This morning we took Ninja in to the vet. When the doctor injected her, she laid her head down and within a minute she was gone.

Arielle took Ninja in as a stray back in November of 2003. Ninja had been wandering around the apartment complex scamming food from Arielle and several neighbors. Being North Carolina in November it started to get cold,it seems the right thing to do. Immediately she bonded with Turtle.

Ninja always had kind of a limp. Later it was determined the limp was probably caused by being hit by a car. This limp most likely caused her hip to rub on her abdominal wall, which in turn weakened it allowing her bladder to become herniated. In the spring of 2004 Arielle, being a loving mom, took Ninja in for her first surgery to fix her little girl.

Over the course of the next 2 years, Ninja would need two more surgeries.

I first met Ninja in May 2006. She had healed from her last surgery and was a little skittish around new people. In July of that year Arielle moved out to New Mexico to be with me, bringing Ninja, Turtle and Lex. From day one that she moved in, I could tell Ninja was a pretty pretty princess. She demanded things be done a certain way. She also gave a tremendous amount of love.

In June 2007 we left New Mexico and moved to Phoenix. I left my staff newspaper job to pursue my freelance career. I was home a lot more allowing Ninja and I to grow much closer. She spent more time on my lap and cuddled with us at night, always coming to bed 5 minutes after the lights went out and we settled in.

Last week we started to notice a change in Ninja’s behavior. Prompted by her peeing on Arielle’s gym bag, we made an appointment to take Ninja in for a check up. This was Ninja’s way of letting us know something was wrong. This is when we learned that Ninja had once again herniated her bladder, something didn’t hold from her last surgery. We felt like Ninja had been though so much and there was no guarantee they could fix things let alone that it won’t happen again. We couldn’t put Ninja through another surgery so we decided to have Ninja put to sleep.

This was one of the hardest decisions either of us had ever made. Through out the course of her last week, we realized how right the decision was. It had become obvious that she was in pain and was hiding it from us for some time.

This past week was a roller coaster of emotions. We had some very tender moments with our little girl. We completely spoiled her and used the last time we had together to love her and accept that she would no longer be with us. Though she would always be in our hearts, our thoughts and our photos.

Thinking back to this morning, it’s almost like I was watching the event on TV, except for the strong emotions I feel from it.

Arielle and I are very grateful to have had Ninja in our lives. She gave us a lot of joy and love. She will be truly missed.

Ninja loved to sit on my laptop whenever I wasn’t around. She tried to sit on it a lot when I was around also. We used to joke that she was checking her email.

This afternoon, Arielle thought it was appropriate for Ninja to check her email one last time.