Woman's Best Friend: Dedication to Josephine

I truly haven't been on in a while and it's mainly because of my access to the internet. No matter how smart they proclaim our smartphones to be, they can be pretty dumb sometimes. I've been trying to fix the problem but it just won't let me.
Anyway, the second reason I haven't been on is because my family and I had to tend to our sickly cat. A lot of people call dogs "man's best friend", so I decided to call the cat "woman's best friend". Others would laugh and say that a woman who's close to her cat is a loner, but that's not always true. If a man has the option of having the dog be called his best friend, then women have the same option for a cat.
I love my cat dearly and I wanted to dedicate this post to her:

My cat's name is Josephine, but I tended to barely ever call her that. I called her "Kitty" since I was little (I had a tendency to call our previous [2] cats "Kitty" too). Since we didn't know exactly when she was born, I picked her birthday which was August 15, 2002. It was easy to remember since my brother's b-day was in August and my uncle's b-day was on a 15th. We knew she was born in August of 2002, though, so it wasn't a big deal.

My mother brought her home when she was two months, in October (the month my mother and I are born in). She was such a pretty cat to me, gray with stripes down her side with very light spots and a white belly. Her green eyes always seemed to glow. At first, she didn't really like me, always finding a reason to hiss at me or scratch me in some way. But I was too persistent, so I guess she gave in.

I loved her little antics around the house, and how fun it was watching her silliness. Sometimes she'd fall off the window sill and on a table unharmed after she had been playing too hard. Other times, she would be sleeping on the couch when she wasn't supposed to and get scared each time we yelled her awake. She'd practically fly across the room. One time, my sister yelled at her and Josephine jumped up, tried to run, but instead slammed into the arm of the couch. Again, unharmed. Then she was also a crazy cat who loved to jump off walls. It's weird how long ago this all was...it doesn't even seem like it was more than five years ago this all happened. But everyone grows up and nearly everyone will eventually feel tired.

I'm not going to get all into her craziness, so I'll just state what's happened these past couple of months. My cat had been sick for a while, probably since a little before the summer of 2012. She had these soft lumps on her belly that started to grow bigger and bigger with each month. I constantly told my mother but she insisted that she had no money to take her to the vet. I kept on getting that same answer until Josephine's condition finally worsened during last summer (2013). She had just turned 11, and it was critical we take her to the vet pronto. The lumps at first did not have a color to them when they first appeared. Then they grew purple and were growing harder. Then the color finalized into red and had got infected because she constantly licked them before we could take her anywhere. By this time, it was obvious she had breast cancer. And when we had taken her finally, I felt like I was being ignored about our cat's health since 2012. I felt like my mother could have done something before. But it was inevitable. Later in August,  Josephine got her surgery and her lumps were allegedly removed. You will find out why I say "allegedly" soon enough.

Our cat didn't seem to have any problems whatsoever for the rest of August all the way till the end of October. I could pick her up again. She had no problem meowing. She wasn't weak. The only problems we had with her was that she hated the cone ("cone of shame" I call it, like from the movie Up) and her medicine. Since she wasn't weak, she had no problem trying to make her getaway. We gave it to her though. The doctors told my sister that in the x-ray, I believe, that the cancer had not reached her lungs yet and that the surgery was to correct the cancer she did have.

But they were wrong. They didn't exactly tell us that she had such a huge risk of getting sick again after the surgery. This time, she wasn't sick the way she was before. This time, Josie had a hard time breathing. She didn't have any motive to come out of her sleeping area that she made for herself in the window, unless it was to eat. She looked more sluggish than she had ever been before. I once saw her -- it was Wednesday of that week --in the bedroom window, sleeping. She was breathing faster than normal. That night, I felt like I was seeing less of her. The next evening, my mother starts worrying where Josie is, and I help in trying to find her with the rest of the family. This was last Thursday. I found her in the closet hiding from us, hissing at me to go away. I picked her up and she felt so light. We decided to give her medicine, her antibiotics. We struggled to give it to her again but this time, she was too tired and exhausted to really resist. All she could do was lay down, pant, and let it drool out of her mouth. We did this again the next morning. And then for the last time that night. This was last Friday. She became overwhelmed by her shortness of breath and tried to keep breathing. I tried to give her water but it proved ineffective.

The way cats are made, their bodies near death would try their hardest to fight off whatever is inflicting them. It's their way of saying, "I want to please you, so I'll try my hardest." The truth is that they do wish to please you. That's why many cats and dogs are not willing to let you see them suffer. They will hide from you when they near death. They get depressed around you if they are dying and they see how much you truly loved them. Many people would say they don't have emotions, or that they can't really think for themselves, or that they may not understand human emotions, but I believe they do all of that and more. Some people may not be emotionally attached to their pets like I am, but others like me consider pets a part of the family and it's hard seeing them gone. No, I haven't been mourning her all week but yes, I have been missing her all week. I mourned for three days and missed her the rest of the week. My cat, my Josephine, my Kitty, my pet, my family member. I will miss her dearly and no other cat can ever replace her.

She died the same month that she was welcomed into our home, October. With the birthday I had given her, she lived for 11 years, two months, and ten days.

R.I.P., S.I.P., Josephine a.k.a. Josie, Kitty, "Wose" (August 15, 2002-October 25, 2013)

I'm sorry if this was so long for those reading this, especially since it was mainly about my cat. I just felt like getting that out. I don't know when my next post will be though, but I hope I can make it soon.