I’ll tell you this, I’m not doing great. Before Peppers’ forever sleep, I spent every minute of every day worrying about that sweet little cat. I had a camera in the room she was sleeping in and would check it every time she moved. By every time, I mean I had the motion sensor turned to high and I literally checked on her every time she moved. I wanted to know if she was eating. I wanted to make sure she didn’t pass in her sleep. It had become a habit and I was basically her stalker.
Every time Peppers went downstairs to eat, I would watch the kitchen camera. What was she eating? Was she drinking water? What is she doing. The majority of the time she would smell the food and go back upstairs or downstairs, where her litter boxes were. There were a couple of times she ate a couple of bites of wet food. She did eat a tube of cat yogurt chicken stuff. She even kept those both down. It was just enough to keep her alive. Eventually she quit even doing that. She drank some water towards the end of her life but that will only sustain a cat for a max of 2 weeks and then they need sustenance. They need food.
She did lick the gravy off of some wet food the day I took her in. It was almost enough for me to call and cancel my appointment. I just couldn’t stand the idea that she was starving. The steroid I was putting on her ear was making her hungry and I think that’s the only reason she had any interest in food. Ultimately I was torturing her by making her want food when food hurt her.
About once an hour I go to my camera app on my phone and think about clicking it. There’s no real reason to now. I turned the motion sensors back to monitor people – not small animals. Every time I reach for my phone to click that app it breaks my heart and I have to choke back tears. It’s just not fair that I don’t have my sweet little kitty cat any more.
Four days before I ultimately had to make my decision to put her down, I got home from vacation where I had been for 7 days while my neighbor tried and tried to get her to eat. If I had been home, would we have made any progress? The thought haunts me. When I came home though, after watching her every move for the past week, and worrying for the 2+ before that, she had gotten so frail. No matter what I did she wouldn’t eat. Before I left I took her to the vet and got a steroid treatment for her. One day she ate a couple of bites of food and I was stoked. Then she promptly went downstairs and threw it up. At that point she had lost 3 pounds – a quarter of her body weight.
When I got home, after a couple of days of crying on the floor by her, begging her to eat, I weighed myself… then I picked her out of her bed and weighed us together. She weighed 7.5 pounds. 7.5. That’s like a person almost losing half of their weight in just a couple of months. It was awful. I joked and told her I didn’t want a skinny cat, I wanted a cute chubby cat but it wasn’t funny. None of it was funny. She was dying and a part of me was dying watching it happen.
Now all I can think is what if? What if I hadn’t gone on vacation? What if I had taken her to the vet when she started throwing up all of her food a few months back? I had my reasons why I didn’t cancel my trip or take her to the vet but I still wonder “what if?”.
I had no idea what to do. I got online and searched, “How do I know when my cat is dying?” Results came up and they were a general explanation of what was happening to my cat. She quit eating. She spent 95% of her time as a recluse in her bed upstairs. She had quit doing everything that she enjoyed. What an awful quality of life. At first I just thought it was because she was sick and of course you lay around when you’re sick. She never got better though. She just lost more weight and slept more.
Could I have kept her around for a bit longer? Yeah. I think she would have made it a bit longer. I think she would have been in pain the entire time though. I didn’t want her to just not wake up one day. I didn’t want her to be in pain for a few more months just because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her. Just because I wasn’t rational enough to make the hard-decision before the pain got any worse. I was checking on her regularly already to see if she was waking up. She was tossing and turning because she was sore laying around so much. She just wasn’t eating. It was logical thinking to put her into her forever-sleep and it was the right thing to do.
That’s why when I go home at night and I talk to my cat, I apologize for having to do what I did. She’s not there – don’t worry, I know that – but I miss having someone to talk to and she has been my confidant for so long, I talk to her anyway like she’s here.
When she started throwing up a few months back, I would make an appointment for the vet. Then she would stop throwing up and I would call and cancel it. There are few things my cat hated more than going to the vet and there are few things I liked less than taking her there. Not because the vet isn’t great. I like the vet. My sister-in-law, who I love, is there. It’s just that this little cat didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want to make her do anything she didn’t want to do. I mean, she brought me joy for 12 years…. why do I want to torture her? I made the vet appointment 3 or 4 times and never took her. I only finally took her when she started refusing to eat.
I just don’t think she would have wanted repeat visits to the vet. She went twice before I went on vacation and then… just the one time after that.
Now, I’m basically running on cruise-control – on auto-pilot if I might. Going home and her not being there is heart wrenching. Doing things that she used to play such a large part in make me cry. Going up to bed and laying down and her not coming to lay on my feet…. well that breaks my heart every night. I’ve found that I have actually cried so much since Monday… that I have been sleeping really hard. I’m grateful for that because it’s 8 hours of my day that my heart doesn’t hurt. A reprieve from the torment that is in my head of seeing my sweet baby lifeless on that vet table.
Am I going to recover? Yes. I do know I did the right thing ultimately. She isn’t in pain and the pain I have is just what comes with missing someone when they leave your life forever. There will be an adjustment period after the mourning period. Eventually I will probably get another kitten or two. Not to replace Peppers – oh man would she be pissed if she thought someone was taking her place. But it might take 2 to pad my heart. To make sure this never happens – where I come home and there is absolutely nobody at my house. Nobody to talk to.
Oh right right right. Get a boyfriend Amy. Fill that space with a companion. Well, it’s been years and that hasn’t come to fruition but Peppers was there that whole time. Someone to talk to. Someone to make me laugh. Someone to care for. If I find a companion now, that would be great. I hope they like cats.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not there yet. Peppers would be so mad if any other animals entered my home right now! There will come a time when I’m ready, I would think, but it won’t be this week. Her fur is still all over my house. I’m still on the mend. I’m still crying myself to sleep – as I should be. It’s only been a couple of days.
It’s just, no matter how many times I tell myself I did the right thing – I still killed my best friend. That’s going to take some time to get through. I can’t think like that. I laid her to rest to avoid further suffering is more like what I really was doing… but the first sentence is more what it feels like right now.
So I’m going to cry. Probably at the most inconvenient times. I’m going to act like I’m ok when I’m not. Eventually, I’m going to be ok. Maybe I’ll even be able to talk out loud about her eventually without crying. I’ll tell you this much – that won’t be today. I just hope that little furball is healthy in Cat-Heaven and judging my every move like she loved to do before. I hope she knows just how much joy she brought me and I hope she’s there waiting for me if I make my way up there too.