#tazendra

[sickolib]

[naamahdarling]

It's the four-year anniversary of losing my cockeyed little goblin Tazendra aka the Mocus aka the creature known as ‘the Mocator’.  She had well over a dozen nicknames, including Stinker, Wooly Little, Kee-keety, Bookitty, Bumble, and Blackwus.

She hated every human being, pretty much every living being, on earth but me, but she loved me completely.  I SO was not worthy of it, but I tried.

She loved Christmas and lay under the tree most of the time she wasn't laying on me.

She kept me company while I wrote.

She loved marshmallows and Easter Peeps and Arby’s roast beef.

She talked a lot, but had a silly little voice that was at once soft and nasal.  She sort of bleated and grunted, instead of meowing.

I sang to her a lot.  She had favorite songs.  Bittersweet Goodbye by Kylie Minogue was sort of her lullaby, and was the last song I sang to her.

She attended me faithfully and patiently when I was pretty much immobile with depression and close to suicide.  I put it off day after day because, while I felt like the humans in my life would have time to get over it and move on, she was already elderly and I thought (and still do) that if I had died, she would have, too.  I’m doing way better now, and glad I didn’t do it.

When I could not sleep during that bad spell, she lay on top of me so I would feel too guilty to move and eventually I would fall asleep, and only then would she leave.  That was something she had never done before and never did after that, so I can only conclude it was deliberate.

She understood a lot of English, though I never actually tried to teach her.  She was just smart.  I could ask her to go into the carrier and she would.  I could ask her to come out, and she would.  This amazed the vet every time.  I could tell her where I was going and she’d turn into the correct room or get out of my way if I changed my tone of voice.  If I left a room, she’d follow me, but sometimes I only needed to leave the room for a few seconds so it got to where I could tell her “Stay here, don’t get up. I’ll be right back.”  And she’d just chill until I returned.  Toward the end she was an extraordinary companion.

She lay every night beside me, positioned so I could fall asleep with my hand in her tummy fur (I alone had tummy privileges).  The night before she died I was almost asleep when I had a hypnic jerk or something and woke up, and I rolled over, and she switched sides for me.  She lay down again with this sigh, like UGH, you can’t even get SLEEPING right. How on EARTH would you get anything DONE without me?  Her utter exasperation was hilarious and very dear and I remember thinking -- because we knew she had heart disease that would eventually kill her -- that this might be the last time she tucked me in, and it was.

I struggled over what pictures to include, since I have a million and they are all wonderful because they are all of her.  I tried to represent her in all her awful glory.  I also included pics of the paper mosaic I made after she died.  Literally putting myself back together one tiny piece of paper at a time.  (Yes, I know I got the French wrong.)

I miss her stupidly.

Goodnight, foul princess.