Unimaginable pain...too true. Last night I took my cat, Kitty Scissorpaws, in for euthanization. She was some undeterminable age.. I had her for nearly 15 years, got her at the SPCA when I turned 39, because I didn't want to enter midlife all alone. I thought she was a large kitten at the time, but it turned out she was already an adult, because she needed to be spayed just a few weeks later.. she never weighed more than six pounds her whole life. I had owned cats before, but had never been in a longterm relationship with any before (or any mammal, human or non-human) in which I knowingly and willingly took on responsibility for Life, including its inevitable end, Death. Single and childless by choice. Practiced non-attachment rather successfully up to then. Other cats had been passed on to good homes, in the wake of a rather unsettled, roaming lifestyle. Her name arrived after she'd been with me a few months, after we'd already tried out a couple other names. I had several slightly built, ikea type shelving units. No matter what sort of fancy scratch posts I bought and presented, she preferred to turn these wooden uprights to sawdust. Everyday. Until they looked like they'd been chewed by beavers. I allowed this to go on for a long time, but we moved 8 years ago to a new place, and I got new furniture, and although I warned her not to scratch the new stuff, she couldn't help herself; I took her in to have her front toenails removed. By then she was an indoor cat only. It was a grueling event for her, and she didn't forgive me for many months, but eventually she carried on as if nothing had ever happened. Too late did I learn that if a scratch post is provided to a kitty when they are born, and allowed to move with them, they will forever be bonded to that original post and never scratch anything else. It was quite a ride with Miss Scissorpaws. She was quite a cat. Only six pounds, but fierce. Her first few years with me she was allowed outdoors. On several occasions I watched her chase off large toms twice her size. She brooked no nonsense. Her boundaries were sharp and so were her teeth.. we adapted to each other (I learned to respect her) and as a reward I was given large and generous cat hugs several times every day, complete with loud purr, usually up over my left shoulder, where she would press herself against me as though she wanted to erase any separation that physically existed and merge herself right into me. Nothing could relax me as fast as that cat. Within minutes of her leaping up on my lap I would find myself lightly dozing. One of her games was to put her face almost up to mine, then stare without quite making direct eye contact. I would stare back. One or the other of us would do a slow blink. Then the other one would do the same. It was like passing a pingpong ball back and forth sort of, although it was simply wordless communing. (I miss the blinky eye game. We did that every day.) She had flight paths.. all cats do.. One of her favorite resting spots was on top of the computer with her tail hanging down in front of the screen, until I finally taped an acrylic picture frame to the top, complete with a picture of a Buddha statue in a garden, flowers in the foreground.. She seemed to be aging gracefully, except for the odd yowl out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. Her appetite stayed strong and she continued to be agile. Until yesterday. She couldn't get comfortable. Her hind leg was in some vicious spasm. She couldn't walk and she couldn't lie down.. her hind leg would lift high in the air of its own accord and she would yowl. This was very uncharacteristic pain behavior. I had promised her when I adopted her that I would never let her suffer unnecessarily at the end of her life. And I kept my promise. It was clear to me that our time together was no longer going to be a celebration of life. (I would hope that someone might do me a similar favor when my own time comes, that society will have evolved an ethical and humane and above board sort of human euthanasia by then.) I called a friend of mine, prearranged years ago, told her I was pretty sure the time was nigh. She came and gave the cat and me a lift to a vet she knew well, who had put down her dog years before. And before long it was done. My father died four years ago today, by coincidence. I expect there's a bit of overlap going on here in some subterranean part of my psyche.. although the two sorts of grieving feel quite different. I remind myself that I healed properly and well from the first, and that I likely will from the second. This one is raw and fresh, is all.. (I can't see clearly through the pain right now, I simply have to have faith I still possess adequate resilience.) Both were old, and I loved each (my father and my cat) passionately and without reservation, but symbolically there were huge differences in the shapes of the bonds themselves. My father was my father, but my cat was somehow me. Today, there are cat shaped holes in my life everywhere I turn, shot through all my familiar physical space, including my body. I am slowly moving around, clearing cat paraphenalia from my apartment, wearily vacuuming long neglected gobs of cat hair (not wanting to have them there tomorrow to remind me..), staring for long moments at pictures I took of her doing ridiculous things.. looking up forums like this on the internet, writing long passages, wondering aloud how best to bear this exquisitely tender six-pound weight of pain around my heart.. crying and gasping and trying to just breathe in and out. At this moment I can't imagine another cat in my existance... I need serious healing time. Yet I know the rest of my existance on this planet will be bleak/bereft if I never share oxytocin bonded life enhancement with another mammal. For awhile I will simply drift around in a sea of grief and find out what's next when I get there. Thank you for providing this forum. While it hasn't taken this weight from my chest completely, sharing it has at least shifted it around a bit.
