The Lotus Fairy, Xianwu Lake
I have been home for two weeks now, when I look back I can hardly believe I was on the other side of the world for that length of time. Travelling through time zones does have an effect on one’s state of mind, I felt vaguely “spacey” and not quite connected for two days or so. Thankfully I didn’t have trouble with sleep disruption, apart from the first night when my phone refused to reset itself from Frankfurt time (where we had a short layover) to Irish time, resulting in the alarm going off an hour early. That was not pleasant!
Returning home after a significant absence is an emotional experience. Seeing my husband and two of my children waiting in the arrivals hall at Dublin airport released the floodgates, commented on at the time by my children “oops, she’s crying!” Further welcomes awaited me at the house in the shape of three dogs who practically pinned me to the ground to express their feelings at having me back.
Three dogs in the sun
Sadly towards the end of my stay in China our ginger cat became very ill and spent his last days in the care of the vet. He contracted feline immunodeficiency virus, leukaemia and an infection compounded by renal failure and was extremely ill. He wasn’t a very old cat, around seven or eight years, but he was clearly not himself and had lost 40% of his body weight and his ability to boss the dogs around as he was so weak and lethargic. The best efforts of the vet to get his temperature down weren’t working, so a very hard decision had to be made as he wasn’t going to get better. Making the choice to end the life of a much loved pet is horribly difficult and it makes me cry now to revisit it. I went along to the vet on Wednesday May 1st with my daughters, my younger son and my eldest daughter’s boyfriend to bid him goodbye, and it was so painful to see and feel Ginger and see how emaciated and weak he was. He purred a bit when we petted him, and we all held him and passed him to each other. When the vet came to give the medication to send him off we were all crying. He passed in good company, not alone and very much loved.
Three dogs and a bossy cat in happier days
In the days since Ginger passed on to ethereal hunting grounds in search of angelic (or should that be diabolical?) mice the house has felt emptier. I frequently see him out of the corner of my eye, waiting on the kitchen window sill to be let in, parked in a dog bed daring any canine to eject him, or glaring through the glazed door to the garden as if trying to laser the glass so he can come in to be fed for the umpteenth time. It is comforting in a way to feel the ghost of his presence, though the reality of his absence is marked by the box containing his ashes sitting on the worktop. My younger daughter painted a portrait of him at the weekend which captures something of his spirit. Bon voyage Ginger.
Portrait of Ginger. RIP 1st May 2013