This post is a bit more serious than my last one on gaming.

When I first got Daisy I didn't see her for the first three days. She only came out to eat and use the litter box. Otherwise she would hide under the bed.

The caring people that had fostered her brought over some of the toys that she had played with at their place. She would not come out to play with any of the fancy toys. Amazingly, it was a simple one made with some cardboard on a piece of wire.

I would lay on the bed and slowly move it back and forth, and after a couple minutes a paw would appear from under the bed. I would slowly move it further out and she would keep stretching to avoid actually coming out. Eventually she did come out.

However, it took a minute for her to notice me, and when she did see me she froze for a second. I thought that she would dart back under the bed, but she just went back to playing with the toy. After that she started laying around different spots when I was home. In the fullness of time she would snuggle up with me at night.

Since I have Aspergers I would get really depressed at times and I wouldn't even got out of bed for most of the day. Daisy would come to the side of the bed I was facing and she would put one paw on the edge of the bed near my forehead and the other near my chin.

She would get right in my face and loudly meow. Which I would translate into, "Get up and feed me Damnit!"

I would chuckle a little and get up to feed her. It would kind of jump-start my day, so I did some other stuff. Unfortunately, and truthfully speaking, I probably wouldn't have gotten up those days without her doing that.

I got her a cat tower, and she loved to stare out of the window to the balcony watching the birds in tail-swishing joy. Every so often she would look like she was going to try and get the squirrels or birds on the balcony. I'm not sure she would have known what to do if she had been able to get one.

Daisy was a one-person cat. If anyone came over she would hide under the bed. Eventually she got to the point where she would come back out a few minutes after my guests left. But at first, it would take an hour before she would come back out.

As time went by she turned 11 years old. She hadn't eaten all weekend, so I took her in, and they said her liver numbers were off. The vet said that at her age is when you can start to see medical issues. We tried what treatments were available at the vet's office and discussed my options for further action.

Those treatment options would have left me nearly penniless, but I still considered those options. She did begin to eat again, so she must have been briefly feeling better, but she quickly went back to not eating.

I took Daisy back to the vet to see if the treatments had done any good. Nope, her liver numbers were even worse. I agonized over whether to try more advanced care options. But, after discussing it with the vet, there was a slim chance of any of those options actually making any difference.

So I had her "put to sleep". The "nice" way of saying euthanized. Euthanasia comes from Greek, which means "good death".

It's never easy to say goodbye. But, I didn't want her to suffer for days and slowly starve to death.

I so miss the little furball, even her midnight zoomies, which would wake me up and make me wonder what the heck was happening.

Or, her begging me to share whatever I had just cooked. It didn't matter what it was; she would always demand a little bit to see if she would like it.

I still occasionally pat the bed when I go to bed, waiting for her to snuggle in.

In the end I had to euthanize Daisy. I miss my cat.

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