Aging Pets
My cat is now 11 years old. We got her when she was only weeks old.... Now the older she gets, the more scared I get and sad. To say that I am a animal lover, is an understatement.... and just the thought that within a few years, she wont be here anymore.... makes me scared to death and very sad. I just dont know, what I will do, or how to deal with it. I have never had a cat of my own, I have never had to see it or anything like that. I had 2 cats that have passed away, but when I moved out of my parents house they stayed, so when they did pass away, I wasnt actually there. I had a hard time dealing with those as it was, so I cant imagine how I will be when mine does, here in my home. I love her sooooo much, and she has been in our family for 11 years now, I just cant imagine her not being here...It will be one of the hardest things i have to deal with. I wish I didnt care so much, at times like these...:((
When my cat died just short of 17 years, it took me more than a year to get through the grieving process and for several years after that I could bring myself to get another cat. In the waning months of his life, as he lost his hair, weight, and flexibility, I struggled with the question of euthanasia. In my cat's case, there wasn't so much an erosion of health. It was more a sequence of increasingly debilitating collapses-- a plateauing down. I remember taking Rex to the vet once. In the lobby was a burley teamster with tears streaming down his face. He had just watched his doctor put his dog “to sleep.” The subject of euthanasia is too complex for this post, but needless to say, I just couldn’t bring myself to take that step. So long as he wasn’t in acute pain so far as I could tell, I resolved to continue to provide as best as I could and play and comfort him until the end. After giving him a bath one night, he had a stroke and died the next morning.
I suppose I could do worse.
One of the many gifts that our fur-kids give us is that they compress time, decades into years. As much as death of someone you love is a desolation and a devastation, there is compensation. By giving us the lesson of death, they teach us about life, that life is short but infinitely joyous. As I type thse words, Kitty is lying in a pool of sun, and sometimes when I've heard a word too much from politicans or tele-evangelists, I find contentment in looking at life through the eyes of my cat, worry less about taxes and war and treasure and marvel at the orbit of life that make up my cat's existence. As I get older, I accept more and more that death is a great gift, not because of what it takes from me, but what it gives to me-- a nobility and poignancy and urgency to life. We accept the death of our pets as an inevitable part of life, but that still doesn't decrease the pain and the sense of loss. Even in death, they wrap their souls around our hearts and so continue to live on in our hearts.
When my cat died just short of 17 years, it took me more than a year to get through the grieving process and for several years after that I could bring myself to get another cat. In the waning months of his life, as he lost his hair, weight, and flexibility, I struggled with the question of euthanasia. In my cat's case, there wasn't so much an erosion of health. It was more a sequence of increasingly debilitating collapses-- a plateauing down. I remember taking Rex to the vet once. In the lobby was a burley teamster with tears streaming down his face. He had just watched his doctor put his dog “to sleep.” The subject of euthanasia is too complex for this post, but needless to say, I just couldn’t bring myself to take that step. So long as he wasn’t in acute pain so far as I could tell, I resolved to continue to provide as best as I could and play and comfort him until the end. After giving him a bath one night, he had a stroke and died the next morning.
I suppose I could do worse.
One of the many gifts that our fur-kids give us is that they compress time, decades into years. As much as death of someone you love is a desolation and a devastation, there is compensation. By giving us the lesson of death, they teach us about life, that life is short but infinitely joyous. As I type thse words, Kitty is lying in a pool of sun, and sometimes when I've heard a word too much from politicans or tele-evangelists, I find contentment in looking at life through the eyes of my cat, worry less about taxes and war and treasure and marvel at the orbit of life that make up my cat's existence. As I get older, I accept more and more that death is a great gift, not because of what it takes from me, but what it gives to me-- a nobility and poignancy and urgency to life. We accept the death of our pets as an inevitable part of life, but that still doesn't decrease the pain and the sense of loss. Even in death, they wrap their souls around our hearts and so continue to live on in our hearts.
Labels: cats
posted by My Mall & News at
3:24 PM
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