Down Home at Dee's: A Tribute to Sweet Pea and Herby

A chapter in my life is coming to a close and I am not sure how I feel about that. I certainly don’t like how it is closing. I’m not sure if I can explain this clearly but I’ll give it a try.

In 2001, my daughter’s then boyfriend wanted to give her a calico kitten for Valentine’s Day. My husband (now ex) and I decided that we were fine with this as long as the kitten was male. Laura assured me this was the case so the kitten became a part of our family. Several months later my marital situation changed and I moved into an apartment. I asked my daughter if I could take her kitten with me for company and she said yes.

The kitten was an indoor cat but did get out one night and was gone until morning. It’s a boy so no big deal, right?. Well a little over a month later a friend stopped by and said something about how the kitten was getting so big and actually looked pregnant. “No way” I said, “It’s a boy.” My friend started laughing and said “Girl, don’t you know that calico cats are almost always female?” So it turns out my kitten wasn’t getting big just because it was growing. It was getting big because it was going to have kittens. He was a she and her name became Baby. Several weeks later I welcomed four additions to my little household. I was not planning to keep any of these kittens but the third kitten born was a beautiful, yellow tabby. I have always wanted a yellow tabby and so now I had one. I named him Sweet Pea because he was such a sweet boy. Yes, I did make sure he was a he by the vet. My little family consisted of Squirt (the cat I already had), Baby and Sweet Pea.

About two years later, my daughter comes home with a little Siamese mix kitten. A dirty, scruffy looking ball of fur. I told her “No, we just can’t have another cat. We already have three. No way!” Yep, you guessed it, the little fur ball stayed. He was such a loving little guy we named him Herby the Love Bug. Our fur baby family now consisted of Squirt, Baby, Sweet Pea and Herby.

Time passed and we all were doing well. Then in 2008 Squirt got sick. She was 16 and wasn’t recovering from her illness so I made the painful and heartbreaking decision to put her to sleep. My heart was so heavy and shattered. Squirt was my kitten or should I say I was her person. I still feel the absence of her in my life.

In early 2013 I decided to make a move to the Shenandoah Valley and start my life fresh. Leave all my heartache of failed relationships and broken dreams in Fredericksburg. My fur family of Baby, Sweet Pea and Herby made the move with me. Even though I left Fredericksburg behind, I did bring pieces of it with me in the form of my fur babies. But the pieces were all of good memories.

Now I’m starting to lose my fur babies and I feel as if I am not only losing them and pieces of my heart but I’m losing a part of my past. The good parts. The best parts. Along with a part of myself. The last sixteen years overall have not been good. Much of that time has been quite difficult with some good sprinkled in to keep me going. Baby, Sweet Pea and Herby were a part of that good.

This past July Herby got sick. He had an ear infection that was getting worse. I was treating it with over the counter medicine but that wasn’t helping. I took Herby to the vet and she found a lump inside of his ear. The vet gave me medicine to help the infection but without surgery the lump wasn’t going to go away. The medicine didn’t help and Herby developed an abscess inside his ear. On July 14, 2016, I made the decision to let Herby, my love bug, be put to sleep. He was thirteen.

Sweet Pea was also having issues with one of his ears and he had lost a lot of weight. I took him to the vet and a lump was found in his ear. The vet cleaned his ear but as with Herby, without surgery the issue wouldn’t go away. At almost 16 years old the vet didn’t recommend Sweet Pea having surgery but to keep the infection under control and let Sweet Pea live out his days. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.

Last weekend I was playing with Baby and Sweet Pea with a laser dot and Rosie, my very large dog, decided to try to join in the fun. She jumped off the couch and landed on Sweet Pea by accident. Rosie irritated the bad ear and caused serious injury to Sweet Pea. This past Monday I made another trip to the vet with a fur baby and returned home empty handed. I have lost another piece of myself and my past along with losing pieces of my heart. Sweet Pea was the sweetest, easiest going cat I have ever seen. Plus he was my kitten as much as he was Baby’s because I delivered him.

I keep expecting to see him lying in front of the wood stove. Or hear him telling me he’s hungry or wants a treat. Or sitting in his box sleeping. Or on the back of the couch watching the birds in the front yard. Or Sweet Pea and Herby, “my boys”, lying together on the couch. I didn’t have time to mourn the loss of Herby because my mother was visiting with me and while here, she became ill. Now the loss of Herby is hitting me like a tidal wave.

Baby is now all I have left from the trek I made from Fredericksburg. She is all that I have left to remind me of the good times I had there. But I am afraid that soon she too will be gone. Baby will be seventeen in December and she already has that frail, elderly look about her. Plus with the boys gone she has no companion to cuddle with and keep her company. Baby has never been alone her whole life. My hope is that when her turn comes she goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up. No more trips to the vet because of illness or injury and not coming back home.

I am mourning not only the loss of my Herby and Sweet Pea. I am mourning the beginning of a closing of a chapter in my life. Somehow I feel that when my babies are gone I will lose an additional part of myself. I will lose who I was. I will lose the good portions of my life in Fredericksburg. I know this sounds completely irrational. How can I feel like this when I have my memories? I can’t answer that. I only know that is how I feel and what I’m dealing with.

Maybe it’s because when I looked at Baby, Sweet Pea and Herby feelings of peace and contentment flash though me. When I pet them I have quick flashes of memories of the times I was happy. They have kept me grounded and have been my anchor all of these years. Baby, Sweet Pea and Herby have been the reason I kept going when all I wanted to do was go to bed and never wake up. I had to keep going. Who would care for my sweet babies if I were gone? And so I stayed. I kept getting up every morning, surviving the day and coming home to them.

I have added to my family over the years. I now have Rosie and a horse named Fedora. They will keep me going now along with Baby. But only Baby is from my “past life”. It’s funny that I came to The Valley to leave behind my heartbreak and yet I feel such a sense of loss over that life now that Herby and Sweet Pea are gone. It is almost as if by losing them, I am losing all hope in the dream of the life I so desperately want coming true. I thought I had put that dream away long ago but it appears I was wrong. Now I must figure out a way to deal with that along with dealing with the loss of two of my beloved friends.