The Death Of A Cat

Neil Gaiman's real-time journal is oddly moving:

I slept in the attic bedroom again last night. Zoe seemed weak and listless when I went in, and was huddling on the floor by the heater. She smelled weird, like bile. She got out of bed a couple of times in the night, to throw up a couple of teaspoons of foam. Then I'd clean her up and bring her back to the bed, and she'd snuggle and purr.

When I woke up this morning, she was in her cat bed on the floor. I cleaned up the vomit-foam that had happened while I'd slept. Now I'm off to drive through something that appears from wunderground.com to be a full-on ice-storm to go and get Olga from the airport and bring her back to spend a last day with her cat.

And I'm wondering what it is about this small blind cat that inspires such behaviour -- mine, Olga's, Lorraine's.... I've had cats in this house for 18 years, and there are cat-graves down by gazebo. Two cats died of old age last year. It wasn't like this.

I think it may be the love. Hers, once given, was yours, unconditionally and utterly.