19 Cat Years

Things aren't going well for Sweet Pea. She's been my near constant companion for so long now, I just assumed she would be here forever.   Like that science fiction story that Harlan Ellison wrote about a boy named Jefty.  Jefty was Five.  He was Always Five. Jefty never grew up and got old.
It made for a strange story.

Sweet Pea showed up here pregnant all those years ago and gave birth to kittens in my greenhouse.  Two of them survived. Sweet Pea was so small. She was always a petite cat.  I think that was the problem.

Boots Bell was her beloved boy kitten. He died young back around 2006, when he was hit by a car.  The dear cat climbed all the way up the double terrace to die under a bush by the house.  Sweet Pea climbed right in beside him. That was her boy.  She followed my bro-in-law to the woods where he
buried him. She knew.   She had also lost her mate, "Old Whitey,"  a stray cat with a broken tail, on the same highway.

But Sweet Pea became an inside cat after only a few years.  Inside cats live longer, and better.  Her other kitten, a female, became my mom's cat. She is still here, too.  But Sweet Pea never liked Little Sambo, the runt kitten.  They are still hissing at each other today.   (Usually when one passes by too closely to the other.)

Well, I'm tired.  Decisions have to made and I can't make them right now.   I'll just go hug Sweet Pea
a little closer.  She knows me.  But in addition to being very sick, she is starting to act bewildered.
Like life is washing over her and she is powerless to  really grasp it.