Goodbye, Georgia. We Love You.

I can't believe this. Even a day later it's just not sinking in. My beautiful, gorgeous and goofy long-haired tortie, Georgia, died last night. Out of the blue. Suddenly and devastatingly. She was just nine years old. She was healthy. She was here one minute and gone the next. I can only believe that she must have had a heart attack, stroke or aneurysm. I came home from book club, greeted my kitties when I came in the back door, went upstairs to check on O and say hi to M - M and I came back downstairs not five minutes later and there she was - on the floor - dead. She was not there when I walked through the kitchen just five minutes earlier. All I can think is that she was in the basement when I got home, heard me come in, came upstairs to say hi - and then something went horribly wrong. She was still warm when we found her. We tried to find a heart beat, but she was gone.

She was my Iowa kitty. My Hawkeye. My sweet Georgia brown. My G-Pup. I adopted Georgia from the Iowa City animal shelter the first semester of my Ph.D. program at UI. She was goofy and fluffy and a big talker - she chirped - and she liked to lick the salt from M's watch. She loved to sit in my lap and was the Alpha Queen of our house. She used to sleep on our bed every night - stretched out in between us. She was Benny's buddy. O called her George-wa.

She used many of her nine lives along the way - but I was sure she had at least 7 or 8 more years with us. She survived spider bites, licking lead from under our sink, two teeth cleanings almost gone horribly wrong (she did not do well with anesthesia), kidney problems...I just don't understand it. She was not on this earth long enough.

I miss her terribly. There's a hole in my heart.



What will Sophie, Jimmy and Walter do without her?