For anyone out there who’s ever lost a beloved pet, for anyone who’s ever had to say goodbye too soon, for anyone who’s had to make a terrible decision to put that pet out of his or her pain, this one is for you. I experienced my own loss a month ago, and it’s taken me that long to write this. I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand the importance of a pet’s death, that you feel like you’ve lost a member of the family (people tried to be kind, but a few said things to me afterwards that no one would ever dream of saying if I’d lost a human), but here’s hoping there are a lot of animal lovers out there who get this. I wanted to memorialize my girl in a special way. So here goes.
The moment we locked eyes, I knew she was mine. And I was hers.
I came from a one-cat family, and my fiancé came from a multi-cat household. When we moved in together after dating for several years, we decided to compromise with two cats. A woman who lived near my future mother-in-law’s house had a cat who had recently given birth to kittens – two were solid (one orange, one black) and three were calicos. I wanted males – the cat I’d grown up with, who would live to be almost 19, was an orange male. We decided we’d get the orange one, and one of the calicos. Then we went over to meet them.
She was standing in the box, and the other four were crouched. She was the orange one (we thought she was a he). But while the three calicos were all huddled together on the right, this orange tabby stood on the left, and had one arm protectively hugging the black one, who was huddled below her. She stared at us without moving, as if to say, “I don’t go, unless he comes, too.” That was it: we were taking the two tabbies.
We named her Oscar. I always wanted a cat named Oscar. A couple of weeks after they came home with us, we took them in for their first shots. The vet flipped her upside-down and said, “Uh… this is a girl.” A girl? We had to change her name. But despite the dignity of her new name, we called her The Girl. And eventually that became The Lady.
She was a little skittish, and where her brother was the friendly tabby, she was the one who hung back a little, eyeing strangers and hiding while watching them from afar. Her tubby little brother would try to jump up on our bed at night, but he was too small and could never make it. She, on the other hand, found other places to sleep. Often curled up with her brother. I remember just a few months ago my husband nudging me and pointing, and there they were, two senior tabbies still curled up together, just like when they were kittens.
If something could go wrong with a cat, it went wrong with her. When we had them both fixed, her stitches came out – we don’t know if she pulled them out or her brother managed it, but suddenly that little incision was gaping open. Luckily, the vet was across the street. I ran over, and they stitched her back up, but put one of those little plastic collars around her head, and we had to separate them. I still remember her shooting backwards like a crayfish through the room, desperate to get it off. That night, I slept in the bedroom with her, while my fiancé slept out in the living room with the other cat. Just as I was dozing off, she suddenly jumped up, nudged my head with hers (almost poking my eye out with her plastic cone), and snuggled up next to me. She was scared. She was never scared, but tonight, things were weird, and she didn’t know what to do. So she turned to me. I remember hesitantly lifting up the covers and she crawled under, turned around, and slept lengthwise against me, with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her. She slept with me like that all night. She never did it since, but that night we bonded.
I know you shouldn’t choose a favourite cat when you have more than one… but she was mine.
My boyfriend and I got married, and we moved – twice – and then on a routine vet visit they said she needed to have her teeth cleaned. I was eight months pregnant at the time and I remember lying awake all night because she was staying overnight at the vet’s, and I couldn’t imagine her being there all alone (and yes, that anxiety foreshadowed my often-worrying mothering style). When I went to pick her up the next day – waiting outside the vet’s office when they opened – she practically leapt into my arms.
Our first baby was born, and while her brother decided he was having NONE of this, she was the one who did that creeping thing cats do when they’re testing the waters – she’d move toward the basket on the floor, jerking her body backwards slightly, then stepping forward two tentative steps, jerk back, two more steps, etc. – and she circled that basket like a shark, with her nose sniffing every corner of it. A couple of days later, the baby was napping (something she almost NEVER did) and I ran downstairs to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine, and when I came back up, there was The Lady sleeping in the bottom of the basket, next to the baby’s feet. I was shocked. From that point on she was always rather interested in the kids, although there were times when even she appeared to think, “Good god, why did you decide to bring these yowling cats to my house?!” and she’d disappear to the basement. Here's a pic of her with my son.
A couple of years after that she was diagnosed with hyperthyroid, something that happens often with cats, and it involves a lifetime of medication, or surgery, or a radioactive iodine treatment. The latter was the most expensive, but it had the highest success rate. She was only 11, and we figured we had a lot of years left, so we chose that option. They put a radioactive iodine in the cat, it runs through her system while they monitor her for a week, and then you separate her from the household for the next month, carefully putting her litter elsewhere and monitoring what she did. She was great, and we’d bring her upstairs at night, snuggling with her and joking about how our radioactive cat could be used as a nightlight, or perhaps could power our TV.
She was always thin, while her brother was fat, but he knew he should NOT mess with his sister. She always gave as good as she got, and when we got a four-storey six-foot cat tree, she immediately claimed the penthouse suite at the top, where she could roost and bat at her brother as he sat on the level below her.
She chirped. When she was in a happy mood, purring and sitting next to me, if I coughed she would make a chirping noise with her eyes half-closed. We would talk back and forth like that for ages. My husband thought it was hilarious. “Cough, make her chirp,” he’d say.
She hated the vet. Whenever I took her, they assumed she was the male (orange tabbies are typically male) and they’d try to do the checkup but her pulse would race and one time she drove her body temperature up almost 8 degrees. It was insane. I’d have to sit with her and calm her down in another room before they could come in and give her the annual shots. But considering how many other treatments the poor little girl had had, I don’t blame her for not liking that place.
She was my circus cat. She’d come into the bathroom as I would come out of the shower, and I’d hold my hand in the air and snap my fingers, and she’d stand straight up and stretch her body out completely as if she were bipedal, and she’d grab my wrist with her front paws and rub her cheek against my hand. I loved when she did that.
We got a new kitten in May, much to my childrens’ delight. She was yet another orange tabby-cat girl. My original orange tabby-cat girl began growling more than I’d ever heard, and she found new and inventive ways to hiss, but eventually there was a begrudging tolerance of the new little beast. Everything seemed to be fine, and we were now a three-cat household. And then…
It happened on a Saturday.
Just this past December, I was away in NY on business, and on Friday night my husband took the kids to his parents’ house because he was playing a show in town there. The next day they swung by the airport to pick me up on their way home, and when we got home she didn’t seem right. She slowly picked her head up and looked at me a little dazed, and I asked my husband if she’d been eating. He said she’d seemed off the day before, but nothing too unusual. Just a week earlier I’d been saying to him that we should monitor their food intake, because she looked a little skinny and I was wondering if the new little kitten was stealing all the food. That night instead of putting her down with the other cats, I gave her her own bedroom, with her own litter, water, and food. She jumped up on the bed in the room and curled up, glancing at me as I left.
I wish I’d stayed. How I wish I’d stayed.
The next morning the litterbox was untouched, and so was the food. Of course it was a Sunday, so the vet was closed. My husband decided to take her up to the animal emergency hospital. They charged him $1000 to admit her and put her on emergency fluids, and when they looked her over they found a lot of sores in her mouth. No one knows where they came from, but we suspect that’s why she’d stopped eating. Just after midnight they called our house and said they were transferring her to the ICU, and that she was in stage 4 kidney disease, and it was unlikely there was anything more they could do for her. My husband came across the landing and into the bedroom and delivered the news, and I crumpled into a sobbing mess. My girl was all alone, in an ICU, and we were going to have to put her to sleep the following day. I should be there. I told him I really should be there. He called the ER back and they said she was comfortable, and there was no reason we should come up. I said if we have to euthanize her on Monday, I don’t want her to be alone on her last night. They said to be honest, they didn’t think she was aware of anything around her, and she was sleeping. I decided I’d wait.
Next morning, I was back up there first thing. A vet took me into another room and talked to me, and said he’s not allowed to recommend euthanasia, but if that was what we wanted to do, he said, “You’re not making the wrong choice in this case.” He said they’d put a catheter in her arm to administer the IV fluids, and they could leave it in there so when we euthanized her they could just inject her in the catheter and not have to invade her body any further. I opted to keep it there. But, he added, it would only be good for about six hours. I now had a time limit with her.
I sat in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity while they disconnected her from countless machines. I watched the clock, thinking, “Come on come on COME ON…” I didn’t have much time with her, and I didn’t want to be separated from her. I began reasoning. If she comes out and seems happy to see me, then maybe I won’t do this today. Maybe she’ll get better.
They brought her out and I chirped her name as happily as I could, with a lump in my throat the size of a basketball and desperate to get out of that place. She looked at me and meowed back. She knew me. Would she be OK?
We got out to the car and I opened the front of the cage and put my hand in. She began purring. I began crying. I was sobbing so hard the whole drive home I could barely see the road at times. I brought her into the house and carried her upstairs to my bedroom, where I assumed she’d want to be. I opened the cage, and she got out of it and walked away, her front arm in a splint and walking very wobbly, and she slowly went down the stairs. I followed her, a little perplexed, and we got to the main floor, she turned and went down to the basement, and right to the kitty litter. Of course. They’d had her on IVs and the poor thing had to pee. But she’s peeing… that’s good, right?
I carried her back upstairs and put her down. She walked in a zigzag. That wasn’t like her. She stopped every few steps to give her front arm a shake as if to get that damn splint off, and that made me chuckle through my tears, but she walked to the back patio door, where she loved to sleep in the sun. (Pathetic fallacy was in full swing that day; there was no sun, only a downpour.) She stood for a minute, and then just fell sideways. She couldn’t even ease herself down. She lay there, and I laid flat on my stomach on the floor, petting her head and talking to her and crying.
And crying.
I eventually decided to leave her alone, but that resolve only lasted a few minutes at a time before I’d be back over with her. After about an hour, I left her alone again, and she got up and went back upstairs, where she managed to jump up onto my daughter’s bed. I began wondering if maybe she might be OK. We got a call from the vet’s office saying they had the paperwork back from the ER, did we have any questions? Yes… do we have to euthanize her today?
The vet got on the phone and said her kidneys were at such high levels, he’d never seen a cat come back from it. He said we could put her on some aggressive fluids and we’d probably get some more time with her. “How much time?” we asked, suddenly so hopeful. “Four… maybe five days.”
Oh.
When should we come in?
How does 3:20 sound?
A quick look at the clock said it was just after 2:30. There’s no time. How do you thank this wonderful little creature for bringing so much joy to your life? How do you take your last few moments with her and make them last forever? How do you let her know it’s going to be OK?
How do you say goodbye?
All day when I’d been sitting next to her, I kept giving her a little cough.
Chirp for me, I thought.
Just chirp for me this one last time. She didn’t. I whispered her name. Nothing. At one point I put my hand on her head and she sat up, and nudged my hand with her head the way she used to. It was more feeble than she used to, but she did it.
Now she just lay there, curled up in a ball, and we pet her and pet her and cried and cried together. She had come into our lives two weeks after we moved in together. She was an essential part of our lives. We couldn’t imagine our world without her in it. But we were going to have to. This is the last photo I took of her.
We went over to the vet at 3:20. They’re only a couple of blocks from our house (we always manage to live close to vets, for some reason) so I didn’t put her in the cat carrier. God, she hated that thing. Instead, I wrapped her in a towel and held her in my arms as we drove through the pouring rain. We walked in, and sat and listened to another couple talk about their sick dog. You can take your dog home, I thought. “Can you put her on the scale?” they asked me. Why? This isn’t a routine check. “Um… we need to weigh her to estimate how much the ashes will weigh, so we can charge you accordingly.” Of course you can. (The $500 bill for her euthanasia and return of the ashes came later. I love vets, but it’s hard not to feel gouged when it cost us $1500 to basically watch her die.)
Then the vet called us in.
He asked us if we wanted to see the records from the ER. No. Did we want to hear anything more about the renal failure? No. He’d already explained to my upset husband on the phone that despite the $500 or so we’d spent only four months ago on a full bloodwork set for her, often things like this don’t show up. At this point, we didn’t want to delay this anymore. He asked me to lay her down. I kept her in the towel and carefully placed her on the table, still keeping my arms wrapped around her. She looked at me strangely as he pulled out her arm.
“She’s not going to close her eyes,” he told us. “And it’s going to be really quick, OK?” OK. He prepared the syringe. He put it into her catheter. I leaned down and whispered, “I love you so much, my girl. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“Are you ready?”
No. No, I’m not ready. She’s only 14. She was supposed to live for five or six more years. I went away to NY five days ago and didn’t give her a second thought and now we’re “putting her to sleep.” I should have let her sleep with us more often. I should have cuddled with her a couple of weeks ago when she nudged me with her head on the couch when I was sitting there typing a blog post about
Once Upon a Time. I should have noticed she was frail. But the vet said this had the signs of a sudden failure, not something that had happened over time.
No, I’m not ready. Don’t do it. Please don’t do this to her.
Please. “Yes,” I said.
He slowly depressed the plunger. She looked up and growled at him, and then dropped her head. And that was it. I thought by “quick” he meant a minute or something. But it was maybe three seconds. And my lady was gone. The vet quickly checked her heart, whispered, “She’s gone,” and quietly slipped out of the room to leave my husband and I sobbing and grief-stricken. I draped myself over her body and cried and cried into her fur, smelling it for the last time, petting her, and reassuring her that she was OK. I noticed one of her hairs was in her eye, so I swiped it out. And then it left a mark on her eyeball. I can still picture that mark. I shouldn’t have touched her eye.
“Why do you call her The Lady?” my daughter had asked my husband only a few weeks earlier.
“Because she’s a lady,” he said. “She’s dignified and graceful. She’s our lady.”
And our lady was gone. Her last act had been to growl at a stranger who was doing something she didn’t like. Just as she’d stared at me knowingly the first time I looked at her, with one strong arm around her brother and making our decision for us, she left this world as defiant and strong-willed as she’d always been. And god, I love her for doing that.
Fate could have landed her in any family, and I'm so endlessly appreciative and honoured that it gave her to us, and allowed me to share that wonderful life of hers.
Goodbye, my girl. My lady. My sweet, sweet lady.
5.13 Why We Fight
