Minus and me when he was young.
Minus Monk
Because I don’t always care for euphemism, I will say that I killed Minus yesterday. Our cat. Well, the doctor injected him, but I said “Do it,” so what’s the difference? I cradled his head in my hands, and Wendy had her hands on him also. I said “Do it” because when Morgan died, Wendy thought I wasn’t decisive enough. He was the first animal I was responsible for, and I couldn’t believe he was dying. So I hesitated, and—I guess, because I don’t remember—Wendy had to say something.
So yesterday I made sure I spoke up. Minus had fallen last week and broke his jaw. Not an easy break, one up near the hinge. The specialist they called said it would be a difficult operation. They would probably have to wire his mouth closed and insert a feeding tube in his neck. I thought about this as clearly as I could, but at such a time you are fighting hope and fear, and it’s not easy to think clearly. What I considered was that he was old and getting feeble, and he had been throwing up a lot in the last couple of months. We thought maybe there was something bad happening in his stomach, but never took him to the vet for it. We were afraid that maybe it was cancer, and if we took him to the vet we would be forced to make a hard decision. He was old. And, besides, he was getting along OK aside from the occasional barf. We thought he would just fade away in a few years. Then he fell. I’m pretty sure it was the fall, though Wendy initially thought that GoGo had done it when she pounced on him. We’ll never know for sure.
The doctor produced a needle, told us it was an anesthetic and that Minus would simply quit breathing. She injected it into his forearm, but he continued to breath, his side slowly going up and down. She went to get another needle, and I wished I could just tell her to stop, to give him some sort of antidote that would bring him around. But then he would still have the broken jaw. And how could it ever heal, and how could he barf with his mouth wired shut? That would be too horrible. The second shot went into his rear leg and somehow Minus went from breathing to not breathing. He didn’t look any different, he didn’t feel any different, but he was dead. You can’t take that back. You have to just accept what you did and go home.
Posted: 2010-01-20 01:44:38