My cat has been sick this week. I got home from a going away do at the pub one night to find him slumped strangely stiff on the couch being patted by my concerned housemate. The story involved him seeming dazed and disoriented, walking in circles, not eating dinner, having a seizure, being wobbly on his legs, then laying flopped over a lap without settling himself in one of those cat-like curls they do so well. He was floppy to pick up and slept limp on my bed like a rag, all night in the same position, not getting up once to get a better spot, or get a drink of water, or go downstairs for an early morning snack. When he did get up he wouldn’t eat or even drink and started walking, very wobbly and leaning slightly to one side, intent on movement, following walls and getting stuck behind the tv or behind an armchair – very disoriented and distressed. It seemed like his eyesight was completely gone, but his normal sense of space was also gone. I took him to the vet that morning in the first available appointment, and the vet said he’d probably had a stroke, and suspected gradual kidney failure for the weight loss, which lots of older cats get, so sent off for blood tests. He said strokes are often recoverable from, although you can’t know in advance to what degree, and with kidney failure it’s a matter of how much – lower levels is liveable with, but eventually they’ll die from it.
I started crying at the vets, I didn’t mean to, and it was more the choked up and a few escape tears kind than racking sobs, but I could feel my face pulling those crying shapes that happen especially when you don’t want to cry, and I felt embarrassed that I couldn’t be a more pragmatic, concerned but together kind of person – not someone who was about to bawl in the vet’s and meanwhile is feeling guilty that maybe I’m being cruel by keeping him alive if he’s in such a bad state. He looked so scrappy and thin on the hard metal counter, and so confused, I felt terrible.
He stayed in overnight while the vet waited for the blood tests to come back. I called in sick for work because the test results were coming through mid morning and it would either mean pick him up to bring home or go say goodbye before he got put down (though no-one at the vets said that, it was all very ‘we’ll see what to do then’ with a grimace and a kind shrug.). I felt like a bit of a dork calling in sick to work especially because we had this special planning day that I’d helped to organise, but I just couldn’t imagine being there and going outside to call the vet and then coming back in to go ‘oh, yes, that’s the end of the cat then. OK now, quick, where were we on the strategic objectives, it’s almost morning tea and those muffins smell delish!’. Actually I didn’t even pull a sickie, I just told my boss the truth, and then, horror of horrors started crying on the phone, couldn’t quite answer his kind questions, and all the time thinking ‘oh shit, don’t cry’.
The blood tests were ok, the vet sounded surprised, and said it was worth putting him on a drip for 24 hours then and getting ready to send him home. I was happy about that, but also upset at the thought of him still all dazed and confused, with a drip out of his arm, freaked out by the vet smells and sounds, and not having anyone to hold him or sit him on their lap. The idea of feeling alone and abandoned in a strange place. The possibility that he might come and still be confused and getting stuck behind the tv and so then what? Well back to the vet what.
I spent the day kind of in a flurry of household cleaning (sorry, this really is one of those posts that would be a day time telemovie made by Hallmark, seriously), and got some kind of inexplicable satisfaction out of my newly spring cleaned pantry. I cleaned out the fridge. I purged old jars of shit that looked kind of suspicious and I pored over a great, upbeat vegetarian Californian cookbook that I always mean to use but haven’t for years. I made lists of things I needed for recipes and I went out, down the street, in the neighbourhood, to buy chillis and ginger and fresh herbs, and nuts, and blue cheese and stuff. Then I had a restorative chai tea at one of my fave local cafes (looking, it must be said like a bit of a hobo, in possibly unbrushed hair, swollen eyes, overcompensating foundation to distract from the swollen eyes and general sallow look). I read a bit of my cheesy Northern-Irish-comedy-mystery novel. I bumped into a glamorous and hip friend of a friend who busted me nibbling brazil nuts like a squirrel and staring off into space.
I went home and talked to the vet again, like he’d said to, and started to feel like my life was becoming dominated by some kind of sudden strangely intimate relationship with the vet where we talk at least twice a day about details of medication and statistics and my cat. I cooked into the evening and stocked up the fridge with all kinds of pestos and salsas. I watching my own reaction to grief and wondered if this is the kind of weird stuff that people do when a loved one is in hospital – cleaning and making the house nice so that? So that if they come back you can spend some time with them and not cooking – or so if they die you can at least feel like something is planned, ordered, functioning and ok in the world – yes I have no control over the important things, yes life is random and arbitrary and all good things come to an end – but hey, no need for bland vegetables.
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Yesterday when I was writing my cat was asleep in my bed, looking happy (trust me, it’s a cat thing, they have a contended look). He’d been home for maybe 3 hours and I’d put him in my bed to have a nap next to me while I read (slept too, as it turns out). He’d stretched out and his paws hung ever so slightly over my outstretched arm, it was cosy. When I got up, and as he still slept he looked so peaceful, I thought ‘aah, see, that’s what it’s all about, these small moments of peace’.
I felt like I’d made the right decision to bring him home, to give him another chance at life. I kept thinking ‘well, the vet says he’s not in pain, it’s not cruel to bring him home’, as if this mantra will keep at bay my niggling worry that I’ve done the wrong thing, will keep at bay other people’s potential judgement. The judgement goes like this “oooh well, sometimes you just have to let them die. I think she’s really done it for herself not for her cat.”; “She’s single you know, she’s probably lonely and scared of what life will be like without it. Single women get very attached to their cats, well, who else does she have to care for?”; not to mention ‘do you know how much Australian’s spend on their pets compared to aid? Do you know how many dehydrated children’s lives you could have just saved with that vet’s bill?’. And of course, all of these anticipated judgements scare my only because I think they’re true, because they already have a place in my thinking.
Then in the evening when he was yowling and standing in the middle of the room looking awkward with one leg at a strange angle (one side seems a bit uncoordinated after the stroke?), crying every time he’s left alone (and by alone, I mean, not held or patted or talked to) I had to think ‘is this an invalid, someone who’s going to get better, or is this someone dying? This morning when I woke up he looks crumpled, his face dropped, chin flat to the bed. He started to pant, too hot so I gave him some water (blunt plastic syringe, vet’s instructions) and now he’s sprawled out in a long streak, his face and paws just over the edge of the bed (bad sign). I think about how cats traditionally lope off under a bush to die. I think about how few bushes there are in our courtyard backyard, how unable he is to do that in his condition, I think about the dignity of an animal death where the moment is private, known in advance and faced, under a bush somewhere. And in contrast, the difficulty of feeling like you are the arbitrator of someone’s life – yup, seems good enough, he can stay v nah, that’s not quality, quick, vet, pull the plug. Then, after all this musing, we go downstairs and he ate a hearty breakfast (good sign). Then he kept dunking his nose in the water when he tried to drink and get sniffly and having to sneeze the water out (bad sign). Then he found his way to the food bowl by himself (good sign). Then he yowled in the kitchen a lot until I held him (bad sign). Then he purred like crazy when he was on my lap and laythere quite perkily (good sign). Go figure.
Stephanie Dowrick had an article in the weekend paper about kindness, about how if we resolved each to make the coming year about being more kind each day, how many of the little and big things will fall into place, because kindness generates good will, including towards ourselves. I think I am trying to be kind, but when kindness, fear and selfishness get in the room together they all stand so close it’s hard to know who’s who anymore.
