Every night when I go to make dinner, my cat
Lily appears out of nowhere to watch me. It’s been this way for as long as I can
remember despite the fact she’s never been given scraps or human food. No
matter where she is in the house or how inconspicuous the trigger sound is -
the slide of a skillet being pulled from a drawer or the soft click of a burner
turning on – she materializes out of nowhere. It’s been her ritual for as long as I can
remember.
That ritual ended two weeks ago. For the
first time in almost 17 years, Lily was no longer there to watch me.
Lily’s health had been in a slow decline for
the last couple of years. In the last year alone she’d gone blind from high
blood pressure. She’d even had a mysterious episode a month ago where she lost
use of one of her back legs and I thought for sure she was a goner. But she
pulled through it and weirdly just a few days later had full range of motion in
the leg again like it had never happened.
But Monday before last my husband woke up to
find her on the kitchen floor lying down. Both her back legs had gone limp and
she couldn’t get up. We were rushing to the OBG for my 5 month prenatal checkup
so I put water by her and set her on her favorite blanket hoping that like the
month before her legs would magically ‘snap to’ by the time we got home.
Two hours later she was in the exact same
place. Not good. Even weirder, unlike
the last time this had happened when she had yelled and refused to stop trying
to move, she just laid there purring like it was the best thing ever. I didn’t
bother putting her in a carrier - this was my first baby after all – but instead
scooped her up into my arms to go to the vet hoping against hope we’d all
three be returning home later.
I got Lily my freshman year at UT – the
first week if memory serves. I’d had
a thing for furry fluff ball Persians ever since my sister brought an orange
Persian home when she was in high school (without permission) and my sweet
boyfriend at the time was going to get me one.
We went cat shopping and that experience
alone is worth a collection of short stories but to keep this under
novel-length I’ll skip it and go straight to Lily. We found Lily at a Himalayan
show breeder’s place in Round Rock. The guy had her mom, dad, and brother who
he showed us first. Her brother was what they call ‘show quality’ with a dreamy
fur coat and the flattest face you’ve ever seen. He was pricey which wasn’t a
problem because after holding him for 2 seconds he’d gnawed half way through my
thumb. I politely handed him back, hiding my thumb under my palm as for some
reason I was embarrassed he had
bitten me.
Next he brought out a white fluff ball that
could fit in the palm of your hand with the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. He
said she wasn’t ‘show quality’ but you could have fooled me. She looked like a
stuffed animal. The breeder explained she was a blue-cream point which meant
white with smoky blue ‘points’ (feet, tail, ears, nose) and that she had an
imperfection in the coloring on her nose that was half blue gray and half
peach. What he called imperfection I called true love.
Lily was in the car on the way back to
Austin in 10 minutes. Weeks later she attended her first TX-OU game in Dallas
where she stayed in her first hotel (okay motel…but still.) It was a good thing
she learned to get comfortable travelling at a young age as it would be a
reoccurring theme in her life. In total she would go on to live in five
different cities, 13 different houses and stay in at least as many hotels in
her lifetime thanks to my career in advertising.
And she was totally down for it – super
curious and inquisitive by nature she always loved exploring a new place. One
of my favorite memories is from our last night in NYC before moving back to
Austin. We were staying at the Maritime Hotel in the Meatpacking District and
the cats were enjoying exploring the room as I drank Champagne and watched True
Blood (my poor husband was passed out from exhaustion.) I was dying laughing to
myself wondering how many cats (if any) had crashed the swanky hotel before.
As it turns out we got her back home to
Austin just in time. Our first year back she and her adopted cat sister Madison
lived the LIFE in our rental in Westlake Hills. The entire back of this sixties
pad was glass so they could look out at squirrels, deer, possums, bunnies,
raccoons and even fox.
Then we got our dog (a half Chihuahua half
Terrier) from the pound and coincidentally Lily’s health started to slide. She
began having seizures triggered by the strangest things. The sound of my flip-flops
as I walked across the Spanish tile, the jingle of the dog collar, anything
loud and rhythmic.
The first time it happened it scared the
living tar out of me. I thought she was done for. But she survived and would
survive a few more. It was around this time I noticed she’d also developed a
mild head tremor. Neither of our vets had a clue what was going on with her but
told me her blood pressure was high so we started her on pills.
Six months later we moved into our new house
and she went blind which my vet warned me was a death sentence for cats. Luckily
for her it wasn’t. She’d gotten a lay of the land just in time and was doing
pretty well all things considered. She kept up her usual routine, laid in the
same favorite spots, and of course still came to watch me make dinner every
night without fail even though at this point she wasn’t ‘watching’ anything.
Then in December I discovered I was expecting.
It was the best news of my life but came with extreme exhaustion and the
meanest case of bitch syndrome you’ve ever seen. My husband says this isn’t
true but that’s just because a) he loves me b) he’s going to be the father of
my child and doesn’t want to admit to impregnating a psychopath and c) I hid a
lot of it from him, including the fact that for two weeks straight the thought
of having to muster the energy to make dinner conversation with him (or anyone)
was enough to send me into the fetal position on the floor. I was just so.
Damn. Tired.
Then of course there were the poor animals.
At this point Lily was regularly peeing outside of her pee pad (believe it or
not the cat used a pee pad after she went blind as she didn’t want to navigate
climbing into her litter box anymore.) And between my general state of
exhaustion and having to listen to my husband complain about cleaning up the
pee (as well as cleaning it up myself) I couldn’t deny it was getting super
hard to deal with my old kitty. Not to mention that because of her being blind
we had to be super careful walking around the house or we’d accidentally punt
her across the room. Sadly this was a major danger to her and myself when I
made dinner because she would try and ‘find’ me by sound and inevitably end up under
my feet practically killing both of us in the process.
On top of all this, giving the cats their
nightly treat (a can of Fancy Feast wet food) had become something I absolutely
dreaded. If you judge me for this I understand. But I beg you to give me some
credit for pregnancy hormones. They’re evil and they drain your soul. To give
me a little more credit (do I sound
defensive?) it wasn’t as easy as cracking open a can of Fancy Feast and calling
it a day.
Both cats had to be separated from the dog
(or else the dog would eat it all) and because Madison eats like a linebacker,
Lily had to be separated from her or
else she’d literally get nothing. So all in all it was an intricate half hour
process not to mention cleaning up.
But believe me, no one is harder on me for complaining
about this than myself. In fact I thank my lucky stars that Sunday night, the
night before my husband found her on the floor, I did indeed give her her most
favorite treat. If I hadn’t I guarantee I’d be in a mental ward somewhere.
So now that we’re nearing the end and there
are a few details I have to mention. First of all, if you can measure one’s
love for an animal in the number of nicknames given to them, then I loved Lily about
a billion percent.
Here are just a few of her nicknames: Lou,
Mimi, Leelee, Lou, Monica Lou-ensky, Midgie Cakes, Deejay Midgerton, Deejay
Midgiestein, The Miginator, Kate Midgerton (after the duchess), Mar-Jane, Jane-Ann. I could keep going but I’ll
spare you.
Another thing. This cat could play fetch. Throw
her a little ball or a furry toy and she would get it and bring it back to you.
I discovered this when she was a kitten and it was something she would do up
until she went blind.
The next thing is my most favorite part
about her. Lily had the most amazing smell ever. She literally smelled like a
stuffed animal that came from a fancy department store. That’s the best way I
can describe it. For example for a brief time when I was little my mom worked
nights at Joske’s Department store in Houston and when she came home she
smelled like cashmere and Clinique. This is what Lily smelled like.
And finally an important detail that will
come back into play in a minute. My husband and I called Lily ‘The Sheriff’ (yet
another nickname) because she was so inquisitive. If you dropped a sock from
the laundry basket on the way to the washing machine, she would go and sit by
it as if pointing out ‘this sock doesn’t belong here.’ She liked order and
anything she considered out of order she would ‘flag.’
Even after she went blind, she was always
the first one up (before the dog!) when she’d hear us unlocking the door. In
fact the very day before I watched her hop up off her little blanket when she
heard my feet crunching the gravel on the way to the back door. She was always the first to greet you or notice
what was new or amiss even blind and half senile.
And now back to that crappy Monday. What
will forever stand out in my mind is how she acted on the way to the vet. Lily is
not a ‘down with the vet’ kinda gal. She’s actually notorious at our vet and
famously bit one of the vet techs causing her to be quarantined because I
hadn’t kept up with her rabies shot (she was an indoor cat her whole life so I
never saw the point. Until she bit someone:)
This time though as I held her in the car,
she just purred and purred as happy as a lamb. She purred even as we went into
the clinic and sat waiting for the vet (we didn’t have an appointment) and then
even as he examined her. Or at least until he tapped on her legs to see if they
had feeling.
They did and ironically this made the
diagnoses really complicated. If it had been a clot – the usual reason for the
back legs to become paralyzed – she wouldn’t have had blood flow to them. Or if
it had been the other main culprit – a slipped disc – she wouldn’t have had
feeling in the legs. She clearly did have feeling in them. She just couldn’t
move them.
This meant something deeply complicated.
Something that even a visit to the neurology specialist in Round Rock might
have not been able to pinpoint. And given the fact it had happened to one of
her back legs a month ago and she’d gotten herself up within the hour it looked
pretty bad.
My amazingly understanding and sympathetic
vet (Dr. Benaryeh at Spicewood Springs Animal Hospital) gave me my options, none
of which were great. I could take her to Round Rock where she’d endure a series
of complicated tests that might not tell us anything (or even if they did
probably not good news) or put her on a steroid and take her home for 24 hours
to see if she miraculously regained use of her legs. Or put her to sleep.
Of course a part of me was hoping against
hope that another miracle would happen and the 24 hour thing would work. But
another part of me felt cruel and selfish doing that. Putting her back on the
floor unable to move or get herself to her pee pad, food or water seemed
abusive for an animal that prides itself on cleanliness and vanity.
And then there was the damn purring.
Something was really, really, REALLY weird that she was so damn relaxed and
outright happy at the vet’s office –
her own private purgatory!
I took her back to the car where my husband
and I debated what to do for two hours, her purring in my arms the whole time
and occasionally falling asleep.
‘What’s your gut say?’ he kept asking me.
The truth was I had no idea what my gut was saying. Which in itself was pretty
telling. Here was a blind, ancient cat whose back legs were paralyzed, who
hadn’t shown interest in water in or in trying to move or in anything in almost
6 hours, and I was having a hard time
listening to what my gut was telling me. Hmm.
Luckily there was one thing I couldn’t
ignore. The fact that she was SO DAMN RELAXED, almost like she was drugged. If
I took her home and forced her to lay on the floor for another 24 hours (while
soiling herself) and THEN ended up having to drag her back here what were the
odds she’d still be that happy and relaxed? Certainly by then she’d be
distressed, pissed off, and embarrassed to say the least.
It was the thought of having to bring her
back there knowing full well she wouldn’t be happy about it the second time around
that gave me my answer. Plus I noticed she kept falling asleep as we talked, her
head kept sliding down my arm.
Again this is not the cat that I know. Lily
has always been sweet to me and happy to have me hold her but she’s never EVER
been a ‘I’m cool hanging in the parking lot of the vet’s office while the dump truck
unloads concrete behind the building next door so I’m just going to fall asleep
in the meantime’ kind of cat. Not even in her twilight years. ‘The Sheriff’ was
no longer on duty.
Something was wrong. I had to believe – to accept – that Lily was telling me she
was ready. I’d already been crying all morning but now the floodgates were really
open.
Because here’s the thing about putting your
pet to sleep – it still feels like murder even when it’s clearly hands down the
right thing to do. Truth be told I really wished it had been a clearer cut decision
I.E. she’s in the last phases of cancer or her heart had given out. The problem
for me was I could still sit there and say to myself ‘but she has okay kidneys!
What cat has okay kidneys at 17?’ or ‘but she gets around the house pretty well
blind.’ Ridiculously I could still rationalize her health even as I knew full
well her back legs didn’t work and more than likely never would again.
This is how much we love our pets. All I
could think of were the reasons not to.
The reasons why she was still a viably functioning cat – basically because she
was still breathing.
But then another thought occurred to me.
What did I want? For her to be worse off than this before I had to make the
decision? For her to have lost all of her pride and sass (and she still had
sass – she snapped out of her purrathon just long enough to go after the vet as
he tapped her back legs) and be a total empty shell of herself?
No. That would be awful. Lily was happy at
the vet’s office. If there was a sign bigger than that I don’t know what is.
I can barely write about the rest. Honestly.
It’s the most gutting, horrific and yet precious thing you can ever go though
aside from being there for a human loved one which I literally can’t fathom.
For those out there who have gone through that,
God love you. You are made of steel and Jesus parts.
But again this is so selfish of me to sit
here whining about putting my cat down when truthfully I am so, so lucky. If
she had died when I was out of town (and I travel for work a lot) without me or
anyone by her side I’d have felt so awful I couldn’t stand it. And here I was
able to be with her, to hold her, to tell her what she meant to me until her very
last breath.
The bottom line is you will never feel great
about putting down a member of your family. It’s human nature to look for the
good, the miracle, the reason why not. Lily had been in decline for years and
while I thought this would make letting go easier, the end still felt ridiculously
sudden and fast. No matter what you’re never ready for it.
But I didn’t write this to make you sad. I
wrote this to hopefully help anyone who has gone through this or who will one
day know the pain of having to make the most awful decision imaginable. And to
suggest that maybe – just maybe - it isn’t the most awful decision ever. Maybe
it’s a gift to be there for your friend and to help them let go. To give them
that peace.
And for those who don’t have a pet, I
sincerely hope that one day you’ll know the love that those of us as pet lovers
have known. It truly is the great untold love
story.
We buried Lily right outside my kitchen door
under a sprawling Live Oak. And every night when I go to pull out a pan or turn
on a burner or open my spice drawer, I think about the stuffed animal with a
heartbeat who could play fetch and smelled like cashmere and Clinique who was
there by my side as I cooked for all those years.
The girl was never late for dinner.
