Saying Goodbye

A personal essay

Princess Buttercake, AKA, Cake the Cat, finally feeling good with some pain meds.

Today I found out my cat is dying. She hasn’t been well for weeks. In truth she has never been well. I got her from a close friend, who got her from a shelter. She was the last animal left at an Adopt-A-Thon, passed over because she had one shriveled ear and was on the smaller side. A hand-me-down of hand-me-downs, forever last picked.

She is the nicest cat I have ever known. A lover of people, content to sleep and purr and eat. When I first met her, I felt immediately bonded. I have a tendency to take on too much responsibility for other people’s lives, especially when they’re in need. But with animals it’s different. I can open my heart without worrying they’ll lash out or take advantage. There is no measuring of motives.

So, to the tune of two young children pleading, we scooped up the purring, vomity mess from Kansas City and drove her back to Colorado. She was sick within the first ten minutes of the car ride. Somewhere near Salina we had to pull over on I-70 and throw her bed on the side of the road. It was covered in shit. I immediately regretted taking her.

That night in the hotel, she scooped piles of litter all over the floor, and we knew that she would need a different box. She was a kicker. When we got her to the house things went off mostly fine—except for the vomiting. Day after day, night after night, we stumbled upon tiny piles of half chewed cat food, sometime dry, sometimes wet, all over the house. On couches and chairs, carpets and hard floor.

She was a lot. The litter box was a lot. For whatever reason, her vocal cords didn’t work. When she needed your attention she followed you, tapped your leg with her paw. Once you made eye contact, she would open her mouth and silently meow. Until she had a sock. Then and only then, her voice was magically healed, and she would walk around the house meowing loudly. Until you made eye contact. Then she would promptly drop the sock and walk away.

It’s been months since she did that. First it was her teeth. They had to be pulled. Then her eye. The inner lid was showing, then overtaking. It grew in a matter of days, until half her eyeball looked like a white gooey orb. Then she started walking into walls. Her pupil expanded, overtaking her other eye until it looked black. I turned off the lights one night and shined them directly at her face. No reaction. She was blind.

I took her back to the vet. No structural damage. Pupil response. Blood work was okay in the weeks before, so kidneys should be fine. Maybe an ear infection. I went home with medicine and gave it to her everyday. My routine changed to make sure she was eating. I created a tiny area for her so she could find everything she needed without going far. She slept more and more.

I missed a followup appointment, cancelled it last minute for a work meeting. Everything seemed to be the same. She was moving around a little, finding her way despite blindness. But she felt smaller, like she was losing weight. I talked to my aunt. She’s owned dozens of cats and seen feline illness of every variety. An ear infection didn’t make sense to her either.

Her eye was completely closed when I got home from work yesterday, a sickly ooze dripping down. She looked miserable, but still tried to eat. Dry food was a struggle, so I switched it for wet, and she lapped it up gratefully. I got a consultation with a vet online, and after seeing her, they said Glaucoma could be the issue.

I looked it up, and to my horror, found there is a very small window for saving your cat’s sight if they do have it. Not only that, but the inflammation and swelling in their eyes causes intense pain. Damage can not always be reversed, and even in the case that it can, the cat will go blind eventually. It’s a matter of time. Many animals have to get their eyes removed.

I had missed my followup, the one chance I had to save her eye. I felt terrible. I called my vet and left a message, asking if I could get an emergency appointment to rule out Glaucoma. They called me first thing and let me drop her off. I made another appointment with a specialist just in case they couldn’t figure it out. I took my daughter to a followup appointment for a hurt ankle, and waited for the call from the vet.

Just as we were walking out of the doctor’s office it came. The vet asked me about her eating, and I told him about switching her to wet food.

“I felt her jaw,” he said, “and it felt like there was more bone on one side than the other. So I took an X-ray and saw a tumor. I looked at her dental X-ray’s from 4 weeks ago, and the mass wasn’t there, which means it grew very aggressively. We only see this type of thing when it’s cancer.”

I started crying. I had spent the morning beating myself up for blinding my cat, envisioning her life without eyes due to an impending Glaucoma diagnosis that was coming any minute. Instead they told me that she was dying, was probably in a lot of pain, and had lost a pound and a half in the last two weeks.

“I can refer you to an oncologist, but I’m not sure if anything can be done at this point.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to put her through that. She’s already suffered a lot.”

And she has. She was a stray. Her belly hangs loose from what looks like at least ten pregnancies. Her ear is shriveled from what they tell me was likely an untreated hematoma. The other ear is clipped from when the humane society spayed her, a marking to indicate they shouldn’t open her up again.

She’s small. She walks gently. She only reacts badly to dogs, and only the first time she meets them. Mine get away with murder because she knows they won’t hurt her. Everything about her has been a burden, and yet I’ve been happy to do it. My underlying feeling is that she deserves care. She has gone through too much.

I feel this truth, that I owe my strength to the weak. I’ll need someone else’s one day. Someone to help me to bed, wipe my face and help me eat. And I deeply believe in what can be called Karma, and is summarized in the Bible so neatly in the verse, “That which a man sows he will also reap.” So when I don’t want to take the time or go the extra step, I think about what a small thing it is for me to do.

I know she is an animal, but I can’t help but grieve. It feels wrong that any living thing suffers from sickness. Tomorrow I owe the vet a call, to schedule an appointment to euthanize her. I’ve never had to do that with any pet. The finality of it hits me so hard. I hate the thought that I get to decide.

My aunt had something nice to say. She believes that the soul of our pets visit us. She said she has felt her cats and dogs in her home after they’re gone. I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope it is. Earlier this week I posted the question: Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever had an experience? To my surprise many people responded yes.

I didn’t know why I wanted to ask the question. Maybe it was because of her sickness. Sometimes it takes me time to work through my feelings about a topic. Maybe it was some kind of premonition, a knowledge that I would need those responses to help me, even if it’s hope with no certainty.

Since leaving my church I’ve had serious doubts (well, before leaving I had them too), but I always hope we go on. I hope that when I call and schedule the end of Cake’s body, something exists after. I hope her soul floats around, or goes to heaven, or comes back to my house, or breaks apart into millions of other particles that will make up millions of other life forms in their various states of consciousness. That she will still witness the universe, folding and unfolding. Dying and living. Beautiful and terrible.