An Extremely Sad Start to My Weekend

After a week of giving him aspirin to try to prevent blood clots and heart failure, my cat went into heart distress while I was sleeping, and I woke to the sounds of him rumbling and rattling under the bed, looking for air. At first I didn't know what it was, and got up to check my email, and he flopped out from under the bed, hind legs paralysed and cold, in distress, getting the breath to yowl his upset and wanting help.

I tied my hair back, took him to the vet, and they descended upon him and put in an IV, took an X-Ray and wanted to know if I wanted them to try to put him on something, and stick him in an oxygen tent, as he was dying, or did I want them to put him down. While I discussed this, they kept working with him (he scratched one of them) and the young female vet gave me a hug a couple of times.

Eventually, the older female vet agreed with me that, if he had two of these incidents while on aspirin, and was near death now and in a lot of pain, that it was very likely that he'd not pull through, and if he did, he'd most likely have another attack quite soon. So, as much as it hurt me deeply to do it, I told them to "euthanize" him, which is how they describe it. I signed a form, they explained that it was a drug overdose/drug high kind of thing and they left me alone with him to tell him he was a good cat, and stroke him, and then they stuck the needle in his IV and he stopped gasping for air. I cried like a baby and the younger vet hugged me.

When you're approaching middle-age, can't keep a relationship with a woman afloat, and have no kids, and most of your friends have moved to the four corners of the earth, you put a disproportionate amount of what can only be described as "fatherly" emotions into a cat. I lived alone in my 20s, and knew that this was not healthy for me. In my late 20s, I lucked into being able to get a townhouse in the city with friends for a few years while the millennium ticked over. Living with other human beings suited me to the ground.

When they moved out, resolved not to go back to living in a dark basement apartment, working nights, alone, I got a place in the nicest of the little towns around the city and went on the lookout for a cat. I wanted a big, black cat like the one I remember my family having from my first memories (the one whose body I found on the road walking to the bus). Someone told me that my grandfather's cat had kittens, so I went to his place (he's a grouchy old cuss and I don't visit him often) and in the basement was a thin, large grey tabby cat with a litter of kittens, some all black, and some grey. I asked about it, and was told that these kittens were slightly too young to take from the mother, but that Grandpa being as he is, was going to have them all killed. So I took one.

It was a frigid November night around my birthday, and I tucked a little black fuzzball into my shirt under my coat and drove to my apartment. He yowled and fussed the whole way, and I picked up some of those little "juice box" boxes of milk substitute for kittens and he drank it and from the beginning took over the place. Troy had a cat he called "Floyd" for Pink Floyd, and so I called mine "Syd Barrett" though the ‘last name for a cat’ thing never really lasted. Right from the beginning he'd do two characteristic things: one is that when I lay on the futon to watch TV, he'd want to lie right on my neck or chin and lick my mouth. I wouldn't let him lick my mouth so he learned to rub his mouth against my nose and chin. The other thing he'd do is, whenever he was upset about anything, he'd pee on the spot on my bed or futon where I lay. He loved to "fetch" cat toys like a dog, and he "spoke" like a dog in that, wherever he was in the apartment, if you wanted to know where he was, if you called him name or just called "hello?" he'd answer back. He hated me to leave, and he wouldn’t leave the apartment. I don't know why he was so scared of the outdoors, but it took years before he got used to going out at all.

Once he saw me place a resume on the end table near the door and get ready to leave, waited while I went to brush my teeth, and then peed on the resume. Another time he did the same thing, except he peed in my suitcase when I went to get clothes to put in it to go on a trip. I had to replace the mattresses and get a couple of those allergy-layer sheet things. They're great. People who are allergic to dust in their mattresses can zip on these covers and they are air and water (and cat urine) proof. After some abortive attempts to punish him in various ways (including the traditional spraying with water) I learned to simply lock him in the hall, change the cover and sheet, and so when he did it, he'd get no reaction at all and it was like he didn't even do it. This eventually worked.

During this time, I lost my job at Nortel in the crash of the huge high tech bubble around the millennium, 911 went down, I got and soon lost a job in web design (once again this second company collapsed under its own weight and they let us all go) and then got a huge line of credit and put myself in debt to become a teacher, which I should have done from the beginning. I had to commute between where I was living and teacher's college just over the US border. Syd had to hold down the fort at home from Monday until Thursday evening sometimes, and he always scolded me when I came home. Although he grew to almost 20lbs, and was a giant of a cat (not just fat, large) he still always wanted to lie across my neck. The compromise was that he could climb onto my chest and curl up with his head jammed under my chin. He'd do this, after some dragging his cheek across my chin. I could get him to go out into the hall and walk around in there, but he seemed terrified of the sun and the sounds of people nearby, so he never really was an outside cat at that point.

Then I got a job two hours from here and had to move. I took him, and he yowled and complained the whole way there. He throve on living in half a house, though he did odd things like climb inside the cupboards in the kitchen. He learned to go outside after dark, but I had to keep him from fighting the neighbour cats. I'd had him neutered, but this didn't seem to do much of anything. Then I was transferred to a different school the next year and had to move back where I started. He yowled and fussed the whole way. I tried to train him that he could go down the rear exit stairs-fire escape, and it took a long time. What he really wanted me to do was just open the kitchen door and let him look out over the town from the third floor apartment I still live in. He went through a phase where I could open the door to the fire escape, and count to three, and on "three" he'd either jump out and make his way timidly down the fire escape, or give an annoyed yowl, turn on his heels and come back in.

I wrote a song about him which always gets a good reaction when I sing it. It goes like this:

I Live Alone
--------------
I came back home, ran up the stairs
And I sang three songs to a girl who wasn't there
Lay on the couch, which I had all to my own
What's that you say? I live alone.

I live alone, 'cept for my cat
He pees on my bed (now how 'bout that?)
When I'm asleep, then he cuts free
That's why I change my sheets so frequently
And live alone

I live alone with no one there
And so my sink fills up with human hair
My toilet's grey, my bathtub too
I'll clean them when I've got nothing better to do
I live alone

I live alone, all by myself
Overflowing garbage and empty shelves
More beer than fruit and I'm outta cheese.
But what the hell, I got nobody else to please
Except myself.

I wrote this song totally as a joke, but people seem to laugh yet take it seriously as "a good song" too. So, last year the vet found a bladder stone the size of a peanut in him after I took him in when he was peeing blood into the bathtub. He also listened to his heart and told me that Syd had a congenital heart problem that would claim his life soon. This upset me, but I carried on. The "single, in her 50s, never married, has a lot of plants and some cats" teacher at school was disturbingly understanding.

Then last weekend he had some sort of incident with his heart, so I started giving him the aspirin. I had a week of lying on the futon and watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker DVDs, and then yesterday my Six Million Dollar Man (season two) DVDs came in (not available in North America) so he lay on my chest and we watched some of those. Then the DVD player died. I went to bed, woke up, and the events that started this sad tale unfolded.

Now I am home, trying not to cry, typing this to commemorate what was essentially, just an animal. An animal I had poured years of care and concern into, though. An animal I did what I felt was best for, getting bites and scratches and fuzzy-headed chin rubs in return, and ultimately, it wasn't enough, and now I asked them to kill him. It took away the pain, and he's not suffering now, but I feel like I failed him and I feel vaguely helpless and guilty. I kind of feel like I killed him. When I think of him gagging and panting, sides heaving, froth coming from his mouth, and how that all relaxed once they gave him an overdose of anaesthetic, though, I know I eased his pain. I'm sure in the New Year I'll get another big black cat and call him Roger or something, but for now I am pretty...bereft, I guess is the word.