Helping a Pet to Die

This is a sad post, so if you don't want to deal with that sort of thing I encourage you to skip it.

My mother's cat died today. I helped.

Spooky has always been something of a sickly cat, requiring several surgeries to stay alive. But she did lead a fairly happy life and she made it to fourteen which is not bad for a cat. The last few months though she'd begun making little chuffing wheezes a lot. I encouraged my mum to take her to the vet. It never happened. I kept telling her to take Spooky to the vet. I looked up symptoms online and saw 'cancer' as a possible cause among many possible causes. I kept pestering my mother to take her to the vet.

It's a bit difficult since my mother is suffering from memory loss; not Alzheimer, just old age, or so the doctors assured us after a battery of tests. Doesn't really help much, she's still losing pieces of her mind.

"No, mum. She's been wheezing like that for weeks, you need to take her to the vet."

"She has..?"

"Yes, mum. Take her to the vet."

It never happened. I was afraid to bring up the 'C' word since my mother has had two skin cancers and it felt like too loaded an incentive to throw out there.

A week ago my I finally convinced her and my brother that Spooky was really, really in need of a vet--she was skin and bones, wheezing frequently, barely eating, rarely coming out of the closet--so they finally took her to the vet. Some x-rays were taken, she was sent home with palliative care drugs and a cone around her neck because her anus was infected as well. My mum still didn't quite grasp what was going on or may have been too upset to let herself understand that she was going to lose her cat. Somehow she kept imagining that the pain killers were curing Spooky despite us telling her repeatedly that wasn't the case.

The x-rays came back with clear signs of cancer all through poor Spooky's lungs and gut. She recovered a little thanks to the drugs but she was still obviously extremely ill and I was amazed that after the cancer diagnosis we weren't immediately taking her to be euthanized and I pestered them to tell me what they were going to do. Cancer treatment didn't sound like an option to me; there's no way to surgically remove such a widespread cancer and radiation or drugs would just kill her immediately since she was so sick already.
A few years ago I'd had to put my own cat to sleep over severe digestive issues, so I knew what my mum was going through and what was coming. I brought up euthanasia several times but didn't want to push too hard because she's my mum and it was tearing her up, but I did have serious thoughts of just catnapping the poor bugger and taking her to the vet. But it wasn't my decision to make.

About 4 AM this morning she crashed. Vomiting, foamy mucous around her muzzle, whimpering, shivering. It horrified me. I feel like I understand the emotion of 'horror' a little more now. In a world where we're generally isolated from the suffering of animals, when I do see one helplessly in pain it's right up there with the worst things I've ever felt. It's one thing to watch slaughter-house videos (not that I do that on a frequent basis) and quite another to have a suffering animal in your hands. My mum was frantic and cried a lot. I gave Spooky a dose of her pain killers a little early because overdosing risk didn't really matter any more and she was suffering terribly. It was time. It was absolutely time and I couldn't let my mum waffle any more. I cried a bit. To be honest I even didn't like Spooky very much as her ongoing issues meant sometimes stepping in feces-mines in the hall and she was mostly a grouchy, reclusive, hissing, biting cat. But she loved my mum and my mum loved her.

I called the vet at 8 AM and managed to get us a spot between other appointments. My mum was finally convinced that it was the right thing, the only thing, to do. 10:30 AM and we were in the office. I don't know if the vet was as bumbling and stupid as he appeared to be or if it was just frustration and grief messing with my head. I wanted to shout at him a few times. I cried instead. After waiting a very long time and listening to sales pitches for pointless paw-print casts and urns a half-dozen times, we finally put Spooky to sleep at 11:45 AM. The vet said she was a 'tough girl' as it took two injections, but I'm pretty sure it's just that she was badly dehydrated and the drugs weren't circulating well. She was on the edge of going without our help. I feel rotten that we left it for so long and let her suffer when it was obvious, to me at least, that there was no hope.

The reason I'm writing about this here is that I feel like this experience of strong emotions; sadness, frustration, anger, acceptance, love for my family who are grieving. These are the sorts of emotions that a good story needs. The kind of emotions that, if an author can write about them convincingly and movingly enough to get the reader to feel them as well, they can make a good story into something that truly touches the reader. I've read several stories on FIMFic that rocked my emotions and I'm impressed, inspired and grateful for those experiences.

Even though I hated today, I'm relieved that Spooky isn't in pain any more and grateful that I was there for them.

Right now I'm feeling okay. I cried and commiserated with my folks, chatted with some friends online about it, cried a bit more, and did some writing on one of my pony stories; You Are Here. It's a comedy actually... I'm trying to channel a little Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, with a large dose of my own perversity. I hope I can publish it soon... I'm tempted to break it up into chapters and publish some of it right now, but I don't even know how it ends yet so I don't want to take that risk. Publishing a story in pieces means that I start trying to anticipate how the readers will react--based on any comments made to previous chapters--and that trips me up a bit as I'm not writing for myself anymore when that happens. I'm selfish, I like writing for myself. It's kind of masturbatory. I should be ok writing Catch Me and publishing as I go as I've mapped out the road-trip that they're taking, have written quite a lot of character backgrounds and I know how the story ends. I think I've pinned it down well enough that nothing anyone says about it will affect what I write.

...

Today also has me thinking about Fluttershy. How many of her animal friends and other ponies pets must she have had to do this for or at least witness the deaths of by natural causes? It's small wonder she's 'nice' and yet has an steel core that won't bend when the manure hits the fan. That vet who pissed me off... I dunno, maybe that's how he copes with the small tragedies every day? I couldn't. I'd break like a twig if I tried to be a vet.