Pan

For the last six months, my biggest fear has been arriving home to find Pan dead. This was probably hard on Nemo, who would lovingly greet me at the door only for me to walk past him in search of his less loyal brother. It was also pretty hard on me. At times the fear was a tangible thing: and my heart would speed up every time I put my key in the door. It would get worse every time he had a health scare and linger for weeks afterwords. Eventually it would recede, but it was never entirely gone; somewhere in the back of my mind, I expected to come home and find his body.

Which is a very long introduction to the fact that Pan died today. I oscillate between "this is a good death, as deaths go" and "but he was so young and I worked so hard." He had a fast crash over three days so whatever amount of pain he was in, he wasn't in it for very long, and aside from a 20 minute jaunt to work to get my laptop, I spent the entire morning with him. So although he was maybe too far gone to call it cuddling, he did spend his last hours on my lap, and I know I was holding him when he died.