Goodbye to Daxter

My cat Daxter had to be put to sleep today due to a liver tumor. I'm beating myself up about how much more I should have done to save him and how I should have taken him to the vet sooner when he started losing weight. As you know by reading this blog, half my life is spent fretting, worrying, and feeling anxious, but this is so much worse because there's an acute loss at the center of it. This is so much worse because Daxter's gone.

For a creature that only weighed ten pounds, Daxter had a huge personality that permeated our whole house and family. You couldn't take out the butter dish without slicing off a little taste for him, and I swear he could HEAR cream cheese when I brought it home from the grocery store. We had to buy him a collar with a bell so he wouldn't catch birds, but he still tried. Last summer, he chased a baby fox through our backyard, his bell jingling all the way.

My son found Daxter in the parking lot by his old karate school 10 years ago. He was a sick, scrawny kitten of about 6 months old. When I took him to our vet the next day, they asked me if I wanted to spend the time and money to get him healthy because he was a "fixer-upper." So we fixed him up, and we shared our lives with him for the better part of a decade.

Today I'm mourning my sweet little Daxter. He should have had a lot more years to chase foxes and mooch cream cheese. He should have been able to move to Georgia with us when we relocate in June. I wonder what he would have thought of an armadillo.

Rest in peace, Daxter. You're loved and missed, now and forever.