Once in a while, Life asks you to do something that you know is the right thing to do, but it just happens that it is also the LAST thing you want to do. You then have a choice. You can either take a deep breath and do it anyway precisely because it is the right thing to do, or you can ignore it and hope it goes away.
I’m human. I want to be lazy. I want to bury my head in the sand and ignore the inevitable. And while I may delay taking action on something until it is clear I must make a decision, I do – in the end – do the right thing, even when it hurts. And it always does.
I’ve dreaded this decision for the last 20 years. When I adopted my kitten, I didn’t think about her death. I just loved her. I delighted in having her. I laughed at her funny and frustrating antics. I delivered a sermon from the pulpit one Sunday telling how my cat did the impossible through determination and visualization, and I was delighted when the congregation burst into spontaneous applause when the cat succeeded.
Then came the day five years ago when I noticed she and her brother were getting old. I had also noticed that I was getting old, but somehow, it was harder seeing it in them than it was in me. They have a shorter lifespan, so they aged faster than I did. I knew they would die relatively soon. And I was hoping they would just die quietly in their sleep.
Don’t we all hope for that?
Such was not the case for my 16 year-old feline son, Sierra. The week before his death his bowels stopped working, so there was no question but that I would have to euthanize him. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and worthy of its own blog. That left my feline daughter, Maura Clare. She was also sick at the time, but I told her she would have to live at least one more year because I could not take her demise any sooner than that.
She and I clung to each other after Sierra’s death. In the intervening four years, I have watched her yoyo between getting better and getting worse. Her downhill slide has been so slow as to be nearly imperceptible. But I learned with my mother’s nine-year post-stroke decline that the tendency is to normalize the abnormal. In Maura Clare’s case, she began having occasional mini-strokes a year after Sierra died. I was terrified watching her try to walk but not being able to figure out how to get her back paw down out of the air and onto the ground to move forward.
And within minutes, it cleared up and she was back to normal. The emergency care veterinarian said this was common in cats her age. All I know is that it scared the bejesus out of us both.
Somewhere along the line, it was determined Maura Clare had dementia. Who knew cats could get dementia? There came a point when she routinely forgot how to get back from the bathroom and she’d howl for me to come get her and take her back to the bedroom. This only happened at night, of course, and was particularly problematic when I lived in a house full of people.
I’ve lived with her heart murmur and her hyperthyroidism for years now, and just last year I got an ultrasound to determine the nature of her heart murmur so that she could undergo oral surgery with the cat dentist to extract two broken teeth and address her periodontal disease. (Who knew there were feline dentists?)
Now her body fluids are starting to come out – or not in some cases – on a far more frequent basis and not always in the right places. You get the idea.
DESPITE ALL THIS, she remains a relatively happy cat who purrs incessantly and still maintains some quality of life. She still maintains her weight and her fur remains not too matted and not too dull. She walks a little more slowly, but she still walks on her own. I always said I would euthanize her if the day came when she was in pain. But it is the absolute LAST thing I want to do to my feline companion of 20 years. (For reference, the normal lifespan of a domestic cat is 15 years.)
Precisely because she is still a happy cat in relatively good shape, I’ve managed to stay in denial. “She’s still viable,” I say. I review my benchmarks for knowing when she’s at the end: when she has a massive stroke . . . she can’t walk . . . she stops eating . . . she curls up somewhere I can’t get to her and she dies on her own . . . . Those are obvious markers. Now I’m questioning if there aren’t OTHER markers I’m missing. If I took a step back and looked at it from a larger perspective, I’d realize:
She’s in the beginning stages of kidney disease because of her hyperthyroidism. This is one of the leading causes of death in cats.
She goes into a room (or wakes up from a nap) and she howls because she doesn’t know where she is, which is evidence that her dementia continues to grow and will take her out eventually.
She still has sporadic “episodes” where she cannot control her gastric and fecal output. These 3-4 hour episodes are difficult for us, but worse than that, constant pooping and puking really take it out of her. Frankly, we’ve all been there, and we know how it is. It’s not fun.
Every 2-3 hours during the night, Maura Clare wakes me up to stir, add to or change her food, or to give her a drink of water from the bathtub. Since getting enough to eat and drink is critical at her age and state of health, I have chosen to be her “cat butler.” It may work out well for her, but the lack of uninterrupted sleep is taking its toll on ME.
I have been looking at the catastrophic markers to determine if I need to assist Mother Nature in giving my cat as peaceful a death as possible. But perhaps I’d do better to also include the small, daily markers that tells me that the quality of her life now is not all that great. Even if she is still viable . . . even if she still looks good to my eyes . . . even if she still purrs incessantly and cuddles with me as I go to bed and sleeps alongside me during the night.
Clearly she is at the end of her life, but even so, can I let my happy, viable, cuddly, daily companion of 20 years go? In theory – eventually – yes, but NOW?
As much as I don’t want to (and I DON’T), I made the dreaded call to the veterinarian and scheduled an appointment for THE TALK where she – the geriatric cat specialist – tells me what I already know, and what I don’t know. She’ll either tell me, “Every day she wakes up breathing is a good day, so leave her alone and she’ll make it out of here on her own.” Or she’ll tell me, “Wake up and smell the (plant-based) bacon, Chickee. Her time here is at an end.”
If I have to be an adult and do the right thing, I will, even if it is the most painful thing I could possibly do.
Because sometimes, you have to put their needs before your own.
Even when it hurts.
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