Saturna

today i had to put my cat, Shevek, to sleep.

the past month he has had a drastic loss of weight. we thought it might just be fleas and worms, but realized that there was something underlying. so today i took him to the vet. had him tested for leukemia and AIDS, of which he had neither. that vet did not have the facilities to deal with him, so i had to take him somewhere else.

(plus i had to drop jah isaac with his dad because he was being more off-the-hook than he has in over a month, on the one day i really needed him to be well-behaved. thanks for helping with him, jason.)

so, i go into this vet, whom i have never met. i have to explain before anything that i am broke, and that this will play into my decision. she assured me she would help me ascertain costs before we did anything. this woman sat with me for nearly an hour while i agonized over bringing him home after IV fluids and seeing what happened, with no testing (which was too expensive), and really not much to go on.

i decided i could not do it. i have been pretty full of judgment for myself today, thinking i could have done something to prevent this, but she assured me that this was obviously something serious - that worms do not make a cat lose down to four pounds. she was talking a course of treatment that would have cost near a thousand dollars.

so i held him while they gave him an overdose of anesthetic. he did not even flinch. very peaceful, of all the ways a being could pass. i hope you had a blissed out, euphoric moment, buddy, before you left your body. i am sorry for anytime you needing some loving and i was too busy. i will miss you fetching the paper ball, and always remember you with love. thanks for being a good companion for the last ten years, and rest in peace.

my head feels so big from crying and my nose hurts when i breathe in, but i feel a small amount of relief from being done with the agony of making that decision. that really sucked.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Open dialog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.