Eulogy for a stranger

I had a cat euthanized last night. It wasn't my cat; I'd never seen this cat before in my life. Euthanasia was the absolute right thing to do, and saved the poor kitty from the terrible slow death of starvation. And yet, I'm grieved; so very grieved. It's as though a weight has been laid on my heart that no logic can lift.

I first saw the cat when my dog went berserk - she feels she is charged with keeping Other Cats, Not-Our-Cats, out of the house. It may be the only thing our cat likes about our dog.

So Kaylee started barking hysterically, I went to see what was going on, and there was the kitty, eating my cat's food. Apollo is a tidy, dainty eater; this cat was not. Cat food was everywhere, strewn in a 10-inch arc around the food dish. I was annoyed; this must be the thief that was running up my cat food bill! In my anger I tossed the cat's water on her. She jumped down, and I went to see where she went.

She went only a few feet away, jumping on a shelf out of reach of the outraged dog. As soon as I looked more closely, I realized she was in serious trouble. She was emaciated; so much so that when I reached for the nape of her neck there was not enough skin to pick her up by; so emaciated that the knobs of her spine were sharply visible, as were her ribs and the bones in her poor thin legs. She was drooling copiously, and I thought her jaw might be broken; food was caked on her chin. Her black fur was falling out in patches, and she was rank with disease. She purred when I touched her. It tore my heart.

I picked her up and stuffed her in the cat cage. Then I called my vet, who had a message directing me to a 24-hour emergency vet. Warning bells: this was going to get spendy fast. I called the emergency vet and brought her in to them.

A note: I hadn't handled her much for two reasons: one was that I was fearful of carrying her illness to my sweet Apollo. The other - and I'm a little ashamed of this - was that I didn't want to fall in love. (It was too late, of course - the purr had shredded my defenses.) So calling the kitty "she" is just a convenient label. Neither the vet nor I checked gender. And we called her Blackie; we had to call her something.

We had a long wait. I called the emergency vet at 6:20pm; I called my husband to tell him I was coming home at 9:35. In those three hours I had plenty of time to offer soothing words to the kitty, and I did. I tried to comfort her (without touching her). It was very hard. When we finally saw the vet, she was horrified at the cat's condition. Then she open Blackie's mouth, and gave a low moan of dismay. "Did you see her tongue?" she asked. I hadn't, so she opened Blackie's mouth again. Her tongue was huge, smooth, irregular, bloated with carcinoma and nearly immobile. It was awful, and suddenly very clear why the kitty was starving.

And it was suddenly very clear to me that this was not going to be a heroic rescue. This was going to be another sort of rescue, a saving from prolonged death by providing an quicker death. Blackie had suffered and struggled and tried, and now all I could do was allow her to rest.

The vet asked if I wanted to try to save her, that it would cost maybe a thousand, two thousand dollars. I couldn't. I wished, briefly, that I could; but even if I had the money, it would have been foolish. There was to be no happy ending for Blackie.

The vet persisted in acting as if I cared, as if I had bonded to this pathetic rag of a cat, as if I was attached. Suddenly I couldn't end the visit quickly enough. No, I didn't want to be with her "at the last." No, I didn't want to take her ashes home. No, I didn't want her tested for FeLV. No, no, no. I just needed to take my empty cat carrier and pay my bill (almost $300) and go home.

So I did. Steve scrubbed the counter top with bleach, and washed all the cat dishes with extra hot water. I stripped out of my clothes and washed them. I showered to get any trace of saliva off my hands and arms. And I cried for Blackie.