Heavy Heart

My heart is a little heavy tonight after getting a poor prognosis for Mullet, our cat. Mullet is just a week or so away from her 21st birthday, so obviously she's lived quite a long life. She's been in decline for awhile, but she recently stopped eating. The bloodwork indicated full blown renal failure (she'd been on the verge for a couple years now), but the vet said she'd be ok to take her home for the weekend and bring her back on Monday to have her put to sleep. I am so sad about it. Mullet is a torbie - a color pattern not known for a docile nature - but she is actually a very sweet cat. She's not a lap kitty at all, and as such we haven't bonded with her to the degree that we did with Catfish. That said, I will still miss her in a lot of ways.

Of practical concern, we are unsure about what to tell Penny. Tray killed a turkey this morning and we showed it to her and let her touch the feathers and everything. I explained that the turkey was "dead" and in heaven even though his body was still here - and I only did that because she seemed confused about the turkey. That was before the news about Mullet. Penny actually went with me to the vet this afternoon and I had explained that we were taking Mullet to the doctor because she didn't feel good. I don't know what to do on Monday in terms of leaving the house with Mullet. If I explain that Mullet is going back to the doctor, then what do I do when she doesn't come home? She knows Minx, Catfish, and Pa's horse Gunnar are in heaven, but I think it would be confusing to take Mullet to the doctor and then come back saying she was in heaven. Also, do we let her see us bury Mullet in the backyard? I'm going to be googling the situation to see what advice I can glean from the internet on the subject, but right now I'm full of concern about how this is all going to go down.