It's been a difficult time for me lately. I know I've neglected the site and this blog, but I just didn't have the heart or energy to deal with it.
Both of my cats have been sick on and off for the past few months. One of them seems to be holding her own now with occasional steroid injections, after going down to skin and bones and nearly dying. The other...
Well, the other did not. After my white cat started recovering, my black cat, Emily, also starting losing weight until she nearly reached the point of emaciation. She didn't act as if she was suffering, but she was obviously not her old self. I won't go into all of the medical details, but after several vet visits and multiple tests, she was finally determined to have a condition which needed to be corrected by surgery.
At the time we discovered this, she had recently had an injection of long-acting corticosteroids on the theory that she might have the same condition as the other cat, so we had to wait until they started to wear off before putting her through surgery. (Corticosteroids can cause problems with wound healing.) Meanwhile, she was still losing weight and getting weaker. Twice she needed to be given fluids at the vet's office to combat dehydration; one of those times required two days of hospitalization and an IV pump.
We got her through to where surgery could be done and she had her procedure uneventfully. The first day after, she seemed to be improving a little. The second day, she just... gave up. She began soiling herself and lying in it. She didn't even want to get up. The look on her face was pure misery and it broke my heart. Her eyes begged me to make the pain stop and just let her rest.
So we made the Final Trip. As it was the weekend, I called the vet and he met me at the empty office. I held Emily and petted her, telling her I loved her, while he injected the anesthetic in her vein and she slipped away. He listened with the stethoscope until her heart stopped, then left me alone for awhile to say goodbye. When he bore her body away, he cradled her as gently as a baby. I know this was for my benefit, but it was appreciated.
I don't really remember the drive home. I know I cried, and I cried even more when I was in the house. My other cat, Charlotte, was anxious and bewildered by the whole thing. She had been frightened by the way Emily smelled while she was sick, and she still looks around fearfully at unexpected noises. She's been even more vocal and clingy in the last couple of weeks since Emily has been gone; she doesn't like me out of her sight. I think - I hope - that she's starting to relax a little bit now.
I'm adjusting, too. In retrospect, I think I made Emily hang on longer than I should have, and I feel bad about that. All I can say is that she was relatively young, I thought she could recover from this, and I wanted to give her a chance. I didn't want to put her to sleep without good reason, but now I wonder whether I was in a certain amount of denial over just how badly she was doing.
I also blame myself for not having x-rays done at the very start of her illness. I have enough medical knowledge that it should have been one of the first things I asked for, but I didn't. If I had, if we had figured this out sooner, it might well have made a big difference. I have to live with that.
Having said that, I'm not walking around weeping and wailing. I cried a lot the day she was put to sleep, but I've only occasionally teared up a little since then, when I start to think about it too much. I am fighting a certain amount of anxiety over the other cat; I keep watching her intently and over-analyzing every move she makes, wondering if she's getting sick again, worrying that I'll lose her soon, too. I keep telling myself to quit it and work at directing my focus elsewhere. Distraction is essential at times like these. Every time I catch myself fretting again, I have to deliberately start concentrating on something else. Sooner or later I'll get on top of it again. Until then, I just need to grit my teeth and ride it out.
