You know you're almost arrived somewhere, that place where you can already see the cloudy sky miles away, somewhere in the intersection of hope and hard pray and reality hits.
It's only last year I was somewhat in this room, pulling the
anticipatory grief and the hope my mom would get better.
This time, one of our family, is Pepe.
He's actually my husband's favorite. He's majestic, he doesn't follow command, he does what he wants, and he chose us to be his humans, the audacity of a street cat deciding that we were his people. The way he curled up in bed with us whenever he doesn't feel okay, locked in so hard until you can hear him meow few blocks away, lol.
He's a smart street cat. Hunts pigeons, kadal, rats, anak
tikus, battles snakes trying to get into our house, but also once brought a
live rat INTO the house and caused actual menace.
I always thought Jorji would go first. He's the typical
timid house Persian, doesn't even like people, comes with a whole list, FeLV,
calici, blood parasite. He felt like the more fragile one.
But it's Pepe, two months of back and forth to the vet, and
the vet said 30-40% cirrhosis. He's been on antibiotics on and off for years
because of his chronic herpes.
And now, seeing him still insist and climbing the kitchen
cabinet demanding udang, I push hard on that image and try to freeze it in my
mind, because the time may come sooner than I expected.
I also get annoyed at him a lot. My husband says I'm racist
against Pepe, because Pepe's is kucing kampung yang ngampung banget, so I anak
tirikan him. Jorji gets to sleep in the bedroom with AC on, Pepe doesn't,
because Jorji likes the AC and Pepe's just well he sneeze a lot and plus he loves
playing outside.
He's not allowed udang anymore, hepatic food only. But I
gave him one piece today anyway, because I feel really sorry for him, even
though the vet warns us not to. Then I gave him his actual medicine.
Now they both play hide and seek, fighting to each other,
loving to each other. And I freeze this in writing.
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