When I woke up I couldn’t find Tuxedo-My-Girl-Cat.

I looked in all her usual sleep spots, and called her name, but nothing.

Then I just stood in the hallway yelling her name, and when that didn’t work I yelled TREAT! But still she didn’t come.

Finally I found my Tuxedo baby girl wrapped in a ball on the bed in the back bedroom.

She wasn’t moving. When I started petting her she opened her eyes, then closed them, as if she was too tired to even hold her head up.

I continued to stroke her soft black hair, and talked, and talked in my usual I’m-Your-Mommy voice, and she only opened her eyes for a minute.

She was dying, I believed. Then my first thought was to get her water, and see if she would eat some food.

Neither worked. I walked back and forth from the living room to bedroom several times to see if she’d moved. She hadn’t, and wasn’t reacting to her name, or TREAT!

Then finally she opened her eyes, but didn’t yawn, or stretch, then closed her eyes again.

I’m not sure how long I went back and forth, but I ended up sitting in my queen spot on the couch, then apparently cried myself to sleep.

When I woke up the next day Tux was asleep on her comfy footstool next to me.

She didn’t want to be moved, so I left her alone, and took another nap myself.

When I woke up again she was gone.

Then I found her in my office on her favorite office chair that used to be my chair.

She wasn’t responding any better so I texted my #1 daughter-from-another, and told her what was going on with my little baby girl.

“She is old,” Jill wrote back.

“Yes, but, so am I, and I’m not dead yet,” I told the computer screen, then checked to see if Tux was still breathing.

Yes! But not moving. It was a long night. The next morning Tux jumped from the coffee table onto the couch next to me.

“Thank you, Jesus!” I said, then stepped in something wet that Tux had apparently thrown up.

I went into the kitchen to get her some fresh water, and food, and she followed me.

That’s also when I noticed a potted plant I’d been nursing had been moved from the ledge above the sink to the counter. A couple of leaves were next to it.

Good grief! I knew Tux had been trying to get at it, and should’ve moved it outside.

I have yet to find all of the plant remains, but moved it to the porch where it quickly succumbed to the heat.

Now my little girl Tux is fast asleep on her favorite blanket next to me in my good computer chair while I sit at my desk on an old kitchen chair to write this. That’s OK cause we take care of each other.

Tux is only 16 years old, and I just Googled and found out that means we’re about the same age in people years.

In other words, my little Tuxedo girl is really old, and I’ve got to start taking better care of both of us.

I don’t think either one of us would know how to give the other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But, I do have an oxygen tank in the living room.