Once upon a time, back before two marriages, two divorces, and two children, not particularly in that order, I was fairly certain I was going to be the crazy cat lady at the end of the block with purple knee socks, purple hair, 17 cats, an assorted additional menagerie, and a serious gin and cigarette habit. I made it all the way to 7 cats, 3 gerbils, a large fish tank, two foster birds, and one toe-less iguana near the end of the first marriage; with the first pregnancy, my happy zoo found new homes with the anticipation of the work of child-rearing. All but the felines, who stayed with me.
The last two of those original 7 are all I have left. Two white kitties, Jem and Scout, rescued as kittens from a dumpster, hand fed until they could eat solid food. They're 14 now, these brothers, a year older than my eldest, named for literary siblings from my favorite book. One is fluffy, healthy, vibrant; the other is actively dying.
It's difficult, this work of dying. A friend of mine was over last week, cuddling Jem in her lap as she sat on the kitchen floor. "We like to think of death as being instantaneous, but it really isn't," she mused. "It actually takes a really long time." And it does. Jem has had almost three months of borrowed time; he was very ill when we first moved to the high desert, but a change of food and the change of air did wonders for him, and I thought he'd made a turnaround. But it turns out that it was just a brief reprieve. For the last month, he has been slowly disintegrating, kidneys failing, respiratory and heart rates increased to compensate for dirty blood. But so sweet, as usual, this little kitty of mine.
Even after all these years of seeing death, I am not quite sure what to do for him. Is that wrong? I don't know what to do because he doesn't understand what is happening. I can't tell him why he's breathing so hard, why he is so weak, why his proprioreception is so off. He is not in pain, he still waits eagerly by his food dish every day. But he can't tell me what he's feeling, and it leaves me to imagine the worst. I don't know if he wants me to sit with him or leave him alone. I just don't know. Every morning I wake up and wonder if this is going to be the morning I find his body, and every morning I go downstairs and there he is, leaning against the refrigerator, waiting for his breakfast.
I've explained this process to the kids, had them say their goodbyes. We talk about our favorite memories of Jem, we sing to him, our voices wavering through the tears and lumps in our throats. We brush him gently, scratch under his little chin as he purrs. I am so grateful to whatever god there is for animals that he had the chance to sit outside in our new yard, eyes closed, sniffing the air; that he had the opportunity to chase butterflies. And that, I think, chokes me up more than thinking about his wasted body now-- the memory of his surprise and joy as a butterfly flitted past him, and the absolute abandon with which he chased it. I wish I'd caught a picture of him mid-flight.
