I thought that long had the time passed when I felt any attachment to Fifi. After all, she had to be given away when I was still much younger (some would know the reasons why), and I hadn't seen her for the past three years or so. But she was my dog, my first dog, and she had been, for a time, a being who shared my youthful innocence, my companion and my charge when I first came to Singapore. She was a friend. It's an odd thing, this bond between human and animal. It's a lasting bond, even if it's only conceivable by the human, since, for the animal you can never be too sure. But there's something, there has to be.
I was fortunate enough not to be the one who made the call - the difficult decision rested on Tania. All I had to decide was whether or not to want to see her for the last time, and even that, I couldn’t bring myself to want to. To read the words “it’s all over now” in a text and relay the message to my mom, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. And again when Tania called. Goodness knows how much harder this must be on her.
Well, as we tell ourselves, Fifi’s has had a good life, a good 16 years, well over a hundred in dog years. It’s about time.