I've just had to euthanize my second cat in a year and a half, and it's no easier than it was with the first one. Actually, it was both the same and totally different. The first cat I had to say goodbye to back in December 2020, Mattie, was old. She was 16 and had been with me since my first apartment with girlfriends out of college. She was well-traveled, having lived in 3 different states and 5 different households. She had a tortoiseshell coat, a type of cat I'd wanted since third grade, when I checked out a book about cat breeds from the school library. She was quirky and beautiful and sweet and my first baby, before I had my actual baby. She developed chronic kidney disease and lived for about a year, give or take a few months, after her diagnosis. We watched her stop eating and slowly waste away, and I remember this one night when she was so restless and meowing much of the night. She came into our bed, got into my face, and I just read this look in her face that was begging me to help her. I called the vet to schedule the appointment the next day.
The one I just said goodbye to, Ladybug, was just over a year old. She was one of a pair of kittens we had gotten after our mourning period for the older cat, and she was tiny, even as an adult, and so sweet. Every vet I took her to commented on how cute and sweet she was. She had funny back legs that gave her a distinctive kinked walk. I always told people she was like a chihuahua - tiny but afraid of nothing. She started vomiting regularly back in November, and it got progressively worse. We took her to the vet every week and watched her continue to vomit up everything until we ended up at the emergency vet for a few days. The emergency vet was able to do a diagnostic endoscopy, and she was eventually diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, which can often be managed with a combination of diet and steroids. This vet gave me the anti-nausea meds and steroids that we hoped would help her regain her footing. But we think this little one had some sort of congenital issue that made her disease worse. After two weeks at home, she had lost almost another pound. I knew her body was probably starting to break down vital organs for energy, as she had no fat or muscle mass left. When we went for a weekly weight check, and I learned she had lost another 0.3 pounds since the week before, I knew it was time to let her go.
The burden of being the one who stays with the pet in the euthanasia room is that you carry that image of their life slipping away seared into your brain forever. I mean, I've been incredibly lucky in my life that I haven't had to watch this happen with any of my human loved ones, so I recognize that. I would not want to let them leave this world without one of their humans there with them, but watching a little animal that you love dearly and care for waste away and then be put to sleep is heart-breaking in its own way. I will never forget the way that Mattie looked at me - it was this look that quite clearly said, "How can you do this to me?" I'm sure she was really experiencing something more along the lines of, "I am old and sick, and you brought me here to this damn place that you know I hate. How could you do this to me?" But of course, I immediately wondered if I had made the right decision and felt extreme guilt over it for days. Even now, over a year later, I will sometimes remember her in that room and feel a pang of guilt and sadness that makes me cry. Ladybug was completely different. She actually tried to lick the vet's hand (the vet remembered that she had treat residue on her fingers) as she was giving the injections. It was such a normal, healthy pet response that it made what was happening feel that much more wrong.
I know some people find closure and release in seeing the bodies of their deceased loved ones before burial. I do not feel that way. The image of the dead body is burned into my brain and drowns out the images of the alive, happy being, at least for the first part of the grief. Eventually, that dies down, but I will never lose that image of death, rather than life. I want to remember loved ones (including pets) as alive. I did not want to look at my dad before they closed the casket for his funeral. I didn't want my last sight of him to be death. I find no closure or comfort from that. For now, I am fighting the intrusive images of Ladybug's dead body on that table as I try to drown them out with the good moments from the past year. In time, the snapshots of happier moments will dominate, but I'm not there yet.
It caught me off guard the first night Ladybug was gone when I went to feed the other two cats and found myself crippled over with grief. Why this? Why the simple act of feeding? The next night when the same thing happened, I thought about how cleaning the litter box caused the same type of grief after saying goodbye to the first cat. Then I realized: these were the things that I was so focused on during the final decline of these two cats. With old girl Mattie, we were watching to make sure she was still peeing, drinking enough, and trying to get her to eat, even though she didn't feel so great. It was the thing associated with the litter box (her kidneys) that had taken her from me in the end. With baby Ladybug, I was giving her anti-nausea meds and steroids every day to try to fix her poor little digestive system that wasn't working any more. I was opening 4, 5, 6 cans of food a day to find something she would/could eat and even hand feeding her when she didn't want to eat from the bowl. Eventually, it was the thing associated with food (the failure of her digestive system) that took her from me.
I have no good closure for this. I am still in the midst of my grief, and I am still somewhat surprised that I am so gutted over losing her when we only had her for just over a year. I understood my grief for Mattie more, as I'd had her in my life for close to 16 years. I am thankful that I still have two healthy cats, who are both snugglers, to make the house feel less empty. But there's still a hole in the house. A space where one day, there was a unique individual of a cat, and now there is no longer. I miss her. I wanted her to get better. I hoped that weight check would tell me that she had gained half a pound rather than lost more. I wish I could have made her better. Unfortunately, I could not work that magic. For now, I'll manage my grief the best I can while still being a mom and spouse and cat-mom to two other cats.
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