Fare thee well, dearest Heidi

As I sit here with Heidi, joyful memories and snippets of our daily life come to mind.

My day always began with Heidi coming upstairs and jumping into our bed at dawn. She would lie next to me. That would be 5am, I know. Then around 7am, together with Tabs, we will all go down for breakfast.

It was in September last year that I made the decision to convert everyone to a raw diet. Heidi was steadfast on her canned tuna, which she loved. She was the last to be “converted”, but I managed to do it. It took a month and Heidi was already eating Cubgrub.

So we would have Cubgrub for breakfast for the three kitchen cats, Heidi, Ginger and Tabs. Next would be to feed the Originals in Bunny’s Place and right after, I would prepare Pole’s kidney supplements. This is when Heidi knows she will get Nutriplus Gel as a snack. It was like clockwork. She would sit in her special place and look at me. And she would get it, of course.

Next it was taiji at the park. Heidi would follow us there and while we practise, she would sit nearby, or have a run in the park and climb trees. Or, enjoy her stash of medicinal herbs.

After taiji, it was time for our breakfast and my husband would usually have half-boiled eggs. It started with Heidi asking to lick the bowl after he finished, but very quickly, she had her own bowl. She only liked the yolk, never the egg whites. There were times when we had run out of eggs, and we would quickly dash to the store just to buy eggs for Heidi, not so much for us.

Heidi lived on routine. Everything ran like clockwork for her and we always obliged.

Heidi loved bread too, but only the good kind. If we ate bread, she would ask for some. Not much, just a little bit would do.

The rest of the day, Heidi would usually spend in her many baskets in the kitchen. She loved baskets and we provided her with quite a few. She had this habit of “changing nests” every once a while. From one basket to another. Every week, she would change to a different location as her “nest”. But she had a favourite white basket in the kitchen which she constantly came back to.

There was a time during the early years where Heidi did a clockwork routine every evening at precisely the same time. She would walk around the living room in certain route, exactly like a wound-up clockwork toy. It was really cute.

It is simple things like these that we will miss dearly. During the two days that Heidi was hospitalised, we already missed her so much. On her final night in our house, Heidi actually came up to our bed twice that night. Once at 2am and again at her usual 5am. I thought that was an indication that she was going to get well and I was really hoping for that.

This beautiful portrait is courtesy of Yui Ping. It captures Heidi’s quiet dignity so well.

Thank you so much for enriching our lives, Heidi.