Because of all the other health issues, anesthesia has been ruled out as too risky. We found out about the potential mass on Monday (best guess with her symptoms), and I had a discussion with the vet about how to know when it was time. She was listing the typical indicators - eating, pain, elimination, etc. I said, yes, not eating would be a big one for me. Callie was lying in her carrier, with her head towards us, and I thought to myself, I hope she's not listening to this. Typically she curls up in the carrier to try to hide from all things vet-related.
From the time we got home Monday, she hasn't really eaten. I've coaxed her into eating a little bit of salmon, and some tuna water. She was drinking CatSure (like ensure for people) until today. She sometimes acts like she wants something, crying a bit and going to her dish, and she will sometimes eat a tiny bit of something if I hand feed her. Sometimes even hand feeding doesn't help. I have 7 dishes of things out currently, and today she has had a couple tablespoons of chicken baby food that I fed her off my finger.
Monday night, she sat on my chest while I was in bed. I said to her, "you listened to me, didn't you, and now you're going to call me on it, aren't you?" And she just blinked her eyes at me and purred.
I don't know how cats know things, but they do. I've told her many times recently that it was ok for her to go, but I don't think she believed it until Monday. I think she has been uncomfortable for awhile. I've been keeping a daily journal, and went back through looking at good and bad days. There haven't been many good days for some time.
Having to decide to help her go sucks. I had really hoped that she would just go to sleep and not wake up, drifting off quietly and peacefully. With her issues, my choices are to help her go now, or to keep her with me until she wastes herself away to nothing. That makes my decision more clear cut, but it doesn't change the outcome. There is nothing that will fix all the things for her. She is dying. It's just a question of when.
Our choice, because I do believe she's let me know her opinion, is to minimize the suffering. I want her to be able to keep some of her Callie-ness, and not have it taken away by pain or suffering. I don't want her to leave this world full of suffering, and as a shell of herself. It would be so easy to do that, though. Keeping her here now would be for me, to avoid the pain of her loss for awhile longer. She would starve herself, or I would have to try to fight to feed her by syringe. We did that once, and she hated it. I knew at that time that she wasn't ready to go. Now, I think she's done with being broken. It's really death with dignity, for a cat. Tomorrow the vet will come to our house, and my beautiful girl will slip off peacefully.
We've been through so much together - marriage and divorce, 2 graduate programs, multiple moves and car trips... I am so lucky to have had her in my life, and for so very long. I am so lucky that she found us, when she was a tiny 6-week-old kitten abandoned in a parking lot. Oddly enough, I saw and held a tiny 6-week-old kitten found abandoned along the highway when we were at the vet's on Monday. It helped me remember how very tiny Callie was, and how very feisty, too. Full circle. I hope this other tiny kitten has as good of a life with her rescuer as my once tiny kitten has had with me.
1 comment:
I just read this, :( its so very hard to lose our buddies. the looks they give us are all knowing, maybe they realize more than we do.
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