8 Days of “Happy”…and Then…

Unfortunately, there are some things in this world that you will never understand, no matter how hard you try. We experienced such an event Valentine’s Day 2009. Dakarai became sluggish over the weekend, we thought due to a late night with Seth sleeping on the couch. However, we quickly noticed his condition worsen. Without going into details, we took him to the vet and were told to nurse him with a syringe every 2 hours with electrolytes & water since he couldn’t even swallow for himself. At 8:30, Dakarai left us during a fit of being sick. Seth was holding him up since he had no body strength at all and didn’t even notice at first. We both cried and cried trying to make sense of what had just happened. How could something so happy and kind and friendly be gone so quickly? Why was this little guy gone after only 8 days of being in a loving home while mangy cats on the street live for years? These are but a couple of the things we still struggle with and will never quite understand. The staff here was WONDERFUL. They helped us find a place to bury Dakarai the very next afternoon. Even though most don’t speak a bit of English, many of the workers passed along their sorrow that our kitty had died. Work that day just flat sucked. We didn’t want to be there and were thinking of our lost Dakarai all the time. He truly lived up to the meaning of his name…HAPPY! He brought us joy and good times in our 8 days together. You have never met a more loving cat who had such a wonderful personality and was amazingly domesticated from the start! WE WILL MISS OUR DAKARAI!!!

While we were mourning, we discussed the idea of getting another cat. We agreed that we would eventually, but it was too soon right away and we didn’t want to betray Dakarai’s memory. That afternoon, while Seth had basketball practice (yes, he actually has a team!), a staff member was having trouble getting a small kitten out from his car – it had climbed inside of the wheels and wouldn’t come out. And it was loud!! Seth checked him out after practice on his way to a meeting and wasn’t going to mention anything to Kristal about him. But when he came back to the apartment, what should he find? Kristal was sitting out on the balcony with a pretty little grey and white kitten asleep wrapped up inside a shirt. Her excuse was that she couldn’t resist going down to look at the kitty but then none of the students down there were going to be able to keep him, so she brought him up. How can you say “no” to a defenseless little kitty? We sure couldn’t. Did Dakarai send him our way knowing how upset we were? Can we do justice to his memory with this new little guy? All we can say is we have another little kitty in our lives. We’ve decided to name him Sokkwi (SOH-kwee) which is Egyptian for “little fool.” Sokkwi had a good first check-up at the vet and loves to play and spastically pounce on his knitted mouse toy. However, he is not a quick learner, being taken off the bed a minimum of 20 times per day. We’ll write more about him later. We just wanted to let you all know of our transition.