The year
anniversary of when everything started to happen with Colin and Nathan has
started. It began the day before
Thanksgiving and will continue on through January. It has been a very difficult couple of weeks
so far for me for a couple reasons. The
first one obviously being that everyday I remember what we were doing a year
ago today. Some days it is easier than
others because not a whole lot of really scary things happened, but what did
happen does cross my mind. And
remembering and preparing for their 1st Birthday and the year
anniversary of each of their deaths, gets me nervous and extremely sad. But on top of all that, I am dealing with recent loss of my cat
Morris.
Now some of
you might be thinking that because I had gone through loosing both my sons,
with each of them taking their last breath in MY arms, how could loosing a pet
even come close to comparing. Well let
me tell you something. It is difficult
as hell for me. And I don’t know if I
would be this extremely sad if Colin and Nathan were still alive and none of
that bad stuff ever happened with them, or if BECAUSE I went through that, that
this is harder than it needs to be. I
have no idea. All I know is how I feel
and let me tell you something….i just feel defeated.
Morris was
such a good little buddy for me. I have
had him for over half my life and he was one of my best friends. I got him in 6th grade so I was 11
or 12 at the time and I am now 28. I
almost can’t remember life without him but now I am going to have to create a
life without him.
A few
months ago in August, I took Morris to the vet because he had been peeing on
the carpet instead of in his litter box quite a bit. So I honestly hoped that it was something
medical related that we could treat with a pill or something instead of it
being behavioral. Boy do I wish I could
take back saying that. I didn’t want it
to be something extreme, but I did want him to stop and I thought if it was
behavioral, it would be harder to stop.
I mean, we have a little baby coming soon and I can’t have him crawling
around on urine soaked carpet.
So on
August 18
th, I took him to the vet and they drew some blood and ran
some tests on him.
He HATED the
vet.
He would get so stressed out going
there.
Dr. Picking, said that she would
get the result soon and would call to tell them to me.
But the next day, I actually was bringing
Darcy in for a vet appointment as well and she just happened to have the
results of Morris’s labs.
She sat down
with me and explained that he was in the beginning stages of kidney disease.
It isn’t something that can be cured, but it
can be helped.
She showed me a piece of
paper with numbers of different levels of things and on it she pointed out the
Creatinine level.
There that word is
again.
I dealt with Creatinine so much
with Colin and Nathan and now, here we are dealing with it in my cat.
I handled the news well and understood
because I knew he was old (even though he never really acted like it).
I asked her what we could do to help it and
we were going to put him on a kidney friendly diet for the time being.
So I bought the special food and Darcy and I
went on our way.
I never did
ask her at that time how long they give cats with kidney disease so I really
wasn’t sure. But the next day was when
we found out that Sean was a baby boy!
And yes, I was very excited about that but when I got home, I went over
to Morris who was sleeping on the recliner and cried because I was worried
about him. 3 weeks went by and I noticed
that he just wasn’t himself. He wasn’t drinking
water like he normally would and he wouldn’t go down in the basement to eat his
food or go to the bathroom. So I ended
up bringing his litter box up to the guest bathroom and his food up in the
closet where he sleeps in his basket.
That seemed to help a little bit, but he still only wanted to sleep most
of the time and he really didn’t go to the bathroom all that much, which I know
is a very important thing to do.
I got
scared and Kevin and I brought him back into the vet to ask her opinion on
September 10th. I was so sad going in there. I thought she was going to tell us there is
nothing we can do. I asked her with
tears running down my face, that if we didn’t do anything for him, how much
time does he have. She told us a few
weeks or so. But that was if we didn’t
do ANYTHING!. I had to try to make my
kitty feel better. What we came up with
was that Kevin and I were going to administer an IV to him every other day,
give him an appetite pill every 3 days, and give him a Pepcid every day to help
him keep his food down because he was loosing weight.
I hated
giving him all these things but I wanted to help him in anyway I could. I couldn’t just stand back and watch him
deteriorate. Just like Colin and Nathan,
they can’t voice how they are feeling. A
few weeks went by with giving him all this medicine, and he started feeling
better. He was more active, he was
peeing more and he was eating more. We
helped him out and he got through October and most of November just fine. We even cut back on his IV’s because he was
doing so well.
But towards
the end of November, I noticed that he really wasn’t himself. It was getting harder and harder to give him
IV’s and give him pills. I had been
working so much that I felt the only time I saw him I was stuffing something
down his thoat. But then he would do
this awful ‘meow’ and you could tell he was in pain. He would just pace the floor…back and forth
and then he would squat as if he had to poop.
His belly would start convulsing but nothing came out. So he continued to pace or would go in the
other room and do it again. I finally
realized that he was constipated. I
told the Vet about this and she gave me some liquid medicine that would help
with that right before Thanksgiving. One
more thing to stress him out over.
His whines
got worse and worse and more often. I would
just sit by his basket in the closet and pet him because that is where he
wanted to be. He had absolutely no meat
on him and I could see that even with the IV’s, he urine output was
diminishing. I would just cry and cry
because I didn’t want him to be in pain, but I didn’t want to be the one to
make the decision to put him down. I
would have to say that Colin and Nathan gave me a gift in the fact that they
made the decision on their own to leave this world to go to Heaven. We didn’t have to make that kind of decision
and for that, I will be forever grateful to them. But with Morris, he is not in a Kitty NICU
and can’t be monitored 24/7. I have to
be the one to say that it is time and I didn’t want to do it too soon and I
didn’t want to have him in pain. I was
torn.
I also have
to admit that I didn’t want to be stressed out over his care when Sean is
born. I hate saying that because it
sounds so selfish, but I had put so many things on hold to accomplish because I
just want to come home right after work and be with Morris. Even though I know he would be sleeping, I
wanted to be there to snuggle with him if he needed me. So how would that work when Sean arrived? Sean is my sunshine after the storm and it
kills me to say this, but I didn’t want the worry of Morris hanging over my
head while I was at the hospital.
I knew deep
down that it was coming soon. And now it
was sooner than later. He was just in
pain. I could tell. He stumbled when he walked, probably because
he wasn’t eating and was weak, and his eyes just looked like he was sick. I didn’t want him to keep feeling this
way. And another selfish thing was that
I wanted to put him down on a Friday because I didn’t want to miss work and I
knew that if it were done during the week, I would not be up to working the
next day. And next Friday is Colin and
Nathan’s first birthday so I didn’t want to do it then but I didn’t want to
prolong Morris’s pain. I also wanted him
to be put down at our home since he gets so stressed out at the vet, I didn’t
want his last moments to be in fear or full of stress. Luckily our vet did house calls for that.
He hadn’t
eaten anything since Monday the 1st
and I hadn’t seen any urine in his litter box. So Kevin called the vet on Wednesday the 3rd
and they made the appointment for them to come put him down on Friday the 5th
at 6:15. When I heard that I just lost
it and went to his basket and picked him up.
We now had a time that Morris was going to leave and go to Heaven. Something about having a time clock on a pets
life seems so wrong. I just held him and
I cried and cried and tears kept coming and coming. I was going to miss him so much. I wasn’t going to get to hold him like I was
and pet his soft fur. I wasn’t going to
have him whine at me to put the blanket on my legs so he could come up and lay
on them. It was just so hard for me to
grasp that in less than 48 hours, he wouldn’t be here anymore.
I made it
through work on Thursday and then as we were leaving, I asked my boss if I
could leave early the next day. I wanted
to spend all afternoon with Morris because our time was limited. She, of course, said ‘yes’ and gave me a big
hug since I started to cry.
When I got
home from work, I picked Morris up and brought him into my room hoping that he
would snuggle with me. And he did. Usually he will just jump down and go back in
his basket but he snuggled with me. I
didn’t want to move. I wanted him to be
next to me for as long as I could possibly have him. I did get up to eat dinner and get ready for
bed, but that was about it. When it was
time for bed, I picked him up and put him in his basket because I thought he
wouldn’t want our legs to be kicking him at night or disturbing him. But when I woke up when my alarm went off for
the first time at 4:07 am, I got a big surprise.
Morris was
on my legs. He was snuggling with
me. So I turned my body around and put
my head next to his and spend the next hour lying next to him, touching him. Then it was time to actually get up. L I for sure thought that Kevin had put him
there because he hadn’t slept with me for a few months. Kevin woke up and I asked him and he said
that Morris was on the bed when he came up to bed that night. I started to tear up. He knew it was his last night with me and he
wanted to be close to me as well. How
can you not love an animal like that?
I got home
from work on Friday around 1 pm. Morris
was curled up on the couch on top of the blanket. His hearing was going because you could say
his name or anything and he wouldn’t budge.
So I petted him and he moved a little.
It was time, time for him to join Colin and Nathan in Heaven. He really didn’t feel good. His eye was slightly open while he was
sleeping so I was watching him breathe just to make sure. 5 more hours with him. The time was ticking by and I didn’t want
6:15 to come. I laid next to him all
afternoon. I made sure I was touching him
so he knew I was there. I felt the need
to do that to Nathan as well. I wanted
him to know his mom was there for him and everything would be all right.
Around 6
pm, I woke him up and set him on my lap and just petted him as I watched each
car pass the house, my heart would skip a beat thinking it was the vet. Then I saw them pull up. I started crying even more knowing now it was
only down to minutes. Dr. Picking came
in and told us what was going to happen.
They were going to give him a sedation shot, which would just make him
very calm and relaxed and then they would euthanize him after that set in. She said that he would know that I was still
there with the sedation shot.
She asked
if I was ready and I just kind of shrugged. Is anyone ever really ready for
this? She poked him in the leg, and
after a minute or two, he became very limp.
I turned him over and cradled him like a baby. His limbs were like jelly and he wasn’t
really blinking. He was just lying on my
chest, not moving a muscle. He was just
breathing and that is the only reason I could tell he was alive. I just looked at him in the eyes and would
give him kisses and tell him that I loved him very much and that he would be
meeting Colin and Nathan in a few minutes.
Dr. Picking
took his paws and made imprints on a piece of clay that we could have. After that was done, it was time to start. So I asked if I could hold him while she did
it and so we put the towel over my lap and she shaved his inner thigh. She explained that we would see deep breaths
from him and he may let go of his bowels (hence the towel). As she found the vein and pushed the medicine
into his thin body, I just stared into his eyes and stroked his head so he knew
I was right there. I watched his stomach
continue to go up and down waiting for it to just come to a stop. After a few minutes, he hadn’t passed so we
flipped him over so she could put more medicine in him since it was taking too
long. She did that and then she checked
his heartbeat and he was gone. Another
one of my little buddies just died in my arms.
I picked
him up, wrapped in that towel, and held him for a moment and gave him another
kiss. Then when I moved, his head just
flopped over, which was hard to see because you just knew he was no longer with
us. The carefully put him in a cardboard
box and left. He was never coming
back. Coming home to the pitter patter
of cat feet coming to greet me would never happen again. I would never hear the sound of the cat door
going to the basement, or the sound of him jumping off the sink onto the floor. No more meows or scratching at the bathroom
door because for some strange reason, he felt like he needed to be in there
with us while we were doing our business.
No more picking him up and hearing him purr because he was just
perfectly content in your arms. He was
really gone and now I had to start the grieving process yet again. I knew what I just had done was the best
thing for him, but it still doesn’t make it any easier. I’m just so used to coming home and him
being there that it is going to take a LOT of getting used to. The door to his closet where he slept is now
closed. The litter boxes and food bowls
are empty. It’s just not the same.
I feel like
I am taking this almost as hard as loosing Colin and Nathan. I am just so damn sick of saying
‘Goodbye’. I am just too damn young to
have already had 3 of my children (yes, I consider Morris like a child to me)
die in my arms. There are some people
who get to live their whole lives without loosing a child, and I have lost 3
and I am only 28. I really don’t think I
can handle anymore. No, I probably won’t
cry everyday for 6 months like I did for Colin and Nathan but it is going to
hurt for a while. Colin and Nathan
didn’t get a chance to live a long and healthy life. At least with Morris, I know I gave him the
best life that he could have possibly had and I tried everything in my power to
help him towards the end of his life. He
had a nice long life for a cat; some might say longer than normal. All this is very true. But it still is making holes in my
heart. I am a damn good mother and love
my children and pets so much. I know I
did the right thing and I have to keep telling myself that. The emptiness in the house without him is
going to be hard to get used too because every time I walk past his room where
he slept, I cry, or if I see his empty litter box, I cry.
This
weekend was hard. I have my strong
moments and I have my not so strong moments.
I will get through this and am looking forward to the happiness that
Sean will be giving me in about a month.
I deserve some happiness. I am a
good person but seem to keep having these sad things thrown at me. I say, “NO MORE!” I am done. I am going to have nothing but
happiness from here on out. I need to
get through December and through the anniversary of Nathan passing and then a few days after that, Sean will be born
and life will only get better from there.
I hope
Morris is happy in Heaven with Colin and Nathan and I hope they all know how
much I love them. Not a day goes by that
I don’t think about them. And even
though I have those holes in my heart from all the losses that I have gone
through within a year, the amount of Love I have for those 3 never
diminished.
RIP Morris! I am
going to miss you like you wouldn’t believe!
