We had a month from the time HP was diagnosed with FIP, a horrible wasting disease that no cat and their human(s) should ever have to experience. Our gorgeous, sleek, mahogany-coated, lightning bolt adorned (on his forehead, thus the name) big beautiful boy precipitously dropped from almost 25 leggy, large, but not fat pounds, to the scant 9 lbs he weighed the day of his death. In those 30 days, he never once expressed pain, desperation, or even fear, other than the 2 trips made to the vet for diagnosis and futile treatment. I believe in many ways he understood that the process was heartbreaking for the humans, and in an odd role reversal was comforting us. It's also very possible that I'm anthropomorphizing the entire experience, and he just was staying true to his loving and sweet nature until that final day.
In his last month, we snuggled a bit more, coaxed and cajoled and begged our normally voracious food thief to eat even a 1/2 teaspoon at a time of intensive-care wet food. (Our other cat gained several pounds in the process, stealthily polishing off any remainders not guarded). We made snuggle nests for his newly chill-intolerant body, counted respirations, played piano for him, and hoped for miracles, but mostly, we just held this very odd space for death to move into our lives with tears, inquisition, fear, and a hope for some glimpse that it somehow meant something. I can't quite articulate what I mean, but I can feel it in my body, and in the process we all grieved together and separately.
Finally, the night came when his breathing quickened and didn't slow, and he simply curled into my side and didn't move, all night. He purred as best as he could, and slept with a paw on my arm. In the morning, when the was no change, I knew it was time. He turned away from any food and water, and sat with his head on his paws, staring out the window. I made the call, and our wonderful, amazing vet-- knowing how he would tremble and shake at her office-- offered to come to our house. The kids stoically went to school, and the minute everyone was out the door, I sobbed for an hour straight. I am not a "collapser". I've had my moments sobbing on the floor (divorce, family tragedy), but this feeling was new. It was grief, catharsis, the slow inevitability of the process, and I allowed it, and maybe even welcomed it, hoping that I would "have it together" for that evening.
The day unfolded as they all do, only for the hours at home with Harry (I did not work that day), there was a painstaking methodical casualness to it. The kids came home and began quietly folding origami hearts and doves. Now, for anyone that's stepped foot in my home, quiet moments are an endangered species, which added to this reverence we were creating without consciously being aware. All the origami was put in Harry's favorite cat bed, and love letters were written by little faces now intermittently wet with tears. Meanwhile, Harry was curled up on a bed with his brother Luke. There they intertwined like a yin yang, with one of Harry's giant emaciated skinny legs thrown over Luke's paw. You can read a million things into that sight, that gesture, and maybe all of them would be right.
Harry loved the Christmas tree. Every year, for the month it was up, you could find him in any down moment contentedly sitting like a gentlemen, or sleeping with one of his favorite low-hanging ornaments confiscated, possibly eviscerated, and held in those giant cat paws. As a family we had made a decision that we would leave the tree up as long as Harry lived. My husband was fairly sure that cat might see June. We decided that night that Harry should make his exit in his favorite place, right at the foot of his tree. Hadley played piano while I lit candles in the living room.
When the vet and her tech arrived, Harry did not run or hide. He put his head in my hands while the vet started the IV line where the barbiturate cocktail that would stop his heart would be administered. He did not struggle or meow, he just held firm. After, they gave him a gentle sedative, and he curled his head into the nook of my arm while I carried him upstairs for the kids to say their final goodbyes. Even though he only weighed 9 pounds, that big long body still took two arms to contain.
I sat with him on the ground next to the tree, candles flickering, Hawaiian slack key guitar playing on the radio in the other room. (If only we allowed all people this same dignity!) I could feel his heart beating against my forearm, and his breath grow raggedy with the sedative. I buried my face in his forehead, and tears flowing, just said the only thing I could think of, over and over, like a mantra. "Good boy....good boy...good boy". As I stroked his bony head, Dr. Libby gave the propofol, then the barbiturate injection, and I felt his heart against my arm very rapidly slow...Soon, nothing. He was gone. As I have done countless time before with other people's loved ones-- their mothers, fathers,children, siblings- she very gently listened for heart tones, and with the look in her eyes, affirmed what I already new.
I thought I would be such a cool customer. I thought I was seasoned to death, wisened as an old soul to witnessing the transition when the time comes to pass from life to death. That night, holding my dead cat in my arms, the tears poured with total loss of control down my face. I sobbed. I felt shattered, but full of love as I had ever been, and definitely as raw. After Matt and the kids had come down, had rubbed their hands together and given Harry "energy and love", after the vet and tech (their own faces tear-streaked, to my awe and gratitude) had so gently carried his body out with them for cremation, after the burgers and shakes and fries my husband ran out to get as a rare junk-food temporary panacea, after the kids had started smiling and telling favorite HP stories... I still felt hollow and completely at odds with the peace and closure I had expected I would feel.
We had a sweet and simple ceremony that night for Harry. We lit 10 candles, intending to write down 10 good things about Harry. One of the books we had read to ready ourself for his passing was "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney", which, incidentally, I don't ever recommend reading in public for the first time when your cat is dying :) We laughed and cried, and at #21, called it a night. To my surprise, all the kids were able to fall asleep gently, sad about our loss, but grasping that he was free now. One of them even proclaimed that our beloved "stomp stomp" kitty was at that very moment making plans to come back as an elephant.
After the kids were asleep, I came back to that same spot where hours before I had held my sweet kitty boy as his short life ended. I dissolved. I lay down on the floor, and just as I could almost tangibly feel that sensation of his heart stopping, an awareness came over me: this was not my relationship with death. I had never before invited death into my home, made a space for it, welcomed it, even. A huge part of my career is engaging in an active fight against it, working hard to stop the very process I had welcomed as a honored guest. Even in final moments, where I knew a patient's death was inevitable, I still had this small island of "other" to hold to, even as I may have held their hand in final moments, or closed their eyelids when all was said and done. To just simply hold my cat and invite death to take him was as much a profound transition of raw and open rebirth for me as it was finality in this body for him. As I lay there on the floor, I thought, "so this is grace".
The next morning, as we walked up to school, a particularly wonderful and rare Portland occurrence happened. Snow started falling, but unlike any I had seen before. The flakes were huge and almost awkward in their fall, landing in gigantic near-plops on heads and faces. The kids were ecstatic, and the snowfall was so thick and insistent on your eyelids it was hard to see through.
Zane grabbed my hand, and squinting though snowy eyelashes, smiled up at me and said "You see that mom? That's Harry saying he loves us".
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Location:38,000 ft
