Goodbye Sushi

Last week marked 7 months since we buried our 15 year old dog, Corky. Today, we will bury our cat, Sushi. We have known for a while that her time was coming. At 16, she is old for a cat. My dh and dss 3 and 4 went to the vet with her to put her to sleep.

Sushi came into our lives when dss 1 and 2 were very young. None of my boys remembers life without her. My Mother got her and realized that her allergies were cat related...thus we kind of inherited Sushi.

She has been through the toddler stages of all four of my kids plus four foster children many years ago not to mention other nieces, nephews, and cousins. She has never once been "cross" with any child. I remember seeing one of the youngsters dragging her backwards by the tail one time as if she were a stuffed animal...she didn't put a claw out...she just relaxed until a grown-up rescued her.

Sushi loved being outside when she was younger and before we moved to Sarasota. She gave birth to a total of 8 kittens in about three years during our time in Port Tampa. Her kittens were just as pretty as she was. People always asked us to "let" her have more!

When we moved to Brandon, she loved to play with Corky in our big backyard. I think it was there that she developed an attachment to my dh. Our parsonage was right on the church property. She would walk over to dh's office and sit in the window or by his door waiting for him to be done with work and come home. She never wandered any farther than that.


When we moved to Sarasota, she had to become an indoor cat. She didn't mind. She would spend her days soaking up the sun's rays from behind a window blind, or perched atop one of our sofa's (a.k.a. her "throne") or on dh's side of the bed, or most recently, on the lap of Son 3.

Not long ago, I told dh that I never thought I'd have problems with "another woman" and I certainly never thought it would be a CAT! She loved sleeping on his side of the bed. When he would go away and I would sleep there, she would bat me away with her paw. That was definitely "her territory" and "not mine".

As I said, in the past year, she and ds 3 have REALLY bonded. In fact, we didn't see her in our room much at all. If she had the opportunity to lay on son 3's clothes, his bed, or anything else he touched, she would. They truly loved each other.

It's hard. Our pets become such an important part of our lives. In a funny way, they ARE family. I will be forever thankful that she was a part of ours.

Goodbye, Sushi! You will be missed!