“The worst Christmas ever”

Posted on | December 26, 2011 | 5 Comments

This was Sweetpea’s declaration last night as she pulled the bed covers over her head and dug down deep, refusing to come up for air.

It hadn’t started off badly. Well, the 6am wakeup was none too pleasant, I admit, but Hubby and I put on brave parental smiles and tried to be jolly. It was Christmas Day after all.

There was disappointment when Munchkin didn’t get the Nerf gun that was on his list. But as I pointed out to him later, maybe it’s just that Santa shares Mummy’s feelings about toy guns.

And there was most certainly too much sugar consumption. The first thing to hit both the kids’ stomachs wasn’t Hubby’s lovely scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, but chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Which in my mind is fine for just one day a year.

They even walked the dog with me, Sweetpea and Munchkin. That was major. I remember watching my dad walk the dog on Christmas Days as a child and feeling pity. Imagine doing something so mundane on Christmas Day! I would think. Sweetpea tried playing the “But it’s Christmas Day!” card a few times, but we weren’t having it. The dog still needed walked. The pine needles from the driest, brittlest real tree on earth still needed swept up.

Then came the miserable bit. Thing 1, our old cat, has been showing signs of distress and illness for a while now, and things got worse in the few days before Christmas. I wanted the deed over with before Christmas was upon us, but before I knew it it was Friday night. I made sure Sweetpea knew the score, not wanting to spring it on her unexpectedly. And then the next day the cat rallied and seemed much better. He got worse again on Christmas Day, until it was evening and I couldn’t bear seeing him suffer. We said our goodbyes to him and I loaded him into the car ready for the trip to the emergency vet. Cue Sweetpea’s wail. We were all crying by then, apart from Munchkin who, at almost-five, apparently couldn’t care less. Had Santa brought him his beloved Nerf gun and had we then taken it away from him, there would have been much more distress.

I wasn’t present at our other cat’s actual injection, and wanted to be there with Thing 1. It was quick, for sure, but the sight of his knees buckling and him rolling over dead haunts me.

“On Christmas night???” the few people I’ve shared the news with ask incredulously, like I’m a monster mother/pet owner with not a kind feeling in my body. But what were the options? Take him on Christmas Eve and feel guilty, because he really looked like he was getting better? Or take him the day after Christmas and make that day miserable as well? But I realise that whatever way we look at it, Christmas 2011 will always be “the one when the cat died.”

So while Sweetpea seems back to her normal self today, I am not. I took a sleeping pill and slept, on and off, for 13 hours. I miss my cat. He was the coolest ever. Nothing fazed him, not even being flown transatlantically from his home in South London, or being settled in the Sonoran desert, or moved homes twice, not even having a dog for company the last 18 months of his life. He took it all in his stride, and an ambling, confident, don’t-mess-with-me stride it was at that.

I know the pleas from the kids will start soon: Can we get another cat? Can we get another dog? I’m giving it about 24 hours. Kids are resilient, they say. Middle-aged adults, apparently not so much.

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