Remembering Amy

Saturday, January 9th —

My little cat was put to sleep at 3:00 pm yesterday. It was a terribly difficult day – but the procedure couldn’t have been more compassionate.

By Wednesday, it had become clear — we thought — that Amy was just getting too tired to fight it any more. Our Mobile Vet (www.drdoss.com) had told us to “look 24 to 48 hours ahead in making a decision; things move very quickly with cats.” So on Wednesday, I tearfully called and asked him to make an appointment for Friday.

Then, of course, all through Thursday I kept wondering if it was the right decision. Amy was outside under the bush on the slope when I went off to the chiropractor. When I got back an hour and a half later, she was on my bed: so she had been able to let herself in the cat-flap, make her way to my room, and jump up on the bed. Maybe it wasn’t time yet, after all…? But the vet assured me that he always examines a cat carefully, under mild sedation, before proceeding with euthanasia. He is a cat-lover himself, and doesn’t want to do anything prematurely.

I really love Dr. Doss, the Mobile Vet. He said right at the start that he would sedate her, using an agent that could be reversed if what he found led him to believe Amy could have a few more weeks of reasonably comfortable life. However, what he found was pretty much what we expected. There was a large tumor in the nasal cavity, pressing down on the hard palate and causing it to sag into the mouth. (I could see it clearly, when he opened her mouth and showed me.) One nostril was completely occluded by the tumor. That little cat was operating on only one nostril for the past few weeks! It astounds me to think she was still able to jump up on the bed, jump in and out of the cat-window, and everything else she did! What a tough cookie she was.

After the sedative came a painkiller, just in case; and finally, the injection that stopped her heart. It took a few minutes, during which I stroked her and murmured to her, and told her how much we loved her. I was crying like Niagara Falls all this time, of course. As I watched her little side go in… and out… and in… I saw it stop. I said, “That was it, right there, that moment, wasn’t it?” And Dr. Doss said, “Yes, it was.” He sniffed, and I caught him wiping his eyes, so I handed him the box of Kleenex, and he blew his nose. A real snorter! I patted him on the shoulder and (weepingly) told him I was really glad he cared enough about Amy to shed a tear for her. That’s what makes him different from other vets, to my mind.

I had Robert bring Chloe in so she could see that Amy was dead. She’ll miss her, after a while, and look for her, but it  was important for her to realize that Amy didn’t just go away. At this point, she is just delighted that finally we are letting her eat from Amy’s dishes, in Amy’s place; she’s been coveting that for years.

And then Dr. Doss put the little body – so very small! – into a plastic bag, very tenderly, to be delivered to the San Diego Pet Memorial outfit. They will cremate her individually and send us back her ashes in a little cedar chest with a plaque on top with her name. I think we will scatter some of Amy under our dwarf Meyer lemon tree on the slope, where she loved to sit in the sun; and under the bush at the top of the slope, where she spent much of her last weeks. The rest we’ll keep.

So that’s the end of the Amy era for me – eleven years. I cannot even imagine what it will be like to be without her: from the relentless alarm-clock-at-six-a.m. hollers for breakfast; to the daily argument about which of us was going to sit in my computer chair (she always won by pretending to be too soundly asleep to hear me asking her to move, and I always ended up moving the chair out of the way, with her in it,  and nabbing Robert’s chair so I could do my work); to the loving, trusting snuggles at night when she decided it was my turn to have her sleep with me. She was one wonderful companion.

Amy lived the last 11 of her 30 years with us. It took three years after we moved in here for her to trust us enough to come to the door for food twice a day; and  a month after that to trust us enough to come into the house. She was shy of things-like-sticks and things-that-rustled loudly (think umbrellas, canes, and plastic bags) for a long time. People had not been kind to Amy, it seems. At least, her first home had been one in which they loved her enough to have her spayed — otherwise, she never would have been able to survive when she was lost, or ditched, or strayed away.

She was one of those “talking cats” who tries to mimic human intonations, and really understands an astonishing amount of human conversation. You could have a very satisfying two-way chat with Amy on a variety of subjects, not only Food or Going Outdoors or Time for Bed.

Of all the many cats I’ve lived with and loved in my long life — there have been 18 of them — Amy was one of the most loving, expressive, and interesting. Watching her regain her comfort with relating to humans, after 16 or more years of living outdoors, on her own, was very touching. Once she decided to move in with us, Amy and I made a contract. I promised her that she would have the best Golden Years any cat could have, with human-quality cat food and half-and-half twice a day, and that we would love her forever. She promised, in return, that she would give us her love and her trust, and keep us as her family for the rest of her life.

We both kept our promises.

Thanks for reading — Betsy