Unbearable Pain

I wrote Heartache as an ode to Hidey, whose little kidneys are failing.   I also wrote it as a way to process the fact that sooner than later my cats and housemates of 18 years would no longer be.  We continue to give Hidey her weekly fluids and she seems to be responding well to them, but at the time I wrote Heartache, I truly did wonder if Scruffy, with all his congenital ailments, would possibly outlive her.  He didn’t.

On February 17^th, 2011 I gave Scruffy his last 8 daily pills.  He had a rough night.  On the morning of the 18^th Curtis and I took him on his last trip to the vet.  It was a beautiful warm morning after a cold winter, but I was bundled up in several layers and wouldn't have felt warm even if it were 100 degrees.  We drove the back way over the lake, a drive I usually enjoy and find relaxing.  The landscape is wet and lush and chock-full of wildlife.  This day Curtis kept talking about what a bleak place we live in.  Gabriel Fauré’s requiem was playing on the radio.  Really, it was.  It is a gorgeous piece of music whose beauty I remembered only later in the day, but whose appropriateness at the moment of its airing only made me feel more desperate.

We arrived at the vet and sat in the light and warm waiting room for what to me felt like too short a time and what for Curtis felt like an eternity.  After feeling horrible for hours, Scruffy finally relaxed on my lap, stretched his paws, purred, and seemed happy.  I watched the dogs panting and fidgeting, smiled, and kept stroking Scruffy in what I desired to be an eternal present, while Curtis wanted time to evolve into another present altogether.  Inevitably Mary Nan, Scruffy’s vet of 18 years, called us and we took Puppy, one of Scruffy’s many nicknames, to her examining room.  

We told her about the night he had had.  As mentioned in Heartache, Scruffy was allergic to everything and had chronic sinus infections and coughing fits.  He was also born with a faulty heart valve and has had a bad heart murmur forever.  I always thought that for sure his heart would one day fail and he would die peacefully at home, in his sleep.  But modern medicine has pretty much thwarted that plan for both animals and humans...  Plus, as Mary Nan said when we expressed what had always been our wish, these little guys are designed to survive, they just don’t die peacefully of natural causes.  Unlike humans however, in what I still think as the dark ages when it comes to reasoning about the meaning of life, animals have an easier way out… 

Mary Nan looked at Scruffy and examined him.  He had lost half a pound in 5 months.   Scruffy was a big beautiful cat, long and lanky with a big head.  He was always skinny; but when he was young and healthy he weighed close to 8lbs.  Now, even though he had been eating well every two hours, and we had been feeding him human baby food to try and fatten him, he was down to 5lbs 9oz: skin and bones.  Mary Nan told us his intestines felt hard and knotted when they were supposed to be soft and supple.  She opined that he might have developed intestinal cancer. 

That morning, even before any diagnosis was rendered, we knew it was time to stop his suffering and start on the road to our own.  Curtis and I held Scruffy while we cried and cried and cried and cried some more as we felt his body relax into drug induced unconsciousness before his sweet murmuring heart contracted for its last screwy beat, and his beautiful and perfect soul ceased to be.

Fuffy, of course the only times you would not sit still were when I was trying to draw you, and I can't find my favorite drawing of you--- so goes life... and death...  I love you little cat...