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Oh man… this will be a hard one to write.

Two nights ago I had to put my little kitty down. He was only about 4 years old. I don’t know his exact age, beacause he was an adopted stray. People have been surprised to hear how hard I’m taking it, because I think they have some sense that he wasn’t “my” cat. But he was. I took him to the vet when he needed it. I fed him daily. I talked to him every morning and every night. He was always around my back door, my front door, the driveway - anytime I was there. All of my friends and family had met him (most had fallen in love with him). He may not have been my cat in any official way, but he’d wormed his way into my heart for sure. I miss him lots, but worse than the simple fact of his absence was the decision and act of putting him to the needle and ending his life.

He’d been breathing rather heavily, with some effort, and after a couple days I figured that even if it was just a cold I should have him checked out. To my horror I was told he had a “really loud heckuva heart murmr” and was having difficulty breathing because his chest was filled with fluid. Heart defects are not treatable, and once I saw the X-ray film, showing his lungs displaced by the amount of fluid in his chest cavity and his heart almost the width of his ribcage, I knew he was already gone. Of course, there were intesive treatments I could have undertaken to extend his life by a week, a month, a year, but they would have been traumatic, ranging from draining his chest cavity with a needle to keeping him in a hospital on kidney-destroying diuretics for 48 hours at a time.

I have enough perspective on death to know it when I see it, and I chose not to flutter my arms and try to let the vets play out their little battle against god on his body. But still, he was so young. It was not at all the same as taking in an old, sick pet who’s had a long life and a lengthy struggle with an illness. One minute I was checking out a mere sniffle, the next, his head was sagging down onto my lap for the last time.

This suddenness, as much as anything, really fucked me up. I was there for several hours (mostly waiting, in the beginning, to be seen) and by the time I left it was about 1:30am. In hindsight, this waiting was a good thing, because he spent his final hours curled up in my lap in a private room, enjoying the warmth of my fleece jacket, his nose curled into the fold of my elbow.

When those hours were up, and I’d stumbled out of the office, past the people waiting room, in tears, it was the dead of night, dark and chilly outside. Cars were whooshing by, lights on and windows up. Kids in the apartment building across from the parking lot were yelling at their playstation. I was smoking like a chimney and sobbing like a baby, blowing big handfuls of ashen snot into shrivelled tissues as I tried to drive with my eyes and cheeks and chin wet. I just couldn’t believe it. As soon as I’d sat down behind the wheel and closed the door behind me, the moribund receipt in my back pocket, all I could think to say to myself was “What. The fuck!?!”

It felt like a cruel joke, or a bad dream where a completely illogical turn of events leads to an entirely horrific end you’re only too happy to escape by waking up. I was messed up for a good 24 hours, unable to go more than about 10 minutes without collapsing onto a maudlin thought like “he was so beautiful” and dissolving into shock and sorrow. My friends and family came to my rescue, passing the time with me, listening to me ramble, doing simple shit with me to keep my occupied. They reminded me why my I’m lucky, why my life is good. Most importantly of all, they all knew already how shitty it was - they’d met the little guy and had a chance to see what a lover he was.

Now that some time has passed I can really see the difference between the immediate trauma and the lasting sorrow. I am still angry and sad. But sweet jeebus, I was an unholy wreck the first 24 hours. I should not have gotten in a car to drive away from that situation. Not safe at all.

This morning, after putting water on for coffee, I walked to the back door to look out onto the sundrenched back steps where he’s always waiting for me in the morning. Just out of habit, I looked out. The scene was piteously empty, just a blank, unoccupied space where I’d grown so accustomed to the presence of a fuzzy little creature insistently demanding attention.

I know now why he hadn’t been eating as much for the past week or so, and why his meow had gone hollow in his mouth for a little while. He was dying, his little heart giving way inside him. Simple. I have to recognize that the reason it’s so tragic and infuriating is that he was such a great cat. This was no fat, aloof, edgy predator who merely used me for food. This was a warm, charismatic little friend who’d been dedicated to me long before I began putting out a bowl for him twice a day. He was lucky to find folk who took him in and loved him, and we were lucky to have him around as long as we did.

I won’t say any more than that. Death is the end. We don’t go anywhere. What we do while we’re alive is all we leave behind. He reminded me to stay compassionate, that we still find abundant stores of love where we aren’t even looking or asking for it. And even this horrible turn of events has reminded me that every day is precious and there are always a few minutes to stop, on your way out the door to work, and enjoy some unconditional love while you can.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.