There is a hole in my heart where my cat used to be.
Those who’ve accepted the unconditional love of a pet know that the gift carries a price. You must be able and willing to make that agonizing final decision for the sake of your pet, who can communicate her feelings to you only vaguely if at all. It’s up to you to gauge when the quality of her life has declined to the point that sending her off to the long sleep is kinder than keeping her alive.
I have deep sympathy for those who’ve participated in end-of-life decisions for a person who is dear to them. I have trouble imagining having to make the decision to decline or cease resuscitative treatment for an incapacitated child, parent, or spouse/partner.
However, the decision on behalf of a pet isn’t easy just because it’s not a human life at stake. You would choose euthanasia for a human only in extremely dire conditions. Mocha wasn’t in a coma, still had limited mobility, and seemed to be in pain only part of the time. But she wasn’t getting better and wasn’t going to get any better over time.
euthanasia
Main Entry: eu•tha•na•sia
Pronunciation: \ˌyü-thə-ˈnā-zh(ē-)ə\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek, easy death, from euthanatos, from eu- + thanatos death — more at THANATOS
Date: 1869
: the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy
In 1994, a coworker posted pictures of kittens around the office. Mick was a good guy, a great guy, but he wasn’t a pootie person. He’d been feeding a stray he’d found hanging around his yard and discovered he’d adopted her. When she went missing for a few days, he went looking for her. He found her underneath a shed with her litter of kittens, so Mick adopted them, too.
We’d wanted a cat for some time but were renting a house and the rental agreement had a "no pets" clause. So, although I’d mentioned the kitten pictures in casual conversation with Spousal Unit, I forgot about them pretty quickly.
Until Mick brought the kittens to the office. They melted my heart, along with several others’, and I called S.U. at work, gushing about how cute they were and how badly I wanted one. S.U. said, "Get two." It turned out that S.U. had already spoken with the landlady and assured her that we would repair or reimburse any damages in addition to paying a $50 fumigation fee. But I thought S.U. should meet our new "kids" before we brought them home.
We went together to Mick’s house the following evening. By the time we got there, only two of the kittens were left. I’ll be frank – I’ve never seen ugly kittens but the remaining two were the least attractive of the litter. They were torties, mottled and splotchy, with eyes that bulged out of their flat little faces. But we both love cats and their looks were far less important than their temperaments. They were both a bit skittish at first but gradually recognized us as pootie people. The lively one expressed an immediate preference for S.U., while the mellower one settled down in my lap. We named the lively one Java and the mellow one Mocha.
As soon as we brought them home, we made two promises. We made a promise to them that we would do everything we could to see that they’d never know prolonged cold, wet, hunger, or pain. And we made a promise to each other that as soon as the first one passed on, we’d get two more.
They really weren’t properly weaned yet. They were so small they had trouble negotiating the stairs. But this made it easier for us to get them to accept us as "mommy" (since male cats don’t help rear the young, a kitten’s guardian is always "mommy" regardless of gender). We groomed their faces, particularly around the eyes, to establish that bond. As far as they were concerned, our thumbs were just like mama’s tongue but drier :-P
They trained us well. They quickly discovered the behaviors that were most successful at getting them picked up and petted. Mocha learned that her mommy liked her "sea otter" pose – lying on her back with her front paws drawn up. The only thing that wasn’t otter-like was her tail, which was always sticking straight out because they hadn’t learned to wrap their tails around their bodies yet. Whatever we were doing, Mocha liked to hang out with us and would sit quietly in the kitchen while we made dinner. Quietly, that is, until the time we had S.U’s parents over for dinner and dad stepped on her tail, at which time she made her presence known – loudly! He must have broken her tail because she always had a knot at the tip of it. This made it abundantly clear that people’s feet were dangerous and she figured out how to wrap her tail around herself pretty quickly after that.
Oh, that tail. It was dark with a white tip, and I sometimes called her "little white tip o’ the tail." Her most endearing trait was the way she used her tail to stroke my hand, arm, or face while I was petting her, as if she was petting me back. She sometimes slept on my pillow and I loved falling asleep with her tail stroking my forehead.
Mocha was a nap looking for a place to happen. When I sat down to read or watch TV, she’d get onto my lap and groom for a while. She had a quiet purr motor, so I’d feel her purr more than I’d hear it. Soon – nap attack! She could induce a nap attack no matter how interested I was in whatever I was reading or watching. Keith, Rachel, even the Super Bowl couldn’t prevail against one of Mocha’s nap attacks. Thank goodness for DVRs!
They grew up to be beautiful cats. Java had a white stripe from her forehead through her nose, while Mocha had little white spots above her eyes, which gave her a quizzical look. Except for the second-story deck in the rental house, they stayed indoors, but had well-developed reflexes. We were impressed when Java caught a fly between two paws – until Mocha caught another one with one paw! We kept an eye on them when we let them out onto the deck because we had a hummingbird feeder out there and worried that Mocha was quick enough to get one of the hummingbirds.
They endured being moved three times, from the Bay Area to the Central Coast and then up to Washington and back. They hated moving as much as we did, howling all the way. They actually howled themselves hoarse! It was funny as hell to see them open their mouths and hear nothing but a whispery squeak come out. We laughed ourselves silly over that and they let us know how impolite we were for laughing at them – they sure as hell didn’t think it was funny!
However, they made out like bandits. We atoned for all their indignity by buying a house that was larger than the one they grew up in and putting tall, carpet-covered cat trees in front of the windows of several rooms. They even had their own bathroom!
Two years ago, Mocha suddenly lost two pounds – about 20% of her weight – in a couple of weeks. She had cancer in her lungs, liver, and intestines. She hadn’t reached the point of going into hiding to prepare for death, though. We were incredibly lucky – we caught it in time to treat it with chemo, we had a caring vet, and a local pharmacy was able to compound the chemo into an ointment that we rubbed into her ear flap. This last item was key to Mocha’s recovery because pilling Mocha was incredibly stressful – for all of us! How stressful could it be? Read "How to pill a cat" for a close approximation of what it was like to try to pill Mocha!
The chemo worked for quite some time. Mocha regained almost all her weight and her activity level almost returned to normal. She seemed healthy and happy. She even grew to enjoy her nightly ritual of "getting her ears rubbed."
To our great shock, Java passed away last Halloween. We were both devastated but S.U. especially so because it happened so suddenly and was over so quickly. We were as prepared as we could be to lose Mocha, but not Java, who’d seemed totally healthy until she collapsed one day. We kept our promise to ourselves, though, and after a month or so, started looking for a pair of kittens. In early December, we brought home two little fosters, Hope and Ember. They helped ease the loss of Java for all of us and will help ease the loss of Mocha, too. As I type this, Ember is in my lap wondering why I am crying and trying to pry my hands from the keyboard. She thinks hands are for petting and any other use is secondary when she wants attention.
We knew Mocha was living on borrowed time and decided to feed her canned food every day, instead of as a weekly treat, to get her weight back up. To monitor her health, she had monthly blood tests and every six months got x-rays and ultrasound. Early this year, the nodules in her lungs came back larger than when we first discovered them. We tried a different chemo drug, which had to be administered intravenously but less frequently than the first one. However, the nodules kept growing larger. We tried a third drug – our last resort – and although it shrunk the tumors, it also made her terribly nauseous. She stopped eating completely and for the first time, she went into hiding behind the TV. I had to take her to the vet three times that week for anti-nausea shots and subcutaneous fluids. She lost so much weight that we cut her second dose in half. Although she didn’t completely stop eating this time, she still lost most of her appetite and continued to lose weight. It wasn’t a case of the cure being worse than the disease – I don’t think there are many things worse than the final stages of cancer – it was more a case of "the cancer will eventually take her if the chemo doesn’t get her first." We decided we had to stop the chemo treatments and just make her as comfortable as we could for as long as we could.
Her vitality diminished quickly. Her appetite never fully returned and she ate only sparingly. She grew wobbly on her feet. Her breathing was starting to sound congested. She was drinking more water than she was eating food. And she stopped using the litter box. Instead, she’d take a few wobbly steps down the hall towards the bathroom and pee on the carpet. When I mopped it up with a paper towel, I saw that it was almost colorless, a sign that her kidneys were failing. She ate so little that she didn’t poop much, but she did that on the carpet too. Whenever we saw her begin to squat, we’d carry her to the litter box, which was in a bathtub because the bathroom is too small to leave the box on the floor. We found that she was too weak to get into or out of the bathtub on her own. And whether she peed or pooped, she cried out in pain afterward.
And so we were faced with having to keep our first promise, that we’d never allow our cats to suffer prolonged pain. We’d exhausted all our treatment options. There wasn’t any way to keep her pain-free any longer. Yesterday, she went to sleep for the last time.
Mocha was my companion for almost 15 years. It will be a long time before I can see a cat out of the corner of my eye without wondering if it’s Mocha wanting some attention. Before I go shopping for cat food without looking for Mocha’s favorites first. Before I can stroke a cat’s tail without expecting a little bump at the tip of it. But I take comfort in knowing that we did absolutely everything possible for Mocha’s comfort and wellbeing. Even the final agonizing decision was made for her sake.
Thank you, Mocha, for sharing your life with us. You made us laugh, alleviated our stress, and loved us unreservedly. I will always love you too, sweet girl. You were my crying pillow, my nap companion, my cuddlekins. Sleep well, little one.