one of us can stop crying. We had her for 11 years and she gave no indication that she was feeling bad. Every morning when I get up
to go to the bathroom, still half asleep, she would follow me and rub her little cheek on the door jamb, speak to me just a bit and she did that again this morning. I went back to bed and she came up along side me, between us, and laid there. I stroked her soft little ears and sending her little I love you’s. I turned onto my side and within 30 seconds she jerked, sort of like a violent shudder. Her shudder was active enough to wake Kate. I reached for Little Bit because I thought she was stuck between the 2 mattresses. I turned the light on because I knew…
I just knew. She drew, perhaps 3 more breaths and that was it.
It is such a grievous thing when you loose a pet, a child-like being in your life. She would say hello when she came in, she would crawl up on
each of us at different times during the day and pad and purr and then go off to take her 10-hour nap in one of her secret hiding places. I hate being in the house because I am looking for her already. I always did. She had 5 hiding places and she would invariably be found in one of them.
Anyway, we know she didn’t want to make that trip in the car to San Antonio.We were so blessed to have had her in our lives. She was joy and delight and wonderful all rolled up in this black and white ball of the softest hair you could ever imagine."
Our friend Ile, and Li'l Bit's favorite pet-sitter came to us as soon as we called her, and Shaula came down from the hill above our house. It was really wonderful to have them there. All of us prepared Li'l Bit and took her up the hill to Shaula's where we laid her.
She rests here now.
Our friend, Shaula, let us bury Li'l Bit at her house.
We couldn't contemplate leaving her here when we will be leaving so soon.
There is a new little Mountain Primrose planted there, and some of the catnip that she loved so much.
She lies on a little hill where the morning sun will shine and where she can 'see' the window where she used to sit at home.
Not that you can see it, but it's there at the bottom of the curve in the road.