Death.

I don't talk about this much. I really can't. I'm overly-empathetic, much like many of our board members. Lately there's been a flurry of GA's on FDMB. It does seem to happen in cycles there. Weeks will go by and then suddenly five or six cats die in two days. It's so hard because you want to give each Cat Mama or Cat Daddy a unique and personal message of hope and consolation, but to have so many die at the same time takes a lot out of a person. As a person who has lost three cats in two years, and two within two months, I should be capable of sending a strong message: Life will restart, I promise.

I just can't.

I disappear for weeks because it blows me away. Guilt for the people I have not posted to, I try to make it up to them, but I can't. Every time I look at the board and see a cat has passed, it brings it all back. I am not "over" the deaths of my boys, and I'm barely able to think about Sammie, now two years gone. I have new cats now, beautiful souls, and I love them very much. As much as Sammie, Spot and Oscar? Not yet, but my heart is trying to heal.

The fact that I love them at all says something about the resiliency of the human heart. Many people have wondered how I could stand to take in more cats after the deaths of my beloveds. To be brutally honest, I have always known that my cats would live less than 20 years and that knowledge, combined with the knowledge that many more cats are in need of a loving home, allows me to stumble past my loss and not be crippled by it. That knowledge does not prevent my being prone to waves of grief when I think about my lost babies.

I have awful sorrow. Guilt, as all diabetic cat moms are prone. Pain, sometimes terrible pain. I want to hold my lost babies one more time and tell them I really tried and I really miss them and I'm really sorry their lives were marred by diabetes, cancer, heart issues, ear pain, and spondylosis. I'm so sorry, my babies, that I was stupid. I'm so sorry I contributed to your pain.

Never again. I will do everything I can to improve the lives of other cats in Your Names. Sammie, Spot, Oscar.. Niko, Roxanne and Leo will all live better loves because of you and what you meant to me.

And now you know. I grieve, but I love. I am smiling through my tears.