A Sad Week

As if it wasn't bad enough that we lost our little kitty (actually an 18-year old grown-up cat) this week, one of our good friends and neighbors lost her husband of 34 years after a prolonged struggle with carcinoma.

What irks me most about his death is that he was, up to a certain point in time, one of the most health-conscious people I'd ever known. He ran daily; he ate all the right foods; he was not subject to a lot of work-related stress (although, as a house-husband, he may have dealt with a lot of home-related stress); he had a wonderfully calm and friendly demeanor; he volunteered at the school to be able to spend time with the kids; and he and his wife were madly in love.

According to his original diagnosis, based on the spread of the cancer and the fact that his kidneys had failed, he wasn't supposed to live this long; but we were all grateful that he lived far longer than the doctors expected, at least on a scale of weeks. Because of this, his family in North Dakota was able to come out and spend some good quality time with him. And he was doing well for at least a month afterward. Then, although he was feeling good up until last Friday, things went downhill over the weekend. Still, he managed to hold on until this morning.

We mourn his loss but treasure the memory of his life, for all that he did for others, for all that he meant to his friends and family, and for the wonderful person that he was.

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Losing a pet isn't quite on the same plane as losing a friend, but for our little immediate family, even though it was expected, it was a difficult loss. Erin had been with us for eighteen years, as long as Mary, and even though she lived in the shadow of Alfred for quite a long time, once she came into her own as Master of the House (as I'm sure she always deemed herself), she left her mark on the family. And the carpets. And the upholstery.

We saw the signs of age creeping up on her: the hairs turning gray, the weight loss, the slowing down of her movements, the creakiness of her joints. Her habits changed, too. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to get her water from the kitchen; now, she wanted it more and more from the sink in our bathroom (which was "cute" every once in a while, but became quite irritating when it was a daily occurrence). Then she decided that she needed a litter box in our bathroom because (as we later surmised) it was impossible to get from our sink to the litter box in the laundry room in time. So, for a long while, she was waking me up at 5:30 in the morning for a sink-drink and a quick potty break before heading down to the kitchen for breakfast.

It wasn't until her aroma changed that we suspected something more serious was going on. Cheryl googled the symptoms and realized that something was amiss with the internal filtering mechanism, so we took her into the vet; and, sure enough, their diagnosis was kidney failure. Unfortunately, they had no way of knowing how long she had to live.

We tried to make it as comfortable for her as possible. After some time, she could no longer get up the stairs, so she stopped getting drinks (or using the litter box) up there; she stopped using her thermal blanket and decided to hang out in the bookshelf next to the fireplace; and then she demonstrated that she was no longer able to make it from the water bowl (which we had replaced with a water fountain) to the laundry room, so we rearranged things so that she only had to travel as far as the kitchen/craft table (we put the litter box next to it), and that seemed to be working.

Sunday morning, she was sick to her stomach and constipated and having all sorts of issues. Not looking well at all. Cheryl ended up sleeping downstairs to keep an eye on her.

Then on Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of the cat scratching at our bedroom door. I opened it, and there she was, somewhat unsteady on her feet, trying to walk across the carpet to the bathroom so that she could get a drink, which she had not done in over a month. I picked her up and placed her in the sink and turned on the water. She drank for a long time, her head wobbling in and out, spilling some of the water across her cheek. When she had seemingly had her fill, she was unable to extricate herself from the bowl of the sink, so I lifted her up and carried her down the stairs and gave her some breakfast, which she tried to eat but could not. Instead, she went back to her shelf and lay there, looking tired.

At this point, she had not eaten for well over twenty-four hours, and the drinking didn't seem to be doing her any good. Cheryl called the vet and we made an appointment for later in the day. We informed the kids that this was probably it. Obviously, she couldn't keep up like this.

At four o'clock, we went to the vet, Adam and Mary accompanying us. The vet took a look at her and she was extremely dehydrated -- no matter how much water she was drinking, her system just wasn't getting it into her body; there was nothing else that could be done. So we all said our good-byes to her, the vet gave her the appropriate sedatives, and we stood beside her while she passed.

She lay on the coffee table in a kind of wake during the rest of the afternoon, with a fresh, new kitty blanket that Cheryl had lovingly sewn together, while I dug the grave out in the front yard. For dinner, in her honor, we had salmon (her favorite).

And then when we were all ready, we all went outside into the front yard and laid the little box with the new kitty blanket her in it and stood around it while Adam read a very moving poem he had written, then each of us in turn dropped some dirt on the box and said our final farewell.

Afterward, we watched one of our favorite cat movies, "Milo and Otis", and reminisced about our little friend. And ate ice cream, in her honor. Because she liked that, too.