Adventure Travel blog — Loss, thus Grief

Cleo “Kiki” Leibold

April 2003- January 25, 2019

“When I hold you in my hands
I hold my beating heart.
One day you’ll be gone, and
I’ll be left with my heart in my
hands.”

I wrote that sometime last year.

Last week I printed it and put it inside her burial box.

It’s the closest I have to describe what she meant to me. She was my heart.

Kiki was my beating heart living outside my body.

Kiki came into my life as a surprise gift from my friends on my 16th birthday. I don’t remember asking for a kitten or making it known that I wanted one, but one I got nevertheless. She gave off an Egyptian vibe (from her various colored fur) so I named her Cleopatra, Cleo for short. It suited her because she was a queen. Later I started calling her Kiki because I thought it was cuter and funner to say. Then over the years I called her a wide range of things including but not limited to: Kiki Muffin, Love Muffin, Fluffy Muffin, Baby, and Baby Muffin. She was an energetic little thing and I remember she used to jump high in the air and flip when playing with toys. She loved hair ties so I would attach one to a wand and string and she would flip all over to get it. Kiki was also a major scaredy cat. As an indoor cat she never had to go outside and it got to the point that I couldn’t get her to even step one foot out the door. She was not curious at all when it came to outside the house. Even going to the vet was a nightmare as she associated the carrier with leaving and would scratch and then pee on us when we tried to put her in it. So then my dad had to start stuffing her in a pillowcase to get her to leave, but she would still pee in that. It got to the point that we couldn’t even carry her into the kitchen without her scratching us and struggling to get away.

As I got older and moved away for college, then jobs around the country, I never took her with me. My dad would say this was her home and she wouldn’t do well with the stresses of moving. But inside I always replied with, I am her home. But since I knew how anxious she was I became fearful to move her thinking she would die from such a shock. Every time I left her was very emotional. I was so upset to leave her but I felt that I couldn’t put my dreams on hold just to stay with her. I am grateful that she had my parents to look after her whenever I was away. Then whenever I would come back she would hiss and hide from me, shunning me for leaving her. But by the next day or so she would come out from hiding and go back to following me around and laying on my chest while in bed. As she got older I knew her time left was coming to a close so when I would leave her it was even more painful. I just felt like it’s so different then leaving people who you can communicate with and know that you will return. I had no idea how or what Kiki thought and only assumed that she couldn’t comprehend that I wouldn’t be back in a couple of days or if I would ever come back to her.

This past winter I came home for the holidays and as always looked forward to my next adventure in the new year. While home I decided to get Kiki checked out at the vet since she hadn’t been in years and I was concerned with her weight loss and excessive water drinking. At the vet I learned that her kidney values where high so we left with a prescription and some kidney food. Just days later she stopped eating and drinking altogether. I didn’t know what to do and waited thinking she might get better, but come Christmas Day she couldn’t keep her head up and was so pitiful that I decided to take her to the ER vet. She stayed there over night and we brought her back to our home vet the next day. I was told she had stage 4 chronic kidney disease and that she wouldn’t live much longer. I was shocked. And I was mad because I had just been to the vet a week ago and was given no indication that it was that severe (later learning that the kidney values can change quickly). So I brought her home expecting her to pass any day. I was relieved when she went back to eating and drinking and acting like normal. And even though my plans got put on hold, I made the decision to stay to be with her. I knew that if I left her to get back to my life that I would regret not being with her at the last. It seems like a no-brainer choice now but at the time I really struggled because my mental state was declining from being unproductive, unmotivated, and stationary for so long and I desperately needed a change of scenery and to be active again to pull myself out of the darkness.

So while I stayed I tried to mentally prepare myself for losing her. I read several books about death to start thinking about it more and to bring the reality closer to the surface rather than, literally, burying it down to not have to deal with it. [side note- I think our US culture does a poor job at dealing with death compared to other cultures that embrace it more. I believe that when we stifle conversations about death it just makes it harder to deal with when the time comes. Talking about it more opens a space whereto process our feelings by sharing with others as well as receiving comfort and wisdom from others. -I highly recommend Caitlin Doughty’s book From Here to Eternity to learn about how other cultures deal with death. And if you’re curious as to what other books on death I read you can see them listed on my currently reading page] However, all the reading still didn’t help much. It got to the point that I didn’t even want to leave the house for fear that I would not be there when she needed me, when she passed. I didn’t want to be apart from her. I wanted to be with her every minute of the day. I wanted to cuddle and kiss on her as much as I could because I never felt like I could get enough of her.

I remember back when she was a kitten and how much I loved her. I felt like I couldn’t love her anymore than I did that day, but then the next day came around and I did feel like I loved her more. And it was like that for the rest of my time with her. My capacity of love for her grew everyday even when I thought it was at it’s max. See, I have always called her the love of my life, and I felt it even more so as I got older for I feel as though I filled other sections in my heart allotted for say a partner/children/friends, that which remained empty, with love for her. I depend on her for the majority of my love received as well as given so I was confronted with, what love remains within me or for me when she is gone?

Then one day she started eating less and less treats and went to my closet. I knew that was it. The only time she went to my closet is when she didn’t feel good. So I knew the end was near. She was still drinking water and didn’t look too bad so I had a wishful thought that she might get better, but again I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I found a local mobile vet. I was determined not to take her for a checkup or to be put down at the vet because I didn’t want her last experience on earth to be one of anxiety and fear. So the mobile vet came by to asses her and we gave her some fluids. By the next day I knew the fluids wouldn’t help so we called to schedule her euthanasia for the next day. I struggled with knowing if this was the end for her and hated that she couldn’t tell me what she wanted. Of course I didn’t want her to suffer or to be in pain, but I also wanted to feel as though I did everything I could for her, and not just dismissing bad news as a death sentence just because she wasn’t a human, where we would do everything possible to keep one alive. So I spent my last hours in a countdown: last night, 4 hours until, 2 hours until, and so on. I had been saying my goodbyes to her for weeks, and at the time could only keep repeating myself. I had to keep telling myself that I was doing the right thing even though my heart was breaking.

It all happened pretty quick. Once her heart stopped beating she lay there as though she were sleeping, and I smiled looking at her and how beautiful she was. I was surprised at myself on how easy it was for me to see her like that and to touch her knowing that it was just her body that remained, but she just looked like she was sleeping. I moved her into another position and placed roses around her body. I stroked her fur and felt an enormous sense of pride in how beautiful she looked laying there. And just as I had done for the past 15 years, which had became a running joke, I called my parents in to look at her. Then I moved her into the burial box that my dad made and I painted. I laid her down onto a bed of flowers and once more placed the roses around her body.

*Bit of a rant concerning the fact that I feel the need to justify my grief to the wider public that “refuses to sanction my loss”— I am not embarrassed by the grief I feel for Kiki’s passing. My mourning for her is my own. My relationship and love for her is only known in my heart. So I understand that you, the reader, might not get it. But I refuse to see my grief be dismissed and delegitimized by the wider society just because she is a nonhuman animal and not, say, a human child. Please don’t compare my love and grief. I don’t need to be told that the love I feel for Kiki is inferior or less than the love you feel toward your loved ones (occupying human bodies) or that I will never know love until I have a child. Because that begs the question, what about all the people that don’t?. Are you saying that they are living a life without deep love if they don’t have children, if they can’t have children, or if they choose not to have children? I just don’t think that’s right. And it hurts. So I am just saying, I can recognize that you believe that for yourself but please allow me the same courtesy and do not assume that it is so for all people. Is it not enough just to love, without having to compare depths or recipients of love?

I’d like to share a quote from one of the last books I read about death and mourning nonhuman animals:

“Pet lovers find their attachments (and thus themselves) dismissed or denigrated as eccentric, sentimental, odd, even crazy. This is a mode of dismissal that rests on illegibility –the incomprehensibility of a set of actions within a matrix of social acceptability that restricts grieving to humans for humans. As Stanescu puts it, ’Social unintelligibility is … a failure of recognition by others, a failure to code as reality what you know reality to be. It is an erasure of existence, an erasure of sense, and an erasure of relations. To have your grief for one you care about rendered unintelligible does not invite simple ridicule; it invites melancholia and madness’.” -Displaying Death and Animating Life by Jane C. Desmond

Her absence will be felt everyday in all the things that I do.

I write this post not just to share what I’ve been going through or to help process my grief, but to share Kiki’s life story. For I believe it gives her eternal life through my documented words, so her memory exists more than in my heart.