Brightwood Lights

August 7 was an emotional day for our household.  In addition to being the third anniversary of our good friends Brett and Kangaruth, we also said goodbyes to two in our lives.

The first was mostly a celebration, actually.  Our friend Sally, whom we’ve known since our days at Northwestern, left DC today to move to San Francisco.  Though we will miss her, we know that she has been looking forward to this move for QUITE some time now.  And, on the bright side, we now have yet another reason to visit the City on the Bay at some point.

The second goodbye was more difficult, as we lost our cat Cowboy today.  Cowboy was diagnosed with diabetes in the spring of 2006 but had done quite well.  However, during our recent trip to Minnesota (I’ll post more about that later), she took a turn for the worst.  She hadn’t eaten in days, and she refused to eat after our return.  She quickly lost strength, and we decided it was her time to go.  Putting her down was quite difficult as we were very fond of her, but Simona did give her two kisses while we waited at the vet’s office.  (She’s never done that before!) 

This was a new sort of “first” for me. As a child, you are allowed the emotional reaction of wanting your pet to live forever, which is why it seemed perfectly normal to me to grow up with a three-legged dog.  As the parent, however, you are forced to acknowledge that prolonging your pet’s life through extensive medical treatment is not a good use of your resources (time or money).  Administering insulin for a year and a half was as far as we could go.  Though Cowboy may have lived longer with more tests, an adjusted insulin dosage, and the attention required to nurse her back to health, we knew what we had to do. Sigh.  Of all the “grown-up” milestones (buying a house, getting married, having a baby, etc.) I’ve reached, this made me feel the most like an adult.