Ciao, Gala

The circumstances through which Gala came to live with us are lost in the murky mists of my miasmic memory, but it was before the kids got married, and that will be ten years this November.  Regardless, she and her step-brother the orange and garrulous SnapDog have been here to greet us, foul up the a/c filter with pillowcase loads of hair, and cough up fur balls for more than a decade.

Gala always acted as if I'd recently given her the beating of her life, and that another assault was imminent.  If I came into a room, she'd skulk out of it.  When unbeknownst to me she'd nap between my desk back and the wall, if I tarried too long in the kneewell, a sudden burst of black and tan would dash across my feet and flee the room, all the better to languish under some safer place.  This was not conducive to cordial relations between us, but I gave her her space and we co-existed.

Gala'd been sick of late.  The fur balls were gone, replaced with a vile mix of bile and partly digested - well, suffice it to say, she was real sick, several times a day, several different places in the house, and even if you got on the carpet spot immediately, it was permanent.  The carped took on the look, if not the texture and desireability of some of my beloved's favorite clothing items. 

This type of thing happens with cats, but it wasn't getting better and in the last few days she would cry out just before offering up another odiferous emanation.  Then Herself decided we were getting new carpet.

This morning I took Gala to the vet.  On the trip she described to me in copious detail the many wrongs I'd done her, and tried to enlist the aid of passers-by, many of whom stared at my truck, their unspoken question obviously "What can he be doing in there to that poor creature?"  The vet's rejectionists quickly ushered me into an exam room, as Gala was upsetting not only the other pets but their owners as well.  I hung my head, my body language clearly professing innocence.  The vet's exam didn't take long, and certainly did nothing to assuage Gala's protestations.  He could operate, of course, if I insisted, but this was a cancer, probably of the stomach, and she was almost certainly in her last days.

The grief/cremation consultant slunk through the door.  A cadverous young woman, here to share my grief.  A hug, a murmured 'Perhaps it was meant to be."  (What the hell does that mean? I wondered.)  And luckily, in the onset of my mourning, my choices were two:  For $243.22 (where did they get that number?) Gala could be given a Private Cremation, after which her ashes would be returned to us in an Urn Suitable For Your Mantle.  Appearing to carefully consider the view to the mantle from my chair at the dinner table, I queried, "You said there are two options?"

For $44.25 (another odd number) Gala could become part of a Mass Cremation.  "Mmmm hmmm?"  I pondered.  She continued, "They do a real good job (I'd know a bad cremation?) and they have a lovely pond on site, where they scatter the ashes afterwards."

In my mind's eye I have a vision of Gala's ashes being scattered across the pond, not unlike the way the dust is scattered across the lawn if I'm not careful when I empty the flapping vacuum bag.  Now I'll have to go poke out my mind's eye.