Red Red Whine

Well, it will probably come as no surprise that we did go through with Alex’s appointment on Thursday morning, which means we are now on Day 5 of living in a world without my sweet, handsome boy. You all were so kind to leave comments on my last post, and I have to tell you, I found so many of them helpful. I know you guys said there was no need to rush, but those 3 days between being told it was “not too early” to consider putting him to sleep damn near killed me. As much as I wanted to delay, I couldn’t bear the thought of getting to that “one day too late” point and I also could not have handled knowing the inevitable was looming like that.

I am sitting in a Starbuck’s right now, killing time between my dentist appointment (ouch! Pregnancy-inflamed gums and teeth-cleaning are NOT fun) and my friend Alice’s lunch time, so I am going to try my best not to cry in public again over my kitty.

But yes, it has been done, and oh, I cannot describe how hard that was. Have you ever walked into the vet’s office with a kitty in a carrier and walked out with an empty carrier?

Ugh.

Despite Rob’s objections, I stayed in the room with Alex for the procedure. I felt I owed it to him to love on him as he was ushered into sleep and then into death. I thought it would be unbearable, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t look at his face, though. Did you know that cats’ eyes don’t close, even when they are sedated? Keep that in mind if you ever find yourself in this situation, and position yourself accordingly.

And so Alex was, and then he wasn’t. And there is now a Hurricane Alex, which, in a weird way, makes me smile. And I am the luckiest girl in the world to have had such a loyal, loving boy for 15 years, and I’m even luckier to have a mom, dad, and sister who will each cry on the phone with me and let me sob about what a great cat he was, and I’m also lucky to have a husband who, despite being one who doesn’t form quite as strong attachments to pets as I do, will never ever let the words “it’s just a cat” cross his lips and instead will be sweet and loving and understanding.

And now I am crying in Starbucks and the people next to me must think I am insane.

Deep breaths.

You know what has brought me comfort? Three things: (1) taking Catheroo’s story to heart (I’m sorry I can’t link here – don’t know how, since I’m using a mobile device to type this) and thinking of Alex’s passing as though he were simply making room for another baby to enter my life; (2) imagining Alex frolicking with Charley, my cat who died when I was in law school, and eating apples (thanks for that image, Erin!); and (3) donating money to the local humane society down in Tallahassee, where I first adopted Alex so long ago. And, I suppose, a fourth thing: time.

Rest in peace, my sweet boy. You really were a great, unforgettable cat.

I came back from Boston with a list of things to write about on this here blog.  (Oh, hi!  Yes, I’ve been to Boston and back since we last spoke!  I’d have told y’all about the trip beforehand, but I promised Rob ages ago that I would not post things about our out-of-town comings and goings until after they happened, because he is convinced that someone is going to rob us if I do).  (Incidentally, have you ever had anyone tell you that the word “gyp”, as in “he got gypped when he paid $50 for that shirt”, is offensive to gypsies?  I think the word “rob” in certain contexts is offensive to Robs.  My Rob thinks I am just silly, but whatever.)  Anyway, I was going to pontificate about all sorts of things, like how much I adore MetroMint water, how fascinating it is to assess the demographic of people who offer their seats to pregnant women on public transit systems (in short: older white dudes), how much I fell in love with Boston although I think their aquarium is a bit on the crappy side, and what it was like to watch a Red Sox game at Fenway in the front row right behind home plate.  Oh, and how I told Rob I was tired of my “stupid, fat pregnant body” and he made the mistake of saying, “It’s not stupid!” instead of “it’s not fat!”  Oh, and how it turned out that our hotel allowed dogs, and they had all this great stuff to accommodate them – including a room service menu with “kibble with sirloin” and “kibble with ground beef” on it,  so that we are totally bringing the Wonder Dog with us next time we go.

Instead, though, I’m putting all those conversational topics away to talk about the overwhelming sadness I feel right now.  Yesterday when we picked up Alex (you know Alex - he’s my 15-year-old tabby cat) from the vet, where we kennel him when we go out of town, we got some very sad news about his deteriorating health.  Alex has not been well for a while.  First, he developed a thyroid problem.  We’ve been treating that and his blood levels are normal, but he has still been losing weight at an alarmingly rapid rate.  In fact, five years ago, Alex was a whopping 24.6 pounds.  Today, he is a little over 12 pounds.  For a cat, that’s crazy.  When you think about the fact that a good 7 of those pounds have dropped off in the last year or two, that’s even crazier.  His litterbox habits have become increasingly more horrendous, so that we’ve had to line the catbox area with puppy wee-wee pads (and yet he still occasionally goes in inappropriate places like our bathroom or on the kitchen floor).  He also randomly starts howling (sort of – it’s a crazy meow) for no apparent reason, so that I can’t help wondering if he’s in pain.

Well, fast forward to yesterday, when the vet told me she had done a urinalysis on Alex to make sure he didn’t have a urinary tract infection (as I’d requested) and that it turns out his little kidneys and his liver are failing him. 

We don’t really have any options left.  The vet can put him on some special renal-failure diet, but she has no real hope that it will make a difference.  We could isolate him, like have him live in the basement or something, but I think that would be incredibly traumatic for him.  Or, we could consider that maybe it is time to put him to sleep, before he suffers so badly that he loses his personality and is clearly in pain.

It breaks my heart.  What makes it worse is the fact that I’ve let myself get so frustrated with his litter behavior that I have said, more than once, that it might not be so awful if he passed on.  And yet, now that it is probably time for that to happen, I can’t stand it. 

The vet says it’s a personal decision, and that she has some patients that she feels have taken this step too early and some that she thinks maybe have waited too long.  She has said, more than once, that Alex’s medical tests – as well as his behavior when he boarded with her this weekend – show it isn’t too early in this case.  And yet…a part of me feels like it is.

We have an appointment with her on Thursday morning, for now.  Will I be able to keep it?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if I can do this.  In the meantime, I’m loving on him every chance I get and feeding him all of his favorite foods (tonight’s dinner was tuna fish with chopped tomatoes on the side; tomorrow we’ll have apples and grape popsicles fora snack before another tuna dinner and possibly some pumpkin or winter squash). 

Have you guys ever put a pet down?  How did you know it was the right time?  How did you ever get through it?  

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting around sobbing over my cat.  Okay, not really.  I’ve cried a lot today, but at least tomorrow I have a busy day scheduled – haircut and OB appointment – to hopefully keep my mind off things.  Dear God, please don’t make me cry at the hair salon or the doctor’s office.  Pretty please with sugar on top.