Sidney
Well, that's my beautiful boy, my cat Sidney, gone. I had to take him to the vet today to be put to sleep.
Sid, in happier, and sassier, times:
This faucet's not going to turn ITSELF on, you know.
I met Sid eight and a half years ago, at the SPCA store in the Galleria. I hadn't been to the Galleria in probably ten years, but my former college roommate and her partner were in town, and we'd gone over there for nostalgia purposes. Sid was sitting there in his kennel, looking like a prince in exile. I fell in love right there, and went and adopted him the next day. He made himself at home in about five minutes. I intended to change his name, but it stuck. He spent many evenings curled up in the crook of my left arm while I was sprawled on the couch with the laptop. He was cuddly and pushy and opinionated. Sweet and not terribly brave, but a mighty hunter of shoes and flies.
Annie won him over ridiculously fast. He really adapted gracefully to the invasion of not-quite-two-years-ago, when he went from being an only cat to sharing an apartment with a dog and KITTENS in the space of about six weeks. I'm really proud of how gentle he was with the kittens and how well they all got along.
When Denise and Michaela came to get Annie and Sophie's sister Patches, they brought her a fancy cat bed. Sid immediately took it over. This picture makes me laugh every time I see it.
He'd been losing weight for a while, but at first I thought it was all the play with the kittens. Then I hoped it was his thyroid, but it wasn't. It was an aggressive form of lymphoma. He went downhill over the course of about two months despite lots of prednisone and all the chicken and tuna he could eat. Last night (er, warning for grossness) and when I got up this morning, I found puddles of stuff that looked like diarrhea but smelled like bile and...swamp. The vet said that smell meant that the cancer had begun to eat though the lining of the intestine, so I decided it was time to put him to sleep. (I'm leaving out a lot of the story here, lots of vet trips and different forms of prednisone, and trying to decide what to try and how long to try it. It was certainly not a decision I made lightly.) He went far more gently into that good night than I expected, for a cat who always hated the vet and didn't believe in cooperating with the enemy.
The song that started playing as I pulled into the vet's parking lot this morning was the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," which seemed appropriate. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."
Sid, in happier, and sassier, times:
This faucet's not going to turn ITSELF on, you know.
I met Sid eight and a half years ago, at the SPCA store in the Galleria. I hadn't been to the Galleria in probably ten years, but my former college roommate and her partner were in town, and we'd gone over there for nostalgia purposes. Sid was sitting there in his kennel, looking like a prince in exile. I fell in love right there, and went and adopted him the next day. He made himself at home in about five minutes. I intended to change his name, but it stuck. He spent many evenings curled up in the crook of my left arm while I was sprawled on the couch with the laptop. He was cuddly and pushy and opinionated. Sweet and not terribly brave, but a mighty hunter of shoes and flies.
Annie won him over ridiculously fast. He really adapted gracefully to the invasion of not-quite-two-years-ago, when he went from being an only cat to sharing an apartment with a dog and KITTENS in the space of about six weeks. I'm really proud of how gentle he was with the kittens and how well they all got along.
When Denise and Michaela came to get Annie and Sophie's sister Patches, they brought her a fancy cat bed. Sid immediately took it over. This picture makes me laugh every time I see it.
He'd been losing weight for a while, but at first I thought it was all the play with the kittens. Then I hoped it was his thyroid, but it wasn't. It was an aggressive form of lymphoma. He went downhill over the course of about two months despite lots of prednisone and all the chicken and tuna he could eat. Last night (er, warning for grossness) and when I got up this morning, I found puddles of stuff that looked like diarrhea but smelled like bile and...swamp. The vet said that smell meant that the cancer had begun to eat though the lining of the intestine, so I decided it was time to put him to sleep. (I'm leaving out a lot of the story here, lots of vet trips and different forms of prednisone, and trying to decide what to try and how long to try it. It was certainly not a decision I made lightly.) He went far more gently into that good night than I expected, for a cat who always hated the vet and didn't believe in cooperating with the enemy.
The song that started playing as I pulled into the vet's parking lot this morning was the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," which seemed appropriate. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."