Grief is bringing home an empty cat carrier
At 31, I felt grief for the first time when I lost my cat of 11 years. I was surprised by the grief that hit me when he died. It hit me like a train. I was in a funk for weeks, crying at the drop of a hat and unable to focus. I had never responded this way to death before. At that time, I had already lost several family members including all of my grandparents. I felt little sad at each of their deaths, but they weren’t part of my day to day life. I didn’t feel their loss beyond acknowledging they were no longer on this earth. I didn’t necessarily feel sad about them not being alive anymore, more so I felt sad for my loved ones that were grieving.
It was not a sudden thing, his death. Looking back now, I see that the slow downward spiral in his health began five years prior. He was sick and losing clumps of hair to the point he was almost bald. Vet visit after vet visit, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He lost so much weight. His mannerisms changed. We were finally able to find a vet that diagnosed him with diabetes. For five years we had to inject him with insulin twice a day and closely monitor his food intake, only allowing him diabetic food.
He had his ups and downs. We had to increase his insulin over the years and the days that we had to coax him to eat became more frequent. While his coat grew back and he was able to maintain a healthy weight, he never fully went back to being the cat he was before he got sick.
My husband held a lot of guilt over the years, and honestly still does, about him being sick. About how lot it took us to find a vet that could help. We talked about it a lot over the years. He believes that it shorted our boy’s lifespan, that the months of being sick took years off his life.
We knew we didn’t have much longer with him, but we hoped he would be around for a few more years. In April this year he stopped eating. He was doing so good the few weeks prior, eating his food and being playful. Then suddenly I had to reduce his insulin because he wasn’t eating much. We took him to the vet and they found a sore in his mouth that was infected. The vet said it was either a lesion that just needed antibiotics or it could be cancer.
We, of course, hoped it was just an infection and, with antibiotics, he would heal. Being diabetic and FIV+ complicated recovery, slowing down his body’s ability to heal. So for three months, to give him his best chances, we hand fed him. Twice a day, everyday, we would blend up his food and hold him while feeding him through a large plastic syringe. We also gave him water through the syringe. With our intervention and the antibiotics, he started getting better. He still needed help eating but he had more energy and was acting normal.
Unfortunately, soon after the first round of antibiotics were finished, we had to get a second round. Then the second round were finished. His health quickly took a nose dive. What started out as a normal day ended in me having to call the emergency vet. We still don’t know what happened exactly that caused his sudden decline. We walked into the kitchen to feed him and blood was pooling out of is mouth. He shook his head and large clumps of blood flung over the floors and walls. There was so much blood. We said good bye to him that night. I held him in my arms as he passed. His blood on my shirt and pants.
His carrier was 10 pounds lighter, but harder to carry. The lightness of it highlighted what had just happened. What we had just lost.
xoxo, Ducky