bubba's days are running out.
he's 20, see, which is old for a cat. it's hard to say if the liver failure or the kidney failure will get him first.
what is certain, in the meantime, is that bubba's light is dimming. his back legs no longer work very well...a far cry from the smoothly athletic stunts he used to pull, like leaping from the bathroom counter to the top of the door. or flying up the trunk of a large pine just ahead of two pursuing dogs. he was a sight, back in the day.
these days, bubba doesn't stray far from the space heater near his bed. his eyes are clouding, and his coat is perpetually full of mattes, despite the fact that i brush him every day. he's tired, mostly, and you can't really blame him. we should all be doing so well when we're the equivalent of 100 years old.
still, it's a little heartbreaking. some days, if i'm overly tired or stressed or otherwise out of sorts...it's a lot heartbreaking. we've been together a long time~~and though i can see a future when he's no longer around, that prospect doesn't feel real, or possible.
denial is a remarkable thing.
there are other, parallel endings imminent. for the wife of a good friend. for an uncle in hospice. strangely, there are more just outside our orbit. they resonate here, adding to the disquiet.
time slips through our grasp, not like sand or water, but like hard radiation, desiccating everything it touches.
and the simple, obvious, inescapable fact is this: at the end of the day, no one gets out alive.
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