Just a little note to say goodbye to a pet. A friend of mine gave us a male Maine Coon cat about 10 years ago. He'd been a rescue from someone but my friend didn't know the details. He'd been declawed and fixed, so he wasn't a kitten anymore. He never fully bonded with the family but he did love to beg sandwich meat when we made sandwiches. He was a pretty cat. He tolerated some attention but preferred to just be around us, not with us.
About a month ago, I noticed he had stopped cleaning himself and that he moved slower. Being more of a pet lover than my wife, I urged her to take him to the vet. We had several discussions about it because she kept putting it off. Her upbringing gave her the perspective that a pet was more for working/helping around the house rather than being an adopted member of the family, which is how I was raised. So, we never got him to a vet...and his condition continued to deteriorate. The past few days, he couldn't even move from his spot on a pillow.
So, now I'm going through all the guilt and not-quite-anger of having failed to see if we could have helped him. It's a weird kind of detached feeling. And it doesn't help that two of my coworkers had to put down their dogs this weekend as well. Makes the cool evenings a little colder.
Goodnight and goodbye, Frisky. I hope you are in a better place now, with better people than we are.
2 comments:
So sorry for your loss! :-0
I'm really sorry to hear this, Steve. We had a cat like that too, even more feral than yours (attacked pizza delivery, attacked a moving car requiring steel plate in skull afterward, avoided animal control for 3 months of their concerted efforts). When the real big personalities of the pet world finally pass on (ours died appropriately, fighting another cat) it's a great and unique loss. However, they go in the way they go. Almost certainly a trip to the vet would only have prolonged things and pain meds would have only dulled his last weeks anyway. Better for the heroes to go down proud. Don't blame yourself for that.
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