Thursday, May 31, 2012

Dealing With Death

Dealing with Death

It's a VERY rainy day today.

The decision should not have been that hard, he looked like death already.

He couldn't wash himself very good anymore and his fur started clumping up.
I waited until summer to shave him,
but his skin was so fragile I cut him once or twice and so I skipped his belly.
When I took him in they must have recognized what a poor caretaker I was.
His belly was covers in dead stickers from where he had been laying in the grass.
He was still feisty though, on the way he tried to break out of his cage
and meowed loudly, mournfully almost. I kept trying to quiet him down.
Finally I rolled down the window and turned up the radio and he settled down.
I missed his meows on the way home. It was quiet.
They put him in a box for me...when I picked it up the bottom was still warm.
I wanted to see him sleeping in the box but when I opened it
they had put him in a plastic trash bag and tied it up tightly.
I almost opened it, but it started spitting rain, I wanted to see him sleeping.
The bag would keep the smell down as he decomposed
so other animals wouldn't try to dig him up, but I wanted to see him sleeping.
He loved to sleep in boxes.
It's raining hard now.
I know that I probably waited even longer than I should have
but he was walking around, even after he broke his leg.
On Sunday morning I found him with his leg hung up in the Y of the chair leg.
When I let him loose I knew he wouldn't be able to walk,
he'd been there all night, eight hours, struggling.
Why didn't God wake me up to come and check on him.
God has done things like that before.
Anyway he was hopping around on three legs
and would purr every time I petted him or picked him up.
He was more than 15 years old. He was a diabetic.
It wasn't right to let him suffer.
Was he suffering or did I just do this for my own convenience.
Euthanasia if very real, but if it is with a person you are playing God.
I did ask God to show me, even before he got his leg caught and broke it, if I should put him down.
Was that my answer. It's not like a person,

you aren't giving them extra time to make sure they have made their peace with God.
They don't even have a soul. Yes it's true, they don't.
But what if God is waiting for something else, me to learn a lesson.
I didn't go in and watch him fall asleep,

I would have made a fool out of myself blubbering all over myself.

I wish I would have gone in. I wanted to see him sleeping in the box.

They pulled all of the machines off of my Grandma. One by one we all said our good byes.

She lived, went home from the hospital and lived for another whole year!

During that time her daughter made amends with her, grew closer to her.

All of this is to teach us, ...something. People are different.

But we can learn something from letting a pet go too.

I'm grateful that I kept him for another whole year.

It gave me something to take care of when no one else in this house needs taking care of.

He was a diabetic, I gave him a shot every morning and every night and special, expensive food.

The only problem is you had to buy the medicine in big people size bottles, it would go bad.

But because I didn't have the proper equipment to check his blood sugar

I didn't know when it went bad, unless I saw the tell tell signs.

Then I just kept giving it to him, like a miracle would take place or something.

I wasn't a very good care taker. The medicine was $100 a bottle.

He loved to sleep in boxes.

He had three different names because no one would agree.
Even at the vet they had two different cats listed...no, I said, it's the same cat.
In his glory days he weight almost 20 pounds.
When we went on walks he would follow us around, like a dog.
I'd be working in the garden and turn around and there he was following me like my own shadow.
He was banished to being an outside cat after being with us for only a month
because he put holes in the water bed....two different times!
He loved to snuggle and he loved to sleep in a box.
When we were throwing boxes away we tossed them on the back porch
so he could sleep in them before we threw them away.
We had him for more than 15 years. I just wish I had seen him one last time, sleeping in a box.




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