This past Saturday when I arrived at my parent's home for the day my mom came out to greet me as usual. What she said first wasn't usual, though. "We think Pumpkin's died," she told me. She then went on to explain that a few days before when my brother was feeding our horses he had seen her go under the tack shed where she had been living for the last few years, that she hadn't sounded good, and that they hadn't seen her or heard her since.
Pumpkin was thirteen years old and overweight, despite carefully rationing her food for years, so this wasn't necessarily a surprise. However, we'd had her since she was a tiny kitten and I was a little girl. My mom found her and her sister in a hollow in a brush pile on our property where their mother had abandoned them. They were so young I don't think their eyes were even open yet. After trying to get their mother to take them back we decided we would raise them as pets and my mom called our vet to find out what to feed them at such a young age. We had to hand feed them with little syringes for a while, even taking them on a trip to my Aunt's house five hours away because we needed to feed them every little while. Sadly Pumpkin's sister died when she was only a couple months old, as did all the other completly tailless kittens from their litter (their mother was a manx). After that Pumpkin was a dearly loved part of our family, with her meows that always sounded like her tail had been stepped on, her turbo engine purr that could be heard all the way across the house, and her complete lack of mouse radar.
When my mom told me that Pumpkin might be gone I was shocked and it didn't seem quite real. She couldn't be gone after being there everyday for thirteen years. That night when my brother and I went to feed the horses I got a flashlight and was determined to look for her, which probably wasn't the smartest decision on my part. My brother helped me look for her, taking the flashlight and showing me where he'd seen her last. I spotted her shortly after, confirming everyone's beliefs about what had happened to her.
She is definitely going to be missed around my parent's place. It won't be the same without her in the tack shed to meow at me and flop on the floor with a thud and a rumbling purr wanting attention.
