Not for the faint of heart

For Ruby, our best and most sweetest of wonders.
I've pondered the appropriateness of including a photograph of one's beloved pet laid for her viewing on a floral blog, so forgive me if this is over the top (in the image you see Ruby the white cat and her brother Buddy, the black cat taking it all in).  In working with flowers we try to help commemorate such a range of life experiences from the most joyful to the most sombre moments. My own experience has been such that I've had to say goodbye to so many family, friends,and animals (and I'm not that old) that I've lost a degree of fear around death- or leastways the handling and viewing one's loved one in a more informal setting. Some of my friends tell me a viewing of a beloved one, no matter what the species, is unacceptable to them. I get it. It's a matter of culture and perspective and I respect it all. This is my way of  honoring a more difficult aspect of this beautiful experience we call LIFE.

Ruby's amazing story: 
About 10 years ago, she was abandoned and left to live outside fend for herself. The exposure to the sun on a white cat resulted in skin cancer. When she was finally rescued our vet, Stan was consulted on her skin condition. He fell in love with her, but had no room for her. So begins another chapter when she was given to a woman who had a terminal illness and was waiting to go to Switzerland because she chose to end her life at a clinic there. This woman decided to put her two animals down first because she didn't want to leave them behind. But her timing was not good and she was left with her illness and grieving her two animals, waiting to go to Switzerland. Enter Ruby, who was her hospice companion during the period of waiting, bonding with the woman, never leaving her, being Nurse Ruby.

Then again Ruby had no place to live! My vet told me about Ruby when I already had a cat. Having struggled with mild allergies to cats,  I was not wild about adopting another one. But who wouldn't be taken with Ruby's plight? Finally we decided to take Ruby in. She got treatment for her skin cancer before we brought her home. By that time, I had just decided to pick her up, sight unseen. But Stan the vet said " I think you had better come meet her first". Huh? What I saw was a spitting, hissing, ball of fur. What were we getting ourselves into?  When Stan picked her up to put her in her cat box to come home with us, she bit him. I think she had just HAD it with having no home and enduring the painful treatment. This was 7 years ago. The exact moment when we bonded was when our current cat, Moo Shu disappeared once again for a long period (we had just found him after he had been missing for 3 months). I began to cry and Ruby crawled into my lap and started purring. Thus began our chapter with Nurse Ruby, the most gentle, nurturing cat, the best and most sweetest of wonders.