I try not to make a habit of filling my gallery with art I have not drawn myself, but this particular commission's extremely personal nature made me feel like I needed to have it in my own gallery and share it with my own watchers. It is based very much off real life events.

underlying sketch by  davecanine
colors, shading, and final lines by  leargini

and of course the characters are

artist's post: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/25117095/




edit; it's been 3 years and i still have dreams where she's alive, and then i wake up in tears when i remember she's not, and no i DON'T have another chance to save her, or at least end her suffering sooner. i still cry about it even tho i don't usually care about others at all. (can't help but wonder if the amount of pain loving and losing her caused me might be the reason i can no longer care about anyone else) just thought i'd put more info about the whole thing here now that i'm... maybe slightly more able to talk about it? and journals are annoying to sift through.

-i adopted luna from petsmart in march, 2013. she was either 1 or 2 years old and had already had a litter. she was the light i needed in a very dark time. she kept me company. we played tag together. i loved her like i was unable to love anything or anyone else (since i see everyone as a potential threat).
-we noticed luna was getting thin and not being as playful anymore in july 2017. she was 5 years old. indoor only, no known health issues. i've lived with cats all my life but she was the first that was actually my responsibility. i had never seen a cat die younger than 12 years old, so i was baffled as to her condition. i couldn't accept it. we took her to the vet and the dumbass said she just had irritated bowels.
-we took her again in august, got a better vet, and found out she had gastrointestinal lymphoma, aka, stomach cancer. nobody wants to tell a pet parent their child is doomed, so they made me think she still had a chance. she absolutely didn't. we noticed it too late, and it's the kind of thing that even if we'd noticed it in the beginning, there was very little chance she'd get over it. led by false hope, we put her through stressful and painful treatments... blood transfusions and chemotherapy. honestly i wonder if she thought we hated her then...
-on september 30th, the day after her sixth birthday, she collapsed and started screaming in pain. we took her to the vet and had her euthanized immediately. i felt as she took her last breath. my husband watched the light leave her eyes. it was the most painful thing either of us has ever been through.
-we suspect the culprit was bad food from walmart, as my mom's cat (who mine had lived with for a while) died in a similar state. there's no way we could have known and prevented her from getting sick. but we could have been more diligent, noticed something was wrong sooner, and... ended her suffering sooner. by the time we realized something was wrong, she was already miserable. and then we prolonged that misery because we couldn't let her go. that is my greatest regret. maybe i couldn't have saved her, but i shouldn't have made her suffer like that. delaying her death made it WORSE for both her AND us.