Whenever you take on a pet, you do so with the knowledge that no matter how much you love them, you are almost certainly going to outlive them. It's just part of the deal; you get to clean up their poop and feed them and come home to the wreckage they have created and they in turn sleep on top of you and purr and absolutely own your heart. And you get to deal with the grief of letting them go.
So that brings us to Octavia, the world's absolute most sweetest cat ever. Just a little more than 2 weeks ago, she developed a urinary tract infection, which is not uncommon in old ladies of any species. Even after I got that settled down, she never really recovered, and stopped eating. A trip to the emergency vet revealed she had a mass on her pancreas and a couple more in her liver. I am strongly opposed to putting an animal through the misery of chemotherapy; as one vet who agreed with me put it, "they didn't sign up for that" and so I have just been trying to keep her comfortable.
Last week I came face-to-face with the realization that it was time to quit putting off the inevitable. In only a couple of weeks she has lost probably half of her body weight, her back legs no longer work, and she can barely drink. So I have scheduled a vet to come here this afternoon and put her to sleep.
I went through this with Saki a few years ago and I know it is genuinely painless and the right thing, but oh man, it is so difficult. When I adopted Octavia a year and a half ago, I did so knowing she was a pretty old cat and that our time together would probably be short, but I had really hoped it might be longer than this. Nevertheless, I'm glad I did it. She has been loving and sweet, and I'm glad she didn't have to live out the end in a cage at Cat Jail.
I know naked guys don't really fit with this post necessarily, but they always make me feel better, at least a little, so I will include them here:
RIP, Octavia. Jx
ReplyDeletePS Yes, cock and ass makes things better...