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Feb. 12th, 2008 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thejunipertreeWhen I came home that Friday night, I thought he was already dead.
I came in the door with a salad in my hand, all set to enjoy my Friday night after such a long fucking week of too much misery. I wanted to sit on the couch with my boyfriend, watch bad television and go to bed early. As soon as I set foot in the door, I knew something was wrong. One cat at the door, two cats, then nothing. Weird. So, I went into the kitchen, fed everybody, and wandered around for a few minutes doing the random and meaningless rituals I perform when I come home from work. Straighten the kitchen table, face-forward the cans in the cabinet, walk to the back of the apartment and then back again. I've never once claimed to be normal. The Engineer was downstairs at this point and in the kitchen, telling me about his day.
At this point, I made the concious decision to look for the cat because there was a little flutter in the back of my brain. Banging itself against the smooth interior of my skull and shrieking that something was WRONG. I paced in the living room, scanning. I walked around the coffee table and then saw him.
This is where I started to "umm. umm. umm." The Engineer came out to the living room when he heard me and put his hand on my back as I stood next to the couch, staring down at my cat lying half under the couch.
I knelt down next to him. I didn't want to touch him. If I touched him, it would make all of this real. I put my hand out and ran my fingers down his back leg and he felt so stiff that my heart leapt in my chest like a wounded thing and I began to choke on my own breath. "No. No. No. No." I covered my face in my hands and started to cry. To sob. The Engineer hovered behind me, but I was only barely conscious of his presence. We remained like that for some time: me, kneeling on the floor and crying; him, behind me and trying to talk coherancy back into my head; and Nympho, half under the couch.
The Engineer asked me if I wanted him to pull the cat out. I said no, I would do it.
And I put my hands on him to begin moving him out, my mind beginning to race around itself with the issue of what I was going to do with the body. It was late and the vet's office was closed for the night, so I couldn't take him there for cremation. I wasn't going to bury him at my father's house. And my freezer would not accomodate his body; he was a big cat, even in his wasting sickness. I put my hands on him and felt his tail move. I saw his chest rising with his breath.
It was like a switch flicked on in my head. The tears stopped and I turned clinical.
He was still alive.
I pulled him out and he was completely unresponsive to me. Saliva foamed at his mouth and he stared glassily at nothing. He wasn't dead, but it appeared as if Death was on Its way to my door. Running late.
I cleaned him off and sat on the floor with him in my lap, made a few phone calls to the people who are able to get me through the bad parts. Ella. Tony. One right after the other, my message to Tony mirroring the text he had sent me the week prior when it was discovered our friend had committed suicide. I sat on the floor with the cat in my lap and made the decision to not go to the emergency vet. Why go? To pay three or even four times the amount of a regular visit and have them tell me the cat must be euthanized? No, thank you. I wanted Nympho to die at home, in comfort, and with a small measure of dignity. As little stress as possible.
I set him up on a towel in the living room, combed my fingers through the fur that used to be so thick. Laid on the floor next to him, talking quietly and feeling his weak purr in reply. The Engineer finally convinced me to leave him alone because the last time I tried to stay up all night on a death watch, the cat defied me and stayed alive the entire time, only to die in the twenty minutes I passed out from exhaustion. I moved Nympho to my bedroom, laid him on a pillow. Kissed him goodbye on his poor face, then took myself to bed. In the morning, I expected all of this to be over.
Morning came and I jolted awake at the sound of my alarm clock. Immediately, I swept my eyes to the place on the floor where I had set the cat. But, he wasn't there any more.
I don't mean that in the figurative sense, like that he had left his body and only the shell remained. I actually mean that the cat was not there any more.
The cat who couldn't walk last night and was completely unresponsive to just about everything had gotten up in the wee hours and moved himself elsewhere.
I could feel my mind beginning to stretch around the edges; I knew I couldn't take much more of this back and forth shit.
A quick search found him on the other side of the room, near my dresser. Contorted around in a twisted position, but with his head up and his eyes open. Alive. Still alive. What the fuck? He meowed at me, that croaky old man sound that I loved so much.
I grabbed the phone and dialed the vet's office, knowing that I would not be able to last this weekend, waiting for the cat to die. I would have to bring him in and make the final decision.
While on hold, Nympho began to jerk around and foam at the mouth. A seizure. This is probably why he was half under the couch. How many had he been having when I wasn't home? When I was in bed? Calls made, I got dressed. The Engineer came downstairs and we bundled Nympho up in his towel. Got in the car. Cried the entire drive to the vet's office.
More seizures at the vet. Options are given to me, that I really wasn't expecting. We could go through the effort of trying to bring him back. It's not the diabetes. It could be the tumor pressing on his kidneys, his liver. It could have spread to his brain. Blood tests, kitty Valium. More waiting and watching. These are my options. My heart can't take this. He's already been through so much and what is this going to bring us? A month? It's not fair. Not to him, not to me. I make the decision. I sign the papers. He has another seizure. The vet cries. I cry some more, with the Engineer's hand on my back. The vet brings in the needle, full of pink sleep. I can't even look at it. She injects it and I lay my head on the metal examination table, with my face near the cat's. He breaths once, twice. Then nothing. Nothing ever again.
The vet tells me I made the right decision. The Engineer tells me I made the right decision. The techs tell me I made the right decision.
But, I'm screaming on the inside. I signed the death warrant of my best friend and it's tearing me apart.
I know I did the right thing. I know there really wasn't anything else that could be done. I know all of these things, logically and rationally. My brain parrots them at me constantly, but it doesn't take away the ache in my chest when I come home from work and he's not here.
It seems foolish when I say it aloud, or when I write it, but that cat was different than any other animal I've ever been the caretaker of. He had been with me through so many defining moments of my life. He was my first real pet, the first animal only I was responsible for. Not a family pet. Mine. And he was always there.
He was there through my time on 3rd street, with all of the chaos and heartbreak that happened in those walls. He was there the time I tripped so hard on acid that I didn't think I was ever coming back and he was the only thing real to me. He was there when I got the call my maternal grandmother died. Drunken nights full of song and laughter. Bleak summer days when I would sulk around the apartment and snarl at whoever came close. He was there when I moved from place to place. He was there when I came home from being mugged. He was there when I found out my first love had died by his own hand. Evil after midnight hours when I thought I was going to fly apart. Ghosts of the past, stories of the future. He was there when I brought home no-good to spend the night and he was there in the morning when they left. Every single time I danced that naive dance, he was there for me to cry on when it all came crashing down again. He was there when I got engaged. When I got married. And he was there when I had my heart broken in a quite spectactular fashion by a beautiful, long-legged boy who was not my husband. He was there when I made the decision to follow my foolish, fickle heart to an uncertain future and he was there when I came home again. He was there when my mother was sick and all I wanted to do was leave. He was there when I walked in the door after she had died.
And now he isn't.
He wasn't my pet. He was my friend.
The vet's office called me last Friday, to tell me that the cremains are in and I can pick them up whenever I like. I don't want to do it because it'll only drive home what I've been play-pretending around. I don't even know how to react half the time.
It's just not fucking fair.
I came in the door with a salad in my hand, all set to enjoy my Friday night after such a long fucking week of too much misery. I wanted to sit on the couch with my boyfriend, watch bad television and go to bed early. As soon as I set foot in the door, I knew something was wrong. One cat at the door, two cats, then nothing. Weird. So, I went into the kitchen, fed everybody, and wandered around for a few minutes doing the random and meaningless rituals I perform when I come home from work. Straighten the kitchen table, face-forward the cans in the cabinet, walk to the back of the apartment and then back again. I've never once claimed to be normal. The Engineer was downstairs at this point and in the kitchen, telling me about his day.
At this point, I made the concious decision to look for the cat because there was a little flutter in the back of my brain. Banging itself against the smooth interior of my skull and shrieking that something was WRONG. I paced in the living room, scanning. I walked around the coffee table and then saw him.
This is where I started to "umm. umm. umm." The Engineer came out to the living room when he heard me and put his hand on my back as I stood next to the couch, staring down at my cat lying half under the couch.
I knelt down next to him. I didn't want to touch him. If I touched him, it would make all of this real. I put my hand out and ran my fingers down his back leg and he felt so stiff that my heart leapt in my chest like a wounded thing and I began to choke on my own breath. "No. No. No. No." I covered my face in my hands and started to cry. To sob. The Engineer hovered behind me, but I was only barely conscious of his presence. We remained like that for some time: me, kneeling on the floor and crying; him, behind me and trying to talk coherancy back into my head; and Nympho, half under the couch.
The Engineer asked me if I wanted him to pull the cat out. I said no, I would do it.
And I put my hands on him to begin moving him out, my mind beginning to race around itself with the issue of what I was going to do with the body. It was late and the vet's office was closed for the night, so I couldn't take him there for cremation. I wasn't going to bury him at my father's house. And my freezer would not accomodate his body; he was a big cat, even in his wasting sickness. I put my hands on him and felt his tail move. I saw his chest rising with his breath.
It was like a switch flicked on in my head. The tears stopped and I turned clinical.
He was still alive.
I pulled him out and he was completely unresponsive to me. Saliva foamed at his mouth and he stared glassily at nothing. He wasn't dead, but it appeared as if Death was on Its way to my door. Running late.
I cleaned him off and sat on the floor with him in my lap, made a few phone calls to the people who are able to get me through the bad parts. Ella. Tony. One right after the other, my message to Tony mirroring the text he had sent me the week prior when it was discovered our friend had committed suicide. I sat on the floor with the cat in my lap and made the decision to not go to the emergency vet. Why go? To pay three or even four times the amount of a regular visit and have them tell me the cat must be euthanized? No, thank you. I wanted Nympho to die at home, in comfort, and with a small measure of dignity. As little stress as possible.
I set him up on a towel in the living room, combed my fingers through the fur that used to be so thick. Laid on the floor next to him, talking quietly and feeling his weak purr in reply. The Engineer finally convinced me to leave him alone because the last time I tried to stay up all night on a death watch, the cat defied me and stayed alive the entire time, only to die in the twenty minutes I passed out from exhaustion. I moved Nympho to my bedroom, laid him on a pillow. Kissed him goodbye on his poor face, then took myself to bed. In the morning, I expected all of this to be over.
Morning came and I jolted awake at the sound of my alarm clock. Immediately, I swept my eyes to the place on the floor where I had set the cat. But, he wasn't there any more.
I don't mean that in the figurative sense, like that he had left his body and only the shell remained. I actually mean that the cat was not there any more.
The cat who couldn't walk last night and was completely unresponsive to just about everything had gotten up in the wee hours and moved himself elsewhere.
I could feel my mind beginning to stretch around the edges; I knew I couldn't take much more of this back and forth shit.
A quick search found him on the other side of the room, near my dresser. Contorted around in a twisted position, but with his head up and his eyes open. Alive. Still alive. What the fuck? He meowed at me, that croaky old man sound that I loved so much.
I grabbed the phone and dialed the vet's office, knowing that I would not be able to last this weekend, waiting for the cat to die. I would have to bring him in and make the final decision.
While on hold, Nympho began to jerk around and foam at the mouth. A seizure. This is probably why he was half under the couch. How many had he been having when I wasn't home? When I was in bed? Calls made, I got dressed. The Engineer came downstairs and we bundled Nympho up in his towel. Got in the car. Cried the entire drive to the vet's office.
More seizures at the vet. Options are given to me, that I really wasn't expecting. We could go through the effort of trying to bring him back. It's not the diabetes. It could be the tumor pressing on his kidneys, his liver. It could have spread to his brain. Blood tests, kitty Valium. More waiting and watching. These are my options. My heart can't take this. He's already been through so much and what is this going to bring us? A month? It's not fair. Not to him, not to me. I make the decision. I sign the papers. He has another seizure. The vet cries. I cry some more, with the Engineer's hand on my back. The vet brings in the needle, full of pink sleep. I can't even look at it. She injects it and I lay my head on the metal examination table, with my face near the cat's. He breaths once, twice. Then nothing. Nothing ever again.
The vet tells me I made the right decision. The Engineer tells me I made the right decision. The techs tell me I made the right decision.
But, I'm screaming on the inside. I signed the death warrant of my best friend and it's tearing me apart.
I know I did the right thing. I know there really wasn't anything else that could be done. I know all of these things, logically and rationally. My brain parrots them at me constantly, but it doesn't take away the ache in my chest when I come home from work and he's not here.
It seems foolish when I say it aloud, or when I write it, but that cat was different than any other animal I've ever been the caretaker of. He had been with me through so many defining moments of my life. He was my first real pet, the first animal only I was responsible for. Not a family pet. Mine. And he was always there.
He was there through my time on 3rd street, with all of the chaos and heartbreak that happened in those walls. He was there the time I tripped so hard on acid that I didn't think I was ever coming back and he was the only thing real to me. He was there when I got the call my maternal grandmother died. Drunken nights full of song and laughter. Bleak summer days when I would sulk around the apartment and snarl at whoever came close. He was there when I moved from place to place. He was there when I came home from being mugged. He was there when I found out my first love had died by his own hand. Evil after midnight hours when I thought I was going to fly apart. Ghosts of the past, stories of the future. He was there when I brought home no-good to spend the night and he was there in the morning when they left. Every single time I danced that naive dance, he was there for me to cry on when it all came crashing down again. He was there when I got engaged. When I got married. And he was there when I had my heart broken in a quite spectactular fashion by a beautiful, long-legged boy who was not my husband. He was there when I made the decision to follow my foolish, fickle heart to an uncertain future and he was there when I came home again. He was there when my mother was sick and all I wanted to do was leave. He was there when I walked in the door after she had died.
And now he isn't.
He wasn't my pet. He was my friend.
The vet's office called me last Friday, to tell me that the cremains are in and I can pick them up whenever I like. I don't want to do it because it'll only drive home what I've been play-pretending around. I don't even know how to react half the time.
It's just not fucking fair.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-12 07:35 am (UTC)