Stripe, March 1991 - October 2006

[belovedlake]

I had to put Stripe to sleep yesterday. On top of her chronic renal failure, she had an acute episode, and they could've kept her in the hospital, but we were already doing fluids, and her body was finally giving out. I bought her an extra year. I wish I could've given her more time. At the end of it all, when I got home from work yesterday, I knew it was time. You can tell when they've had enough. It broke my heart to accept it and let her go, but it's what she wanted. She'd been fighting for a long time, and she'd lived a good and long life, so I couldn't justify putting her through another hospitalization and more intensive treatments again. The first time, I promised myself that when we could no longer manage her illness successfully with minorly invasive procedures, I'd put her down. She was going to need feline dialysis, and she would probably have gone into heart failure from the procedure. I asked the vet for a few minutes alone with her, told her how much I loved her, and then signed the papers to euthanize. She died quietly in my lap shortly before 5pm.

I feel horrible right now. I can't begin to describe the kind of bond that providing life-sustaining care creates between two creatures, be they human or animal. I feel like I lost a part of myself.