— पांच हजार छह सौ उन्नीस —
As you can see, I decided to populate today's Daily Lunch Update (DLU) with photos of Shanti.
Since I was already looking them up on Flickr, I decided to see the total number of photos I have tagged with each of the last four cats in my life.
Batty (lived 1989-2004): 200 shots
Peng (1998-2008): 289 shots
Guru (2008-present): 788 shots
Shanti (2008-2024): 1,019 shots
. . . Can you tell which one of them was my favorite?
To be fair, the years I had Batty, and a majority of the years I had Peng, were before digital photography, which makes a huge difference. Batty will forever be uniquely special to me, just because I grew up with him; I had him from when I was 13 until I was 28.
They are all special for different reasons, though. Peng was special in relation to Shobhit in particular, being the first house pet Shobhit ever bonded with. Shobhit had only four years with Peng before we put him down.
When it comes to pets and Shobhit and me all together though, Shanti and Guru are it. They are the only pets Shobhit has had since kittenhood, and certainly by far the longest he's had a pet—we had Shanti and Guru together for literally four times the length of time Shobhit knew Peng. Shanti was the first pet Shobhit lost that he had known its entire life.
Between Shanti and Guru though, it seems I took 29% more photos of Shanti than I did of Guru. Depending on how much longer Guru lasts (and he seems to be doing fine, *knock wood*), his image count may get closer to catching up, just by the advantage of getting more time.
— पांच हजार छह सौ उन्नीस —
I forgot to mention
yesterday that I had a bit of a nightmare about Shanti yesterday morning, right before I woke up. I dreamt that she came back to life, with odd white light coming out of her eyes, basically a zombie cat. In the deam, I had a frightening uncertaintly about it:
I don't think this is supposed to be happening. I remember feeling an unsettling mix of relief and excitement over her being alive again, with genuine fear about the fact that I knew it wasn't right. I'm glad I woke up from that.
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— पांच हजार छह सौ उन्नीस —
I wrote pretty extensively about Shanti over the past two days. I even looked up the word counts of the two posts about her on Sunday and yesterday.
Sunday's post, which I barely managed to get posted before midnight, was 2,355 words long. Yesterday's post was even longer, at 2,738 words. Combined I wrote just over 5,000 words about the death of Shanti, which in a book would be about ten pages.
In the comments on the
Facebook post from Sunday night about it—which I shared a while before writing the blog—I posted a link to Sunday night's blog post, warning that if anyone clicks through they should read at their own risk.
Somewhat to my surprise, at least two people did read the blog, and posted about it in their comments.
Gina's friend, Jennifer:
Oh Matthew, I am so sorry. I read your blog. You write so wonderfully. Shanti was a gorgeous kitty and it is clear they were ready to go. You gave Shanti the best life a cat could ever have. Much love.
Then my eldest niece, Brandi:
ok I'm bawling. I can't imagine witnessing that. I'm so sorry you had to go through that experience 😔
Laney also posted a comment under my link, but it's kind of unclear whether she read it. She probably did. She responded:
writing about a traumatic experience is so important... to get it out so it's not hanging around as unexpressed trauma. I urge you to continue writing about your trauma and grief. It's as if you came home to an unexplained crime scene involving a loved one. Don't try to just be done with it, express it as it lingers. I'm so, so sorry for both you and Shobhit. I'm here to talk or whatever you need.
As of now there are 40 reactions and 51 comments on that post. I have not responded to most of the comments, and had posted the link to the blog as a sort of collective response. The wave of condolences that have come in have been kind of surprisingly moving. Even Gabriel, who is on record with his basically anti-house pet views, text to say he was sorry to hear about Shanti.
I did not make clear the horrible scene of how I found her on Sunday night in that first post, but I did in
a follow-up post I shared yesterday, which were the same seven paragraphs with which I began yesterday's blog post. I was writing the blog first, and then decided I wanted to share that first section directly to Facebook and Threads as well.
As for today, Frank (the new Grocery Merchandiser who replaced Shelley; he started last month) went out of his way to say he was sorry to hear about my cat. Amanda, who is deeply attached to her own cat and therefore understands better than most, also stopped by my desk during a virtual meeting I was in, so I went over to her desk after that was over. We ended up chatting pretty extensively, even moving to a couple of chairs near the kitchen that serve as a sort of open meeting space separated from the cubicles. I wound up tell her basically the whole story in pretty significant detail, so much so that she even wiped away tears as I told her.
That was kind of odd, her getting a little emotional while my emotions are spent: I did all my heaving sobs on Sunday. There were several moments yesterday when my eyes welled up a little, and a couple of times I actually wished I could get out another good cry, rather than this sort of in-between thing. But, after Sunday, I guess my eyes have dried out. I squeezed out all my tears. Honestly I'm good with that, I'd really like to move forward.
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There's not much else for me to catch you up on. Even though I showered and put on makeup yesterday, the only time I left the condo was to check the mail—where I'd gotten
the beautiful wedding thank-you card from Gabriel and Lea, with a quite lovely note inside. Every part of their wedding has been fantastic, from the invitations to the thank-you cards.
Anyway, Shobhit picked up extra hours and wound up working 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., leaving me to spend the day at home alone with Guru. His clear anxiousness in the morning abated, and by afternoon he was behaving the same as he always does. Shobhit is really worried about him being lonely if we leave him alone, but he didn't have much to do with Shanti even when she was here anyway. He'll be fine when we go to Toronto next month, although I will still ask the pet sitter to give him some extra attention anyway. That'll make Shobhit feel better and Guru will love it, so it's a win-win.
I'm glad to be back to work today though, even though I'm way behind on too many things now, with the morning spent basically putting out fires (most of them floral; I am eager to find all the peonies in the world and actually torch them). I spent too much of yesterday kind of not knowing what to do with myself. I watched an episode of
Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show. In the evening after I made dinner I finally got around to watching
Deadpool 2 on Disney+, that gave me something to do. Once Shobhit got home we watched
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Max before I finally went to bed.
Back to the regular routine, as of today. I'm seeing a movie with Laney tonight.
— पांच हजार छह सौ उन्नीस —
[posted 1:02 pm]
