The Rest of the Story

Twice in the past week (last night and last Monday (2/24) for the curious) I had to cover for the events in the previous day or two getting away from me, sucking up all my time, or more honestly leaving me in a state where I couldn't think clearly enough to write.  Now that it's over with, I can tell the story.  This is entirely a "me, me, me" story - more accurately "us, us, us" for Mrs. Graybeard and I, and for me to write this is going to be horribly, gut-wrenchingly sad so this is your chance to close the page and bail out.  

Last chance. 

For the last three years, our old man-cat, Mojo (his name when we adopted him at the rescue center in 2010 - my post about that in August '10) has been slowly sliding downhill, requiring more attention, differing medication doses and more veterinarian visits.  Both emergency and routine visits, sometimes monthly for blood tests.  

This past week the downhill slide turned into outright collapse.  Last weekend he had stopped eating and was having trouble walking.  Petting him by just bending over and gently petting him as he was walking by seemed to almost knock him over.  Over the preceding few weeks, he seemed to realize he couldn't hop onto our bed, and would ask me (seriously!) to pick him up and place him on the bed.  He could still hop onto our sofa - it's a bit lower - and would sleep there most of the day.  By Sunday (2/23) he was sleeping almost constantly, hardly eating or drinking.

The situation Monday 2/24 was we called the vet first thing and asked if he could be seen.  That appointment was 5PM.  The vet gave him a couple of new medications, one in case he had nausea and one to stimulate his appetite.  Tuesday he noticeably improved, eating more of his cat food than we'd seen in maybe a full week.  Wednesday, that decreased a bit, and Thursday, the collapse resumed.  Friday midday, he suddenly lost the ability to put weight on his forelimbs.  By the evening he was too weak to walk.  He had his first episodes of urinary incontinence, first wetting the floor by his litter box, and later losing control in our bed.  In the first case, nothing that a couple of paper towels and a grocery store plastic bag can't take care of; in the second, nothing our washing machine can't.

I awoke Saturday morning to find he had died in his sleep, in my arms.

His favorite sleeping position for the last several weeks has been for me to lie on my right side, facing him and beyond him Mrs. SiG, while he stuck his hindquarters up against my right armpit and facing toward her, my right arm straight, pointing perpendicular to my body.  He couldn't get himself into that sleeping position before I conked out.  I woke up at 4:30 AM and found he was there in that position and realized quickly he felt cool to the touch and wasn't reacting.  I was up for another hour, maybe 1-1/2 hours, thinking about times past and fell back asleep.  By mid morning we had taken his body up to be cremated. 

Pets are in a different world than any of our human interactions and we don't really have a good word for it.  I'm not talking about working dogs, or working animals, which don't share that sort of relationship with us.  I'm talking about house pets.  They're not kids, although many people refer to their dogs or cats as their kids.  We're not among those folks.  We think of them more as a friends, but that's not a good word either.  They're closer and more intimate in many ways than any friend.  They see us as we are all the time we're home.  We are completely ourselves with them - and they with us.  They love, or they don't, in a more pure way than many of us can.  Gun people seem to be a bit more dog people than cat people.  While I have nothing against dogs, I've always preferred cats around the house. 

Mojo was a remarkably sweet little person and was always coming up with fun things to do or just doing something like coming into the ham radio shack to spend some time with me.  Just to be together.  I remember mentioning to his vet that she could do just about anything she'd like to him if she petted him a little first.  Saturday she told me the staff there had thought he was one of the sweetest cats they have in their practice.  There's a handful of places around the house that I simply can't walk past without looking for him.  The papers from the rescue center where we adopted him say he was three years old in June of 2010; his papers from this veterinarian says his birthday was 11/1/2005.  If Nov. 1, 2005 is true, he's 19 and 4 months old.  If the papers from the rescue center are right, he could be closer to 18-1/2.  Both of those are on the long side of average cat length of life.

Over our 43+ years together, we've had seven different cats - always two at a time, with two exceptions.  The first was for one who was our only cat for five years.  Mojo is the second, and was our only cat since Aurora who we adopted a week before him had cancer in December of '22.  Losing them doesn't get any easier. 

Now Mrs. SiG and I have a gaping hole in our lives.  I've choked up nearly to tears several times writing this and all I know from my experience is that the pain doesn't go away, at least for years. Keeping yourself busy is the only thing that seems to help. 

Yeah, I virtually always include a picture. It just doesn't feel right to do that with this subject. If you just have to see what this little guy looked like, I don't have any recent pictures in the blog, but you can search on his name in the search box in the upper left hand corner of the frame.