The last cat
Vinaigrette, my last cat left from the ones Penny and I raised together, has been suffering from a bad case of kidney disease, which is the common way that cats die when they get really old. Vinnie was almost 23, or in human-equivalent years, about 112, and she'd been having trouble smelling food and eating for a while.
She was too weak today. On Saturday night, I took her to the emergency vet for fluids, since I didn't want her to be miserable too long, and Sunday (easter) my vet was closed. So she was OK-ish, with the usual feeding and watering by syringe. She was not energetic though, and she was having increasing fits of pain, and only weighed about 4 pounds. She wasn't able to walk more than four or five feet before collapsing in exhaustion.
So I took her to the vet this evening. I didn't want to do it in the morning because it would be too noisy and too long a wait.
And I selfishly wanted more time with her.
She has been trying to find a quiet cool place to hide, and yet would call for help, so up until then it was clear she wasn't ready to go, but today, she was just too tired.
The vet gave her a very large dose of anaesthetic. She relaxed immediately when the pain stopped, then breathed twice more, then she was gone. Of my cats, she was the least attached to her body at the time she went, so there wasn't as much a sense of her vanishing, perhaps similar to Faux Paw who clearly wanted to be with Penny (who had passed a week earlier.)
I will miss trying to sleep with her face in my face, I will miss her ear-splitting yowls of indignation from the hallway that she didn't know where anyone was, and I will not miss at all the tiny, fading whimpery mewls of pain near the end.
She was a very nice cat, a master of allergen production, and a lap fungus par excellence.
She was too weak today. On Saturday night, I took her to the emergency vet for fluids, since I didn't want her to be miserable too long, and Sunday (easter) my vet was closed. So she was OK-ish, with the usual feeding and watering by syringe. She was not energetic though, and she was having increasing fits of pain, and only weighed about 4 pounds. She wasn't able to walk more than four or five feet before collapsing in exhaustion.
So I took her to the vet this evening. I didn't want to do it in the morning because it would be too noisy and too long a wait.
And I selfishly wanted more time with her.
She has been trying to find a quiet cool place to hide, and yet would call for help, so up until then it was clear she wasn't ready to go, but today, she was just too tired.
The vet gave her a very large dose of anaesthetic. She relaxed immediately when the pain stopped, then breathed twice more, then she was gone. Of my cats, she was the least attached to her body at the time she went, so there wasn't as much a sense of her vanishing, perhaps similar to Faux Paw who clearly wanted to be with Penny (who had passed a week earlier.)
I will miss trying to sleep with her face in my face, I will miss her ear-splitting yowls of indignation from the hallway that she didn't know where anyone was, and I will not miss at all the tiny, fading whimpery mewls of pain near the end.
She was a very nice cat, a master of allergen production, and a lap fungus par excellence.