Vorts,
The subject pertaining to this post is completely and utterly "OFF TOPIC". If you're not a cat owner, if you're not interested in the lives and deaths of felines that share our lives, please feel free to skip this post. Be forewarned, it was cathartically tinged to write. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Nicky, our 15 year old farm rescued cat died last night. It was a slow and painful death for Nicky, and I'm still grieving. Due to bad timing, and/or bad planning on our part we were not able to get him to the vet. The only facilities available on the weekend would have been the emergency pet hospital. Not only would it have been several hundreds of dollars just for a simple shot to euthanize Nicky, we're pretty sure he would not have survived the car trip because of his rapidly deteriorating condition. It would also have been an excruciatingly miserable car trip. For weeks now, his lungs had been slowly giving out... affected by fluid buildup. We knew this and had made preparations. Up until Sunday he was still a reasonably happy cat - behaving and acting like a cat, performing cat duties like catching outside "vermin" as late as last week. We had planned on taking Nicky to our favorite vet Monday morning to put him down quickly and painlessly. Unfortunately, Nicky's conditioned rapidly worsened Sunday night. Don't know if it really means anything or not, but earlier in the day, Sunday afternoon, as it was getting dark outside, I went outside to collect Nicky. We knew this would be the last time we would let him out - outside where he preferred to be, out in cat "Valhalla". It was getting cold outside and we didn't want the chill to aggravate his deteriorating condition. I found him hunched down in one of his favorite spots under a spread of hostas. Before collecting Nicky I sat down alongside him for several minutes quietly taking in the view, sharing in the scenery. Nicky seemed ok with that. He continued his cat vigil, listening to all the sounds about us. Suddenly, while I was quietly sitting next to him a yellow bird, I think it was a finch, flew into the nearby bushes adjacent to us and perched on a branch. It was only four feet away, occasionally ruffling his feathers as if letting us know it was there. It certainly had to know we were there. I've never seen a wild bird behave in such a manner before. It was so close to us. It was as if the bird knew something was up. After the bird flew away I brought Nicky in and took him upstairs to a quiet spot in my home office where I could unobtrusively monitor his condition. He lay on the shag carpet, panting, as I typed away at my computer. Eventually, just laying on the carpet became too uncomfortable for him. It was then I realized he was probably not going to make it through the night. I watched him head for the landing stairs. I knew he wanted to go outside again, back to his cat "Valhalla". He exhausted himself walking across the carpet, just to reach the top of the stairs. While Nicky was trying to catch his breath, Zoey our younger cat had positioned herself at the base of the stairs looking up at the both of us. She was very concerned. "What's wrong???" her wide open eyes seemed to keep saying. She obviously heard Nicky's occasional wails of frustration and pain. She kept very still and watched for a good fifteen minutes as I kept a vigil on Nicky. We've tried to reassure Zoey. After a spell Nicky summoned some of his ebbing strength and negotiated his way down the stairs, down into a secluded bedroom on the first floor. It was clear he wanted away from everyone. He found a dark spot under a dresser. We closed the door and turned off the lights to give him privacy. There he stayed for probably another fifteen minutes till we heard him wail some more. He now wanted out of the bedroom. He struggled his way to the back door, to the only exit he understood. It was at the back door where Nicky had his final confrontation. It was there between labored gasps for air where he loudly and most vehemently yelled out his final protestation to leave. I swear, one of his final wails sounded exactly like he was cursing - cursing us, cursing anyone who might be in earshot: "SHIT! Why won't you let me out! Damn it! God! Damn it! Damn it all to hell!" He then shuddered, lost balance and fell over. He lost bladder control, and began convulsing. We sat next to him as he slowly drifted away. We said our goodbyes and thanked him for having been such a great cat to the both of us. We held vigil as he went through several cyclical convulsions, each one less violent than the previous one. What saddens me was the fact that Nicky's last request was to repeatedly ask his humans to be let outside. He just wanted to hide someplace out in the woods - away from everyone. It was at our back door where Nicky had asked for passage to cat "Valhalla". It felt to me as if Odin had simply taken way too much time getting around to granting Nicky's final request. I have half a mind to take up the inexcusable bureaucracy this process can occasionally present us with - with "management" when hopefully I get there myself. Truth is we were simply afraid that we wouldn't be able to find him if we let him out. I feel so sorry, wishing I could have done something to make his final passage easier, certainly less painful. There's no way around the fact that it was a violent death for Nicky. He basically drowned from fluid buildup around his lungs. He literally suffocated to death. Having been intimate witness to this violence continues to reverberate through me. I was in no shape to go to work today. I called in sick. Lack of sleep had turned me into a mess. We buried Nicky's remains, along with a sprig of catnip, in the back yard close to his brother, Elliott, who preceded him by several years. Later today as I sat outside on the back porch a neighborhood cat, Domino, who I'm on good terms with, stopped by to visit me several times. I've always appreciated his social calls. He even jumped up on my lap for a few skritches, a request he had never made before. I'm sure Domino was aware of the fact that something was up in our household, particularly since he had been hovering nearby when earlier in the day we buried Nicky. Nicky was a major nemesis to Domino who always chased him back across the street. I told Domino, it was now up to him to keep our back yard free of "vermin." Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
