Life

Colby 🐾

Rob Pavacic

Late last year in December I lost my cat Colby.

It was years ago when my sister had found Colby as a stray in a parking lot nearby. You should know that I have always been allergic to cats. In fact, when I was younger, I was at the doctor’s office every weekend getting allergy shots. Cats, pollen, almost everything would cause me to have an asthma attack.

And then Colby joined the family. He kept to himself mostly. I didn’t spend much time with him when I was younger, because I was away at college. Instead, my brother grew up with him. Colby wasn’t your typical kind of cat. He liked to observe a lot and keep to himself. He rarely ever got angry, but would like to play with one of those string toys. We would also often find him sitting on the kitchen table patiently waiting for someone to feed him.

And then, he got sick. The first time, many years prior he wasn’t able to keep his food down and we thought maybe the food was the problem. So we bought different food and over time that seemed to help. The symptoms disappeared. And then last year he got sick again, but this time was different.

During Covid, I mostly worked from home and Colby started spending time with me in my room either under my bed or at my feet under the desk. He became lethargic and was sleeping more. It would be a struggle some days to get him to come out from underneath the bed. Much of the time I would attribute it to Colby just being Colby. He kept to himself, even in the end he didn’t let on that he wasn’t well.

All this to say, I really miss my cat. If my younger self heard me saying this right now, he probably wouldn’t believe me. I had always been more of a dog-lover due to the allergies and asthma issues. But that all went away with Colby.

The night he passed away, I desperately tried everything to keep him alive. I called emergency pet services, tried to give him food, water, heating pad, everything. I stayed with him for hours.

And at one point, when I had him wrapped up in a blanket in my arms, he meowed in a way that my mind sort of translated to “you have to let me go now“.

That was one of the hardest days of my life. I’ve lost a lot of pets at this point, but Colby passing away was different. I had spent so much time with him during Covid leading up to his last night. During that time, there were also so many other stressful things happening in my life, that I never really had a chance to grieve for him after he was gone. Lately I’ve been stumbling across instagram videos of other people with their pets. Dogs, cats, birds, all sorts of different ones. Occasionally, I’d come across a video of someone in tears saying their last goodbye. And it’s then when I remember Colby.

I remember the moments I had with him, sleeping on the bed. Him curled up, resting in between my legs. Or when someone would accidentally leave the door to the backyard open and he would attempt to make a mad dash for the fence. Or when I’d be sitting at the kitchen table and he would walk up to me, bow his head, and press it against mine to get my attention or console me.

I’m sure many people have similar moments with their pets.

Colby was just the best cat you could ever ask for. It feels like he came into my life and left so quickly, yet we had him for years. Just after he passed away, I managed to get imprints of his paws on this moldable putty that hardens overnight. Every so often I’ll take it out, run my hand over it and remember the good times I had with him.

Miss you Colby 🐾

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