T(w)inkle

It occurs to me that two weeks ago, as I write this, Twinkle was home from the hospital for the last time. By now, I would have fed her her morning 50 ml through the e-tube, and it would have been the little juncture between breakfast and her first meds, around 8. She had not quite a day and a half left to live. Hard to believe.

But what gets me writing here is the memory that I’ve been wrong. I’ve mentioned here Twinkle’s predilection for peeing on things, to the point that my former roommate used to make the joke that her real name was Tinkle and the shelter had just snuck an extra “w” into her name to get her adopted. It eased off over time even in the old place, and I’ve been saying that once I moved into the condo, that was pretty much it, except for a few shots she took at my sandals (still not sure what that was all about).

I realized this morning I was wrong. She did kind of keep it up even after we moved. The mat by the door. Before I moved, we had a mat by the door for leaving our shoes on. Twinkle was apparently using it as her third litter box, but it was a natural fibre and very absorbent, and we didn’t even notice till around the time came to move. I ran it under the tap in the tub and was astonished to see the water running out of it the colour of steeped tea. I realized that even if I got it clean, there was no point in bringing it with me if that was what it was going to mean to Twinkle, so I threw it out.

When I got to the new place, I bought a large rubber mat for the door. I noticed nearly immediately that Twinkle seemed to take this as an invitation, or a challenge, and started going for it. I washed it once, she kept it up, and so I washed it one more time, rolled it up, and set it aside on the floor of my bedroom closet, where it’s remained. I must have seen it (I was going to say “a thousand times”, but obviously, that’s hardly the case after three or four months) scores of times without paying it any mind, but this morning it all suddenly came back to me. I’m not sure how I could have forgotten that... probably because, to the best of my knowledge, she wasn’t peeing on anything else outside the litter box after I put that rug away.

Just for a moment, I thought about putting it back by the door, but that smacks too much of sticking my thumb in her eye after she’s died. So, I guess I’ll chalk that round up to her, and maybe later on when the weather gets sloppy I’ll go out and find something else. I don’t think I’ll be using that particular rug.