When someone in your household passes, the home maintains a lot of memories. That can be difficult to deal with, regardless if the someone was a human or an animal.
We look around this house every day and see things that remind us about Binky—from the mundane to the special, from the dining room table he simply liked to walk across to the spot where he was fed where even Abbie wonders why there’s no food bowl for her to clean anymore.
One of the items in the house that I’m not sure what the endgame with is the lapdesk I used.
Or really, that Binky used as much as I did.
He’d be on it an average of once a day probably. Maybe a smidge less. He’d stretch and leave scratches in the surface. I’d pick it up with him sitting, standing, laying and move him to the ottoman just so I could go to the bathroom.
I can’t use it anymore. There are too many memories attached to it.
I can’t throw it out, and not only because it would be wasteful. I can’t give it to Goodwill because no one else will know how special it was.
For now, it’s going to sit in the downstairs window, on the shelf whereas a younger cat, Binky would lounge in the sun. It’ll be there for him to use if he ever wants to pay us a visit. Maybe if I get a Glowforge or some other laser etcher I could etch a portrait of him on it and just hang it on the wall, but for now, knowing it’s in a spot where he’d like it is going to make all the difference.
I feel silly adding this, but, when I carried it downstairs, I did so very gingerly, the same way that I’d lift it when he was on it, balancing it carefully so he wouldn’t fall. I talked to him through tears the entire way. I like to think of that silly cat laying there, waiting to perform on that shelf, just like he used to.
