I killed my cat yesterday. Euthanized, whatever. He was sick.
Requiescat in pace, Lulu. 1999-2011.
He lost a lot of weight. My wife noted this with concern, but I was not impressed, for he retained his monotonous, demanding yowl. Who?s to be alarmed by a lazy old cat?
He left squirts of diarrhea in my shoes. That got my attention. I was angry at first, then surprised and frightened by his weakness. I asked my sister to bring us to the vet.
After a few moments of examination, the vet declared Lulu?s kidneys irretrievably failed. Without treatment he would slowly wither. With twice-daily hydration drips he would ?go on for a while?. Or we could end it now.
Lulu groaned and wriggled meekly, a shadow of the hissing, bucking tomcat of previous visits.
I wanted time for us to say goodbye. I wanted my seven-year-old son to understand Lulu?s illness and death. Before it?s my turn to die. And I wanted to give Lulu a few days of treatment to help him feel better. Before we killed him.
So we brought him home with a liter bag of fluids, drip line and ten needles. I treated him morning and night, piercing the skin between his shoulders and draining 100 ml per treatment of ?lactated ringers? from the elevated bag. He walked away bowlegged, with the fluid pooling in his legs and belly.
His condition improved and we savored the time. We stroked his fur, tolerated his uremic odor and forgave his now regular incontinence. For five days. Then the vet (this time, a lady who makes house calls) came to put him down. We would not continue the hydration treatments indefinitely.
He sat in my lap as she injected the anesthesia. He seemed woozy and turned his head as if surprised, then slumped. Time was expiring. In seconds it would be too late to stop, too late to grant my ward the care I expected for myself. And then it was. She injected a medicine to stop his heart and then checked for a heartbeat. There was none. He was dead. Days (or was it years?) of anguish yielded to the irreversible truth, and I sobbed.
Back in ?99, before we were married, my wife and I answered an ad in Uncle Henry?s for free kittens. They were giving away the females and we took two: a black-and-white tuxedo we named Otis (after their place of birth, Otisfield), and Lulu, a sleek silver-hair. We took them back to my father?s house in New Gloucester, where we were visiting, then back home to Lawrence, Mass. and then, a few days later, to the vet, who gently disabused us of our sisterhood with the revelation of Lulu?s distinctly male genitalia. Otis had a boy?s name by design, Lulu a girl?s by accident.
They were joined a year later by an orphaned, flea-bitten mackerel tabby kitten we named Henry. For eleven years the threesome prowled, seeking plunder in youth and then, with age, just dinner and a warm lap. Otis grew fat, Henry selfish, and Lulu paced a middle ground, apparently the only cat who could get along with the other two. He often groomed them (especially Henry) and was fond of licking us as well.
We often thought of Lulu as ?not the sharpest knife in the drawer?, given his tendency to get stuck in closets or on roofs or anywhere the route of escape was not readily visible. His breath was terrible, his claws indiscriminate, and his potty training incomplete. He regularly vomited on the furniture. He was also affectionate, and delightfully strange. When he trotted, his loose belly fur would wag comically.
After the vet left, and my wife and I stopped crying, I wrapped Lulu?s body in a shroud of old tee shirts tied up with old socks. His eyes were rolled back. His head swung. I held him in my arms as my wife drove us back to my father?s house in New Gloucester, almost to the very beginning of our journey together, now with our son along. We buried Lulu next to Mittens and Cosmo (my father?s cats) in the tall grass down by Woodman Road, and marked his grave with a plain stone which is less than he deserves. We spoke a few awkward words, sang Michael Row Your Boat Ashore (terribly) and swatted mosquitos.
I don?t find myself regretting our shortage of poignance. Why pretend that any volume of stirring words can meet his peculiar bearing, his flat whining, his maddening habits, or the pleasures and pains of the time we might have had?
Source: http://mybraincancerdiary.com/2011/10/04/lulu/
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