Max 2019

In my mind I am nothing but a torrent of emotions. I don’t know where or what I will be saying in this today but it is coming and I will deal with it. I want to say it started recently but this is something that has been coming for a long time. We lost a family member this week.

This part of the ride started Friday night. See, our elderly cat had gone outside and came back in moving slow. It wasn’t out of the ordinary. This cat was close to 17 years old, and he has dementia. Or maybe what ever is close to that for cats. He didn’t know if he was coming or going most of the time. Anyway, he was attacked by something, but we have no clue what got him.

Ended up taking him to an emergency vet on Saturday. Of course, they want an arm and a leg to fix him. And we are looking at it from a semi practical stand point even then. We got some antibiotics for the weekend and then planned to visit his actual vet on Monday.

This is where things get a bit tricky. The cat had some bad teeth that were giving him some abscesses. And then the open wounds in his arm pits down his front legs where we could see his muscles, those needed to be tended to as well. He also had a puncture wound in his cheek.

And the other thing is, we don’t know what attacked him. It could very well be something living under our deck. He always liked to hide under there.

So, at our vet they looked him over and made an assessment of his likely hood of surviving an actual surgery. At his age and current condition, his chances were next to nothing. So I had to make the decision. I’m the one that makes this decision. No one else in the family can disassociate themselves from a decision like this. I get some of the hardest decisions thrown on my shoulders because I can compartmentalize this kind of thing. And even then the enormity of it still weighs on me.

How do you say good bye to someone who has been a part of your life for 16 and 17 years? It’s a thing where you know it isn’t going to be easy at all.

So, we had to end the suffering. As much as it hurts and you never know what to expect, we had to do it. This one hurt more than any other we have gone through with a pet. I figure it has quite a bit to do with how long he had been with us.

Back when we first got him our youngest daughter was 4. I imagine she doesn’t know a world without him in it. It’s an emptiness we didn’t expect even when we knew it could come any day.

Yeah, we didn’t really see the impact till earlier today when we were cleaning up some of his stuff. The house feels a bit more empty now than it did when the girls moved out for their own lives. Strange how something so small could have had such a huge presence in our lives and in our home.

And so I figure I should leave this here. Otherwise, I could spend days just digging through nostalgia and sadness. No one wants to take part in that.