A Year for Goodbye

Those that know the two of us personally know that our world revolves around our cats.

When we first moved to Bardmony, we lived with three sweet girls – Donut, Twiglet, and Schnitzel. I had adopted Donut and Twiglet (two adorable litter mates) in early 2012 when they were 8 weeks old, and Schnitzel joined us in the autumn of 2013. All three were from the same rescue in Wiltshire and pre-dated meeting Christopher.

In early 2020, just before we moved to Scotland, Donut was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and it didn’t look like she’d have long left – at the time, we weren’t even sure she’d make it with us to Scotland. However, with a lot of TLC and thanks to a super strict regime of meds and renal food, she managed the disease surprisingly well.

When we finally got the keys to the house in July of 2020, all three girls moved in and quickly took to their new home. The huge sash windows and abundance of birdies to watch made for a veritable kitty purr-adise and they all quickly developed routines for their days – shifting from the cat beds in front of the Aga to afternoon sun traps for cosy naps to evening stretches in front of the wood burner.

Years passed and somehow, Donut kept going – thriving, even – after our move. Most days, you’d never know she had a serious chronic illness.

Thanks to COVID, we had to delay our wedding from September 2020 to September 2021, and I remember praying that she’d make it to the new date – and when that date had to be postponed again, I remember praying again that she’d make it to the new date in July 2022.

I just couldn’t imagine not being able to see my all of my precious girls on my wedding morning; thankfully, Donut somehow kept her disease at bay and was with me to get ready on our wedding morning 💙 I’ll never forget her stomping into our bedroom, straight into the fray of all of the bridesmaids and stylists, demanding her fair share of attention and pampering 😹

Because of Donut’s history with chronic kidney disease, we always expected that she would be the first we’d have to say goodbye to – we never imagined that it would actually be Twiglet who left us first.

However, around Valentine’s Day 2023, just over 6 months after the wedding, we started to worry that Twiglet was looking a little thin so we took her in to the local vet. After a round of diagnostics and a referral to the Royal Dick in Edinburgh, we were given the devastating news that she had a very aggressive form of cancer. We tried our best for her and started her on chemotherapy straightaway, but sadly, it was no match for the cancer. We lost her peacefully in her sleep 9 days later on the 23rd of February, 2023.

We felt the loss of Twiglet very deeply – she and her sister were the first lives I had been fully responsible for as an adult, and they (along with Schnitzel) were with me through periods of significant hardship and enforced personal growth.

Twiglet was an absolute law unto herself – a quirky, fiercely independent and yet entirely loyal creature who loved her people (and only her people 🙈). She was hugely opinionated, and if you dared to tell her off for any sort of wrongdoing, she was never afraid to chat back and tell you what she thought of being told off. And yet, she was a gentle, affectionate girl who completely doted on Christopher, and we loved her so, so dearly.

As the months passed, Donut and Schnitzel found a new equilibrium without their sister, and when Frazzle eventually joined us (I’ll write about her another time), she quickly found her place in the order of things.

We closed 2023 fairly somberly – we had experienced some other loss in our family towards the end of the year, so by the end of December, it felt like we had been put through the wringer. That said, we were optimistic that better days were ahead and we looked forward to a happy and productive 2024.

It was with that initial enthusiasm that I drafted a fairly ambitious goal list for this year and set off to start documenting our Bardmony progress and projects in the blog.

Unfortunately, as is often the case when we make plans, the universe had others: Donut’s luck finally ran out. On the 15th of February this year, we noticed she wasn’t herself and took her in to the vet.

After a few days of fighting what appeared to be dehydration and inappetence (not totally unexpected for a cat with kidney issues), the vets diagnosed her with end-stage kidney failure. We brought her home for her last night with us on the 19th of February, and the vets helped her pass peacefully at home in my arms on the afternoon of the 20th, just 362 days after we said goodbye to her sister.

Since then, I have been quiet while I processed Donut’s loss.

Despite her intense curiosity and need to know everything that was going on in her kingdom, Donut was generally wary of strangers – so most people who came to our home never got to know her beyond a flash of black disappearing around a corner. However, since the first moment she emerged from her carrier when I first brought her home, she and I were bonded. It’s true that she could be an absolute madame who wanted her own way in all things, but she was also a sweet-natured and loving baby girl who wanted nothing more than to be carried around and get kisses on the top of her head. She was intensely loved and I have missed her horribly since she left us

To lose both of our precious girls in the space of a year was unthinkable before it happened and it has been heart wrenching to work through.

But, life keeps moving and we must too – so I am pushing myself to get back to normal things, including writing in the blog. Sometimes, the only way out is through, and experience has shown that time helps us learn to better carry our grief. Thank you for bearing with me as I got all of this out ‘on paper’, as I didn’t feel that I could continue to write the story of Bardmony without closing the chapter of Twiglet and Donut’s time here.

Until next time 🌷