Something very sad happened today: one of my boyfriend's cat passed away in my arms. She was suffering from feline hepatic lipidosis, and was being fed through a feeding tube... the disease is reversible sometimes, but we believe she had some unknown comorbidity which made her unresponsive to treatment. We did everything we could to help her, to no avail.
For me, it was particularly painful because Princess was my favourite. Not that I don't love the other cats, but she and I had a special connection. I was the first to notice when she seemed sick, and she responded whenever I called her.
When I first learnt about the worsening of her condition, I was out of town visiting my grandmothers. L told me she first seemed to be improving, and then had a sudden turn to worse. Being so far away and powerless to help, I decided to do a reading about to expect – and it shook me to the bone.
The deck I had with myself was The Wild Unknown Tarot pocket edition, and he cards I drew were the Son of Wands, the 9 of Wands and the (shudder) 8 of Cups.
The second card, 9 of Wands, speaks of the last difficult steps before finally accomplishing one's goal. It's like the final test. It's interesting that the card that follows it in the suit sequence is hardly a card of success – the 10 of Wands, a card of burden and burn out. In any case, the image of stairs covered in broken branches, climbing endlessly towards the moon, gave me the idea of an uphill struggle. Yes, the situation was as dire as it seemed.
Then came the final piece of this daunting puzzle: the 8 of Cups. Of the keywords in the booklet of the deck is "ill health", and it advises: "There is no hope of rekindling what's been lost. [...] Nothing good remains for you here".
Damn.
Like any oracle reader worth her salt, my first response was to instinctively know that we would lose Princess. Then came the second respond – denial and rationalisation. Maybe I was reading the cards too negatively. I wasn't getting the full full picture of the 8 of Cups, which could just mean the disease packing its bags and moving on to another poor creature, right? Or perhaps the deck just sucked. Who knew? Surely it couldn't mean...
Surely it couldn't...
Then this week happened. She seemed to improve a bit, and then worsened. On Saturday, the vets recommended we bring her home, because being in a hospital for too long is bad for... well, any creature. So we did it and we were ready to change our schedules and do whatever it took to keep he treatment until her health was fully restored, no matter how long it took or how expensive.
She did not give us much choice. By Sunday evening, I knew in my heart that she was leaving us. And on Monday morning, she did, taking her last breath in my arms as her little heart rushed and then stopped completely.
I must say... I am devastated, and have cried a lot. I loved her very much and she was so young (3 and half years old!). But, due to the reading, deep in my heart I knew her chances of recovering were dim. When death came, it was a sad thing, but not really a surprise. And now... now we have to let time take care of it. For now it hurts to looks at her pictures, and I catch myself tearing up whenever my eyes fall on a spot in the room where she used to lie.
Our Princess has crossed over the rainbow bridge, and I was there to help her make this passage, with love and dignity. At home, not in a glass box in the vet. Still, it hurts... not matter how much the cards prepare you, the truth is that we are never truly ready for what life throws at us.
The Wild Unknown Tarot © Kim Krans & HarperOne
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